$5/day challenge- the list

The  trick to making this work is shopping for more than one meal and more than one day at a time, and buying ingredients that compliment each other so that you can use your leftovers throughout the week. I asked the friendly internet for some cheap and healthy recipe suggestions before shopping, and then armed myself with my ingredient list.

We stopped ourselves a little under the $70 limit for the week because we already have chicken breasts and ground beef at home, so purchasing more would have been wasteful. Also, you may notice as I cook this week I use a few ingredients here and there not on this shopping list. If your home is already stocked with olive oil, spices and herbs, no need to include them in your count. I have those items plus a jar of chopped garlic, a bottle of lemon juice, some white and red wine, and a few leftover grapes that I plan to make use of as well. The challenge is about a lifestyle change that has longevity, not about eating boring food or letting what is in you refrigerator currently go to waste.

All of that said, to keep us honest, I'll post the total cost of each meal as I make it. As long as it averages out over the week, though, you've done it! (my challenge, my rules). This shouldn't be an impossible feat, just a good challenge to make us get off our butts and into the kitchen :)

Here is what we bought for the week:

bag fuji apples- $5.49

jar Simply Jif creamy peanut butter- $3.99

bag yellow onions- $3.99

16 oz bag dry chickpeas- $2.99

16 oz bag dry great northern beans- $2.59

Loaf wheat bread- $2.25

Cucumber-$1.57

2 green bell peppers- $1.61

2 packages cherry tomatoes- $6

1lb roundeye steak (lean)- $5.14

Red wine vinegar- $3.99

Head of lettuce- $2.99

Head of cabbage- $2.31

4 cans tuna in water- $5

6 oz fat free Vanilla cherry yogurt- $1

8 oz Cheddar cheese- $3

8 oz Meunster cheese- $3

Local farm fresh medium eggs (30)- $4.99

Celery- $3

Total- $67.49 (with tax)

The challenge begins October 1st!

Hanging with my brother

Shawn and I were at the mall over the weekend and we may have gotten a little carried away with the camera...

$5 a day food challenge!

I am putting out a challenge:

Eat for a week on $5 a day. Why?

1. save money
2. eat healthier
3. eat in, not in restaurants

Eating cheaply and at home forces you to really consider the ingredients you are putting into your food so that you cut out the junk food and buy nutritious food instead.

Joe and I are going to challenge ourselves to eat on $5 a day each over the next 7 days and I'll be sharing and reviewing the recipes we use, and sharing our progress. My hope is that proving we can do this will change how we think about grocery shopping and will save us money and make us eat healthier. All at the same time.

I challenge YOU to do the challenge, too, and share your experiences in the comments here.

Good luck!

Game Night

Sunday nights in our house are family game nights. Let me explain the rules:

1. The winner from the previous week gets to choose the game.
2. If you win more than 2 weeks in a row, we draw names and let someone new choose the game.
3. The winner scores a point for their team on the leader board:

The current board has us all tied up...let the games begin!

4. If you have friends over and the friends win, their points go to the team that invited them over. Anyone want to come over?

We have played a variety of games for game night. Here is a sampling of the chaos from a recent night:

Joe shuffles the deck with his blue stripey margarita close at hand

Shawn is busy...

 ...killing other people's bunnies

Of course, other games are in the mix as well.

Kill the monsters, steal the treasure, stab your buddy. I didn't write the rules.

That's my hand. I already made the tower fall

The electronic thing is annoying. I miss my paper money :(

And just for the record: Joe and I do NOT cheat at Monopoly.

Reality Check: Beverages

In our favorite local Mexican restaurant...

Me: I'd like a water with lemon, please.
Waitress: Ok (turns to Joe)
Joe: I'll have an unsweet tea.
Waitress: No.

Food post: San Francisco

For those of you that love to eat as much as I do, I want to share my adventures in eating my way through my MFA. I dedicate this post to my fellow Lunch Train riders. You know who you are.

Before reaching Hawaii we had a 12 hour layover in San Francisco. And San Francisco has some amazing food! It was a little chilly the day we were there, but that didn't stop Joe from conquering the beach:

I was just cold.

Luckily there was plenty of good food to be had a Fisherman's Wharf. We looked around for just the right place to eat lunch.

Flying Ninja Sushi, despite its awesome name, did not make the cut. We were looking for that perfect San Francisco food, that I had been craving since we landed in California:

Sour dough bread

Mmm. Yummy

If you want to know the story of the San Francisco sourdough bread, visit this link:http://www.boudinbakery.com/meetboudin/. It's a fun read and the bakery still has lines out the door to buy fresh bread.

The sour dough bread bowl with clam chowder. A classic. Mine also had corn and blue crab. Delicious.

Joe had another seaside favorite: fish and chips with vinegar.

And of course afterwards we visited the world-famous Ghirardelli Square to get some chocolate from the chocolate factory. When you walk in you are immediately greeted by a chocolate square in that day's chosen flavor, opened and handed to you by a smiling staff member. If you leave and go in another door, they give you another. You can get the most amazing looking sundaes and shakes, but I was still so full from my chowder that the chocolates squares were enough. It was fun to go through and see the machines making chocolate, though. You can read more about the Ghirardelli Company history here:http://ghirardelli.com/about/history.aspx

The sign just looked so good. I just wanted a taste.

