Green Low Budget Challenge – Easy Start
This week I officially started my personal green low budget challenge. Being honest, the first three days have been very easy so far. Monday and Tuesday I visited my parents and didn’t need to pay anything for food. No, I did not plan this visit on that special date to make my challenge deliberately easier! It was organised beforehand – Honour bright! Yes, it made my start easy-going, but since such visits kind of belong to an everyday-life as well, I didn’t want to ban it.
However, it was quite an effort to prevent my mother from giving me a big food box to take home with me. Obviously she is not overconfident that I will survive this month. If I took the box, I probably wouldn’t need to buy any food for the next three months plus I would have needed a personal train cabin (I did not take it).
Also today was pretty uncomplicated, since I usually have some basics and leftovers at home from the previous weeks. So I didn’t need to start buying stuff from the very beginning. As I want to be as transparent as possible, here comes the list of my still available food: salt, different herbs, oil and vinegar, soy sauce, flour, honey, tea, buckwheat, millet, chickpeas, porridge oats, lentils, nuts and seed-mix, chia seeds, three onions, very few wizen potatoes, two apples, one small turnip and a package of oat milk. Please see above the photo of proof (an extraordinary still life).
Since I had these edibles available, I didn’t need to worry about my breakfast. Happily, I even discovered a self-made soup in the freezer from last week, which was good enough for a nice dinner.
However, I also discovered a limiting factor, which was coffee. I managed to scratch enough out of my coffee box to prepare one cup – which means I need to buy some tomorrow… or I switch over to tea. Well, I’m not too sure about the second option. I’m definitely still doing too well…
My first real expenses I needed to register were those for my organic box, which will be delivered on Friday. Usually I am ordering the “small regional box”, which contains a mix of different regional organic fruits and vegetables. Apart from the good quality, I also appreciate the variety, which provides good cooking inspiration.
This time I was choosing my content more practically – with only basics I use regularly and that can be combined well:
- 1 kg apples
- 1.5 kg potatoes
- 1 bunch of carrots
- 1 bunch of spring onions
- 1 cucumber
- 1 head of lettuce
Including shipping charge this costs 18.79 Euros. Since I have an average weekly budget of 30 Euros, I only have 11.21 bucks left for this week.
… maybe I really should go for tea!?
On the other hand, I still have the possibility of food sharing. In Leipzig, we have several small food sharing “distribution-locations”, where a non-profit organisation manages the public storage of food-leftovers of supermarkets, markets or private persons. It is food that cannot be sold anymore, but which is still edible. My hope is that I can save good money with these so-called Foodsharing Fairteiler. Today, I couldn’t gain much, but still it was enough for a simple lunch plus I got some fruits for breakfast.
Let’s see what the next days will bring!
Photo: facingchange