Today was one of my hungry days. I started the day with a happy sunny side up (.33) with a sprinkle of Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling salt (.05) on a slice of home baked chive potato bread (.25). Very yummy.

Lunch was two slices of bread (.5) with a serving of …. Chili! Still some left. Luckily I like it a lot, cause I will be eating it another couple of days. That is the challenge you face when buying your meat with small farmers at the farmer’s market: it comes frozen, so once you unfreeze it you have to eat it. If it were fresh, leftovers could be frozen, but as I am frozen meat to cook with, re-freezing is a no go. Maybe I should just invite a bunch of people over to share a meal and a good laugh!? One serving of the chili is actually 1.59$, there is just much more in that pot than five servings only! 2.06$ for lunch. An espresso followed in the afternoon for .4$

For dinner I started out with some cheese nibbles from artisan cheeses I had bought in Wisconsin (.6) with a biodynamic pear from Argentina (yep, forgive me, but no real seasonal fruit yet! .7). After a couple of hours I was a bit hungry again and followed Michael Pollan’s brilliant food rule: all junk food is ok if cooked from scratch at home: an organic potato (.3) sliced thinly and pan fried in some good Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Cosimo and a pinch of Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling Salt (.45) were just what I wanted, together with a cup of organic Castle Rock milk (.4)

Total Food Cost for Today: 6.42$

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So, brunch today was a leftover frittata, using some of Carlo’s delicious pasta, two happy eggs and a teaspoon of Roberta’s Sun-dried Tomato Spread – all whipped together and briefly cooked in a frying pan (when making fritatta, just make sure to let it rise slowly over low heat. Do not stir. You do not scrambled egg – it only get’s hard that way and looses its taste!). 1.46$

For late lunch I finished off one more serving of my chili & rice: 2.09$ and enjoyed a cup of herbal tea (.15$).

For dinner, I munched on the second leftover bunch of celery sticks and a small multigrain roll from Cook au Vin (1$). At this point my fridge is almost empty (two more beets to go!!!) and ready for the start of the Farmer’s market season 2010! Whoaa!

Total Food Cost for Today: 4.7$

Bfash was an organic grapefruit – two more oranges to go and my citrus is cleaned out – horrah for strawberries!! (0.9$) and green tea (0.15$), lunch was chili & rice (3$) and dinner was a pretzel roll w. cheese (0.80$) and an organic beet (two more to go, 0.5$) and some shopped up organic celery stems (0.8$).
At this point my fridge is almost empty and I have started to tackle my freezer as well. I actually feel as if I have accomplished something!

The Farmer’s Market season has started in Chicagoland, and I am very excited! Looking forward to Tuesdays – will be my first market visit of the season, as I skipped yesterda’s Saturday market kick off in Evanston. I just hope that the recent drop in temperature will not affect Midwest farmers to much. No, that was put wrong: it has already affected farmer’s in the Midwest, especially fruit growers in Michigan have suffered losses already – a warm April and frost in May is not a good combination. So let’s hope that this bumpy start into the 2010 growing season has exhausted what nature has in store for farmer’s this year – for an abundant crop for everyone to enjoy!

Total Food Cost for Today: 6.15$

I woke up today and was not feeling too great. The hectic pace of the last weeks was getting to me, as did the temperature change… not good to be cold when on a bike! So I assigned myself to my bed and some hearty food that was to warm me from the inside, too. I strongly believe in the ying & yang concept of foods. And I totally and absolutely am a cold person needing hot food. So I prepared a huge pot of chilli to munch on over the weekend (and days to come) and cooked some rice, of which I used a cup for breakfast, mixing it with organic raisins, some organic almonds, a tablespoon of local organic honey, an orange and some grated fresh ginger. Very yummy, warm and filling. Cost: 1$ rice, 0.2$ raisins, 0.2$ almonds, 0.6$ orange, 0.15$ honey and 0.1$ ginger = 2.25$

Lunch was a small serving of the chili – one does not really burn a lot of energy sleeping and so I was not really in need of food, but wanted some of the chili peppers (dried chili flakes and a fresh organic Jalpaneo pepper I had bought at the green grocer – did you know that if you want a hot pepper, you should go for the more shriveled ones – you did? Oh well, I learned that yesterday…) Overall I used 1.1$ for onion & jalpaneno pepper, 0.9$ beans, 0.8$ organic canned tomatoes, 0.25$ for other spices (chili flakes, cumin, salt) and 6.50$ for a pound of local pasture fed happy cow ground beef (which I pulled from the freezer in my attempt to clean out that part of the kitchen, too). Total of 9.55$ for approx. five servings – so let’s out the rate at 2$ per serving. I had a small serving and some rice for a total of 2.5$ lunch cost.

