(in case the embed fails: http://youtu.be/xz8clpZ8FCM )
So yesterday (day 20) I finally made a trip up to the Barrington/Rochester area, which according to the USDA is in a food desert.
(click on the image to see larger size)
This is a screen shot of the USDA's interactive map for food deserts. If you want to see where the closest food desert is to you, you can enter your location. I currently live east/southeast of here. UNH is southeast.
So my trip up into a real food desert as indicated by the USDA's map was uneventful. The convenience stores were essentially identical to what I had already seen pretty much everywhere else. There were differences in quality of the physical store, but pretty much all the stores carried the same stuff - beer, chips, and a few other edibles, almost no fresh food, very little frozen food other than pizza.
I confess, my hypothesis had been that I might actually find a little more real food, but frankly I think the USDA map is wrong. There is a Market Basket (a full grocery store) south on 125 about four miles from the Circle K. So why would the Circle K go through the trouble of stocking real groceries if they know that people can drive just a few miles down the road and get a much better selection at prices Circle K couldn't afford?
Anyway, day 20 started out with a nice omelet. I decided to splurge and use both onion and green pepper.
| Breakfast | Quantity | Cost | Calories |
| eggs | 2.00 | $0.59 | 155 |
| onion | 4.00 | $0.31 | 30 |
| green peper | 0.25 | $0.32 | 7 |
| I can't believe | 5.00 | $0.07 | 20 |
| cheddar | 1.00 | $0.40 | 110 |
| coffee | 3.00 | $0.28 | 8 |
| $1.97 | 330 |
Day 20 was a busy day working in my office, before I decided I would go try to find the food desert. I paused to make a quick lunch of PB&Js and carrots:
| Lunch | Quantity | Cost | Calories |
| bread | 4.00 | $0.52 | 266 |
| peanut butter | 1.00 | $0.27 | 180 |
| jelly | 2.00 | $0.35 | 112 |
| carrots | 4.00 | $0.50 | 51 |
| ranch dressing | 0.50 | $0.24 | 70 |
| coffee | 2.00 | $0.19 | 5 |
| $2.07 | 684 |
I was very excited to finally find a few missing ingredients - canned beans, and frozen peas!
I set those aside and decided to cook up my beans. One of the frustrating things about the Food Desert is how bland my cooking is. I am not charging myself for the spices because they are too hard to measure, and they cost is minimal from meal to meal, but I am only using spices I have bought in convenience stores, which is pretty limited, and does not include chili powder, cumin, garam masala, curry, etc. - all spices I regularly cook with.
I did decided to splurge again and use not only onions and peppers, but olive oil on day 20's dinner:
It came out nicely.
| Dinner | Quantity | Cost | Calories |
| pink beans | 1.00 | $0.50 | 120 |
| olive oil | 0.50 | $0.35 | 60 |
| onion | 2.00 | $0.16 | 15 |
| green pepper | 0.13 | $0.16 | 4 |
| spaghetti sauce | 0.25 | $0.08 | 15 |
| rice | 1.00 | $0.39 | 175 |
| $1.63 | 389 |
I did eat the bag of jalapeno flavored peanuts ($0.50; 220 cal) as a snack on the road. It was nice to have some spice.
As an evening snack I made oatmeal again, but just put banana in the oatmeal, left out the peanut butter.
| Snack | Quantity | Cost | Calories |
| peanuts, jalapeno flavor | 1.00 | $0.50 | 220 |
| oatmeal | 1.00 | $0.33 | 153 |
| milk | 1.00 | $0.31 | 83 |
| banana | 1.00 | $0.24 | 90 |
| cinamon | - | $ - | - |
| $1.38 | 546 |
For exercise, I just walked on the treadmill, no running, for 1 hour.
Day totals:
Cost: $7.05
Calories: 1,949
Exercise: 188 cal - 10,418 steps
Net calories: 1,761
Weight: 167.1
No comments:
Post a Comment