Today is Day 6 of the Challenge, and... we're going to go over budget.
Tuesday night, we both had dinners out that were at least semi-business related, and thus unavoidable. I also went to see Grant Lee Phillips, so I ended up spending $12 on a couple of beers. They were local beers, at least.
I made another shopping trip for a few things for Wednesday dinner/ Thursday lunch, and since we didn't cook Tuesday night, I bought lunch out. Michael got a free lunch from work, so I'm not counting it.
The money breaks out like this:
My Tuesday Dinner before Grant Lee Phillips show + beers at the show: $32
Michael's Tuesday Dinner: $24.50
Software for Wednesday dinner & Thursday lunch:
2 organic red bell peppers: $5 (probably local, but I'm not 100% certain)
1 loaf of organic local bread: $3
2 local/ sustainable carnitas tacos w/ chips & salsa: $11.50
That brings our total spent this week to $155.
Dinner last night was roasted red pepper, caramelized onion and Fatted Calf bacon sandwiches with Happy Boy greens from the farmers' market on Saturday. I had wanted tomatoes, but there were no local tomatoes to be found. Paying $5 for two smallish peppers totally sucked, especially since I know the non-local, non-organic variety would have cost about a buck at the Korean market where I usually buy them.
My lunch yesterday was also illuminative. I spent almost $12 for Traci Des Jardins' designer Mexican street food. The tacos were delicious, no doubt, but I could have had the exact same meal for about $5 from the taco truck a few blocks away. The taco truck doesn't use Niman Ranch pork, or local organic produce though. I also cheated, and used the excellent (and imported from Mexico) Valentina hot sauce on my lunch. Traci's salsa may be local and sustainable, but it's also somewhat lacking in the flavor and heat department. For twelve bucks I was going to enjoy those suckers.
We're left with five bucks in the budget. Five dollars would probably be enough to get us through the next 24 hours via a flank steak or something and the odds and ends around the house. Today is Dining Out For Life though, and some friends invited us out to Cesar for dinner. If it weren't a fundraiser, and just a regular night out, I would have postponed until after the challenge. It does raise an interesting point though, namely that this sort of conscious eating can make having a social life somewhat challenging.
Ironically in our case, it seems to have supercharged our social life. In an average week, we might dine with friends once... and yet somehow this particular week gave us four opportunities to eat out, only one of which was planned before the week started. I suppose we could have taken a more hardline approach to the challenge and declined these invitations, but we don't get to spend enough time with people as it is. The fact that all these occasions happened this week is purely coincidence.
So tomorrow we're off the hook, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. Not because of the food... we've had great stuff this week. I'm looking forward to not having to bean-count. We've definitely incorporated more local products into our diets than usual, and that's something I'd like to carry forward after this week.