For dinner I met friends at a restaurant – a new place that serves Soul Food and live music with it. Dee’s Place was delightful, it was good to get out of bed and enjoy a crispy and not at all greasy fried chicken (and yummy appetizers, sides and pecan pie). 23$ for dinner & entertainment.

Total Food Cost of Today: 27.75$

Today was a hectic and food wise totally screwed up day. I was working a tasting in Evanston until the afternoon and skipped all food till I got home around 4pm for my last serving of leftover soup and a nice piece of the Red Hen baguette with organic butter. I love bread and butter. Which is why I try to keep little of both around. Has not worked too well the last months, cause I really like the salted organic butter you can buy in the US. Butter in Italy was a no-go. Terrible. Inedible. But why would they need to worry about butter if they have such an abundance of great olive oils? They even bake their pastry with olive oil and all cakes I ever baked that way turned out great! My favorite is a sponge cake w. orange juice and orange zest. Terrific. But I guess with it being May now, the recipe for this cake has to wait till winter … Be strong!

Total Food Cost for Today (and I am not proud of today’s screwed up diet): 2.5$

For breakfast I enjoyed a nice cup of latte macchiato – double serving of milk with a strong café and an organic orange: 2$, early lunch was another serving of my fridge cleanout soup: 1.5S… and one more serving to go (luckily I froze two smaller servings yesterday… I could have never finished all this soup… but I will get back to it soon, cause part of the fridge cleanout is also a freezer cleanout… some local veggies still in there I froze when there was more of them still around).

For dinner I treated myself to something special: I was in the area of Dirk’s Fish on Clybourn, and he has the best fish ever. And the best seafood salads. So I bought three little portions of three different salads to enjoy over the next couple of days – and with it came a beautiful, crusty Red Hen baguette: today’s share 5$.

Total Food cost of Today: 8.50$

For breakfast I continued to finish up the food bought by the friends that had house sitted in my absence. Cause I have huge difficulties throwing food away, I munched on what is the Trader Joe’s version of shredded wheat “frosted maple & brown sugar”. And what is written on the package is what you get: sugar, sugar, sugar. Very sweet, but no wonder if ingredients no. 2 and 3 after “whole wheat” is “sugar” and “brown sugar”… No mentioning of Maple Syrup an an ingredient though (and what is the “frosted maple” supposed to make a reference to??) The cost? Never buy this stuff myself, so let a box be… what, 4$ - assuming 13 servings in the box that comes down to 30cents and 50cents for my lovely organic Castle Rock Creamery milk! And a strong caffe and an orange to offset all that sweetness! 1.1$.

For lunch I dived into my leftover veggies soup – a BIG portion - let’s put that at 2$.

Dinner was simple frittata made out of one egg and a pinch of Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling Salt w. a slice of organic, artisan bread 0.33$ + 0.1$ + 0.1$+ 0.1$ to line the pan with Cosimo’s extra virgin olive oil.

Total Food Cost of Today: 4.53$

Breakfast was my last croissant w. French Lentil Jam- I will never get over the fact that someone invented something as delicious as lentil jam and it took me 35 years to find it. Actually, it took me 33 years to find it, and then another two to open the jar…. That is what you get when you buy food in every occasion… you stuff it in your pantry and stumble upon it years later. Anyways, delicious. Made in France with lentils that are actually a Slow Food Convivium. Better that Nutella, Crème de marron and Peanut butter together. Ridiculously good. Now, honestly, I do not remember how much I paid for a glass of jam two years ago. It was at the Salone del Gusto, the bi-annual Slow Food event in Turin. That is for sure. Funnily enough the price on almost every item was 5 Eur. Want real vanilla from Madagaskar – 5 eur. Dried figs from Tuscany? 5 Eur. A bag of dried beans? 5 Eur. So would you agree that we put the price tag of 5 Eur also on the jam? That would bring my breakfast to 3.40 for croissant & jam, plus 90 cents for my cappuccino.

