La Vida Fresca

Because I got all this for $32:

2 seedless watermelons

2 pints of blueberries

2 bags of spinach

1 pound of strawberries

~1.5 pounds of golden delicious apples

~4 pounds of pears

~2.5 pounds of tomatoes on the vine

~2.5 pounds of bananas

3 mangoes

3 lemons

an avocado

and a bag of radishes.

Some of the loot:

Man  I <3 that store.

That is all.

Weekend breakfast:  pork sausage and lots (and lots and lots) of citrus from the trees outside.

Sausage (a very good local brand) in the skillet …

More oranges …

The only way to have orange juice is fresh squeezed.  I don’t know why but the taste is totally different to me, even compared to the good, fresh, not-from-concentrate stuff.

The orange storage facility.  I think I burned my retinas out taking this shot.

And this is the view from above my coffeepot looking down at the filter.  Not sure why I’m putting this up but here it is …

Today I started a new dinner adventure: “Eat like a Spartan.” Previous dinner adventures include $14- and $16-limits for five weeknight meals for two. The rules were each meal had to have a protein, quality starch, and vegetable, none of which could come from a can. I’m planning this one for five nights too, unless something else comes up (like, say, we end up going out to eat or I just really want to do something else). For the purpose of this exercise, Spartan means three things:

• Inexpensive (goal is between $4 and $5 per person, per meal).

• Made of a few simple ingredients, including meat.

• And lastly, these are meals the guys training for the “300″ movie might’ve eaten. For this I’m making meals that don’t include starches. This part is pure speculation, as I have no idea what they really ate, although I think I remember reading they ate somewhere around 1,800 calories while training hard at Gym Jones. If that’s true, it must’ve been a very sad, hungry time for them. I don’t think I’d be happy on that much food doing what they did. However, they did get to train at Gym Jones as part of their job, so that alone makes me not feel sorry for them.

Back to the point. This is tonight’s dinner and stats. It’s kind of light on the calories though. Spartans might require a little more. I’m just kind of winging it here, but if I were going to modify this, I’d add more protein.

350 calories

16 fat

34 carb

22 protein

Even though it’s low on calories, it’s actually quite a lot of food. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the salad items, especially the tomatoes, were huge. I left them in big pieces because Spartans don’t like dainty salads. :- ) There’s a big piece of chicken, three carrots, a whole large tomato and whole cucumber per person. We couldn’t even finish all the salad.

I also used two tablespoons of olive oil total and some cooking spray. It was $8.58 total*/$4.29 per person — less than an Extra Value Meal at McDonald’s. I use this comparison because you always hear people complain that they have to eat junk and fast food because “healthy” food is too expensive.

*I figured the cost of the chicken is 2/3 of the price of the chicken on the receipt, because I used that much out of the pack. The rest I’ll use in another meal, most likely in the next few days.