That is all for our tasty romp through San Francisco. Stay tuned for more fun food postings!

College Days

As graduate students, we spend a lot of time on campus. Our days look like this:

Set up at little cubicles, working at our laptops in the library.



Mostly we are working. For our jobs.

 Imagine how much time we'll spend here when we're really studying!

And outside of the (freezing cold) library it looks like this:

And it is breezy and beautiful. This is where I drink my coffee, eat my lunch and check my email.

The walk just across this grass takes us to the theatre building, where I live have rehearsals and classes.

The Kennedy Theatre building.

It is a beautiful campus.

The View

We live in Kaneohe, which is about a 30 minute drive from the UH campus in Manoa. Unless there is traffic, in which case the drive can take an hour or more. People keep asking why we live so far away (it's only 15 miles). My answer? The view:

This video is of my drive home. I love this view. Forgive the long intro into the tunnel, but it's totally worth it when you come out the other side. I don't have any software to edit this video, so you are also stuck with the music I had on in the car when I took the video. But enjoy the view with me!

Differences

I know you are dying to know how things really are. How is Hawaii different from Florida? From the mainland? From the world? Here, I share some observations of this strange and wonderful new world we are living in.

1. The weather is beautiful. We do not have central air, we do not close the windows EVER, we do not need to. Humid? Yes, a bit. Wall-of-water strangling you and making you feel heavy, tired and miserable like Florida humidity? NOT AT ALL!

2. The air does not always smell like flowers (sorry, SR!), but our yard does alwys smell like the Burger King down the hill.

3. Parking is terrible. Non-existent even. Except in driving lanes on the street. Then you will be driving along, in a turn lane and all of a sudden there are parked cars in front of you. And they are there legally. And you have to change lanes into the other moving traffic lane and then back into your right turning lane. Because apparently there was no where else to put that parking except IN THE STREET.

4. People do not dress like this all the time:

Sexy ladies: Abby, Bethany, me

Although a lot of people in Florida do.

5. Driving 40 mph suddenly feels like speeding. The fastest interstate I've driven on was 60 mph for only part of the road. Everything is in the 25-40 mph range. I think it's because you are always going up or downhill, so the car wants to speed up for you.

6. All of the views look like postcards, no touching up required. This is the view from the pillbox hike in Kaneohe, where we live. That's my brother and the BEAST. This is a cloudy day. You should see it when it's clear. WOW

Sophie and Shawn

7. Everything is served with a side of rice. Hawaii wants me to get fat.

8. You cannot buy fat free Coffeemate. Hawaii wants me to get REALLY fat.

9. Everyone is super friendly. Did I say super friendly? I meant mega-uber-friendly. People, WE HAVE MET OUR NEIGHBORS. And hung out with them. In Tampa, that just doesn't happen.

10. Drivers don't hate you (well, not all of them)They let you change lanes in traffic. They stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. They let you go in front if a lane merges. People smile at you in the streets. The spirit of aloha is not a myth. Come visit us and check it out for yourself :)

I do miss driving my car above 40 mph, though.

Our New House

Ok, we've been in the house for 2 weeks now and I know, I know, I haven't posted any pictures. Well, here they are. We have some decorating projects in the works, so once those are complete I'll post those as well.

Consider this post the "before" view of the inside of our home.

Here is what you would see walking up our front path:

Walk through the entry way and this shady path takes you to...

...the back yard

Here is our living room:

Note my snazzy additions of x-mas lights!

 And the dining room as seen from the living room

While we miss the cardboard box furniture motif of the apartment, we find that the TV stand seen here (from Salvation Army thrift store) is less likely to collapse on us.

 This is our kitchen. Isn't the bar cute?

Fun fact: that ceiling fan you see to the right prevents us from opening the cabinets when it is on...

Here is a close up of what the bamboo chairs look like now. I'll be recovering some of the cushions for the next post. The chairs are courtesy of Grandad and Auntie Joyce (thanks!)

Aren't these chairs amazingly gorgeous? We have a generous family :)

We found this bamboo sofa at the Salvation Army Thrift store. I made some other excellent DIY thrift store finds that I will share later as well.

 We have walmart bookshelves and a kitten calendar from Grammy in our office.

We have an honest to goodness mattress in our room, and the old butterfly curtains that I made for our Tampa house. As you can see, the mattress is functional.

I am not a fan of the paint, but we are waiting a while to decide if we can live with it...

To make things homey, the first thing we did was display this picture that April made us as a wedding gift. It hung over our bed in Tampa. I also covered the room in white Christmas lights.

This is the most important feature of our home: the leader board. What you see here is no longer accurate. Shawn and Kristin are kicking our butts right now. We have a Sunday night family game night. The winner gets to pick the next week's game. That will have its own post, too. You can also get points for other awesomeness that occurs.

Current score- McGettigan: 4, Winskye: 2, Sophie: 1

As you leave our humble abode (and yes, we are purposely decorating it like a beach rental) you are met with this amazing view of the mountains:

Mahalo (thank you) for stopping by!