Lunch was the continuation of my fridge clean out. I just want to get rid off all these root veggies, potatoes, chard, kale, onions – IT IS SPRING NOW! Bring out the asparagus, the rhubarb, the peas…. So I just threw a wild combination of root veggies, potatoes and chard into a pot, briefly sautéed in olive oil and turned it into a soup with a little of Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s Originario Rice from The Scrumptious Pantry. The whole pot holds 7$ of food and from what I have been eating today, I got at least seven portions in that pot. So that would equal 1$ for lunch.

For dinner, the quest to empty my fridge continued. Some chorizo sausage I found after friends that I had lent my place to had left behind, some EVOO, the last of the fresh chives – all over some pasta: 1$ pasta, 0.3$ chorizo (not local, not sustainable, comes in some weird plastic wrap. But cannot convince myself to throw it away. It is some sort of food, somehow. And other people are starving…), 0.25$ EVOO, 0.3$ chives = 1.85$.

Total food cost for today= 7.15$

Now, today was scary. I needed to run all up and down Chicago’s Northshore and had planned to be home for a late lunch and skip breakfast, cause it was either sleeping 15 more minutes or preparing a sandwich to take with me on the trip.

Then, at one of my stops en-route, at Sunset Foods in Highland Park, I took a sample bite of the carrot cake that was sitting on display in the bakery. Although I was not hungry before, the moment the sugary cake had been swallowed, my system was screaming for food. Very crazy reaction. So I obeyed to my body calling for sugary treats and bought myself a chocolate double muffin (1.11$). Now comes the scary part. That muffin put me on a level of sugar and energy - I was not even thinking about food for the rest of the day. What a mean piece of cake. I had to force myself to prepare a decent dinner at home, and that fairly late, cause the idea of eating nothing but a double chocolate muffin for a whole day gave me the shivers. Learning: Sunset Food has very yummy baked goods. But be aware that a muffin can be a meal! Share with someone or keep one half for later. Try to stick to that as a general rule when it comes to "snacks"!

For dinner I started my annual spring fridge clean out: half a bunch of organic Red Chard (1.29$), two organic spring onions (0.5$), a tsbp EVOO from Cosimo in The Scrumptious Pantry (0.4$), a hot pepper from the local Mexican store (but neither organic nor local) 0.2$, a tsp of freshly squeezed lime juice (0.3$) and a pinch of Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling Salt (0.3$), all over some pasta (1$) = 3.99$

Total Food Cost for Today 5.10$

Breakfast was late, a delicious Croissant from Gerhard’s Patisserie in Lake Forrest with a nice Cappuccino – 3.90$.

For dinner I had planned to stir up some veggies, but I went to check out my new garden plot in the afternoon and ended up going to dinner with a friend in a Serbian diner kind of place she recommended. Delicious Cevapcici. Childhood memories. We had a (then still Yugoslavian) restaurant close to home in Germany, and if the family went out for a treat, we got to choose between Turkish food or Yugoslavian. I loved to go there, cause I would have double portion of Palatschinken with chocolate sauce for lunch, while my Dad had the Cevapcici. Officially. Inofficially, I nibbled enough Cevapcici of his plate that he went home hungry. Anyways, for 6US$ enjoyed dinner in good company, talking about Square Foot Gardening. I am very excited to have my own gardening plot for this season. Although I am pretty sure that it will be hard at times to get to the garden often enough in the hot days of summer – especially as I do not own a car and the plot is 6 miles away. But I am not complaining. I cannot wait to have my first crops - wanting lots of different chilli pepper plants, eggplants, tomatoes, beets, potatoes and some squashes. My goal is to take a decent amount of this year’s harvest into the root cellar in autumn and feed myself with it over the winter. All very exciting!

Excitement came for free, the Food Cost for Today was 9.90$