One thing about living in New York that is a constant challenge is the living costs. I have had to adjust to the fact that I am unable to save as I could in Melbourne and while some things are cheaper, life here is undoubtedly more expensive.
For one room (not one bedroom, ONE ROOM) in an old building we pay, per month, what many people would pay for a brand new, two bedroom apartment in say, Richmond. Seriously.
When I sat down to do the budget for Bill and I, food costs were always going to be a factor as we both like to eat well and make decent meals. Actually… we don’t have a budget as I refuse to ‘budget’ as such. Every few months I spreadsheet all of our pay dates and our expenses and allocate funds towards everything at each pay and that is it. This works better for us as I find this helps with by making long term goals look ‘short’ term and I find it also helps me more easily when it comes to dealing with unexpected expenses. For us, it just seems to work. I hope that makes sense!
One thing where it is so easy to control costs is food. When I moved in here, I started ‘meals.xls’. Bill was an avid orderer-innerer (even though he is an amazing cook!) and I was someone who would happily have a corn omelette or baked beans on toast for dinner. Cooking for one is HARD. When I realized this when I first moved here, I started doing Sunday cooking days and freezing meals and it worked a treat. I just can’t cook a meal with ‘half an onion’. I grew up mainly doing a lot of the cooking for everyone at home and when you are trained to make ‘dad sized’ meals all the time, it is hard to change.
So, back to meals.xls.
Every week, I do a meal plan – Saturday to the following Sunday. Lunches and dinners are listed. In this spreadsheet I put down the staples that need re-stocking and what meals we’ll be having. Then under Saturday or Sunday or sometimes both days, I’ll put in what meal we’ll cook in bulk. I don’t like freezing all meals, so we have a few favourites that are made this way and that freeze and defrost really well. Normally a huge dahl, a chicken and coconut curry, some kind of soup, a tomato based spaghetti sauce and chicken fetticini sauce. This means when we are planning our meals we normally have fish when it has been freshly delivered, then another kind of meat-and-3-veg dish, a lentil and rice night, chicken and vegetable wraps, pasta etc. During summer we would roast a chicken every Sunday and have cold chicken and salad meal on the Monday and Tuesday. We were even baking our own bread there at one stage… but we had to stop as I kept eating the raw dough. Ooops. When I moved in I had to explain to Bill that I couldn’t afford to eat out all the time and what I feel works best is a meal plan.. I was worried what he would think but he loves it now too and we refer to meals.xls every single day!
The way we control our food costs is the following –
1. We only buy from Fresh Direct.
Bill and I are both impulsive buyers when we are in the supermarket. We have a Whole Foods on one corner and a Garden of Eden on the other corner so the temptation is definitely there. Sticking to Fresh Direct works and even though their prices can be a bit more expensive, it isn’t more expensive than the little purchases we’ll make each time we’d go into a normal shop. We have an unlimited delivery pass and this is awesome. In the few instances where we have had not-quite-right produce, or milk that is leaking they have refunded us straight away.
2. We mix it up by buying stuff that is on special and using that to try new recipes with
Beef short ribs were on special last week so Bill used that as an opportunity to cook a totally extravagant Alton Brown meal. It was delish!
3. By making take away treats at home
Instead of going to a burger shop when we want burgers, we make them at home. They always taste better. Same with our home made pizza.
3. We nearly always take lunch from home
We maybe buy lunch once or twice per month. We hardly ever have leftovers so I find keeping things interesting for lunches is the biggest challenge.
What about eating out you ask?
We hardly ever eat out. While I find restaurants fun, I prefer to keep them for special occasions when it is a real treat. If we eat out it is normally on a Friday night and we’ll get some chinese from our local hole in the wall. We both love cooking too much to bother with eating out all the time.
So tonight, for example we had a delicious and healthy dinner for two for under $10.
The Tilapia fish (which was absolutely beautiful) was on special – so we got two fillets on special for $4.99. The fresh bunch of asparagus was $3.00. We had some mashed potatoes on the side – perfect!
This photo was taken before Bill spooned a lovely buttery lemon and caper sauce over the fish.
Also, it doesn’t take ages to cook a meal like this. We got home at 6.25 and we had eaten by 7.00 and dishes were all done and we were relaxing by 7.20!
On Sunday I made a huge batch of Cauliflower Soup (freezes really well!) and while it cost about $15 all up it is completely decadent in texture an flavour and… it made TEN containers worth. So a weeks worth of lunches for $7.50 each and it tastes better than any soup at any place in the city!
And just for an extra challenge, all this cooking is done in a kitchen that has a preparation area the size of a chopping board and we have no dishwasher. So on a cooking day I could end up doing 4 or 5 loads of dishes a day just because we have no place to chuck the dishes.
Glam New York hey? 😉