Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I’m only eating twenty-eight dollars worth of food. I hope I do not die!

Twenty minutes before Coles closed.

I had a big day today! I woke up, weighed myself, and then went to help a friend of mine move house.

When a friend is moving, the unwritten rules are “go and help them move, and they’ll buy you pizza in return.” It absolutely sucks when you’re helping a friend move, and you don’t have pizza to motivate you.

She had also purchased some flavoured water to share with the movers (us):

Cool, refreshing water.

…and of course, I couldn’t have any.

I’m not going to lie; I came very, very close to breaking the rules. “It’s bottled water,” I told myself, “I specifically said that didn’t count.” “I’m moving furniture – this is not part of my ordinary routine. Extraordinary circumstances and everything, right?” “I am so damned thirsty.”

In the end, I didn’t have one. I had to drink water from the tap, from a jug. (the glasses had all been packed away.) It was not cool or refreshing at all.

It may just be bottled water, but it claimed to have all kinds of vitamins. It wouldn’t have been fair to the project.

Before we went around to help my friend move, Cannibal Kate and I went shopping: her for something to live on (she lost a bet, so now she’s going to try to survive for 5 days on $5. There’s twenty-eight dollars riding on it!) and me for a new main meal, now that I’ve finished my bread.

Cannibal Kate, with one of the 33-cent limes I posted about the other day.

Kate decided to buy:

• $1.29 worth of butter (250 grams. 0.01 pounds.)
• $0.95 worth of plain flour (1kg)
• $1.09 worth of plain bread (700 grams. Coles homebrand bread is more expensive than Woolworths homebrand bread.)
• $0.66 worth of limes. (2)

The limes, flour, and butter are for some “lime biscuits” she plans to make, to nibble on throughout the day. I agreed to go halves in those ingredients, because I’ve been missing Kate’s baking like crazy. She has a theory that she can, instead of using yeast (which is expensive) make the dough rise using the citric acid from the limes, or something like that.

I don’t know, I don’t bake.

She will make an even number of biscuits, and we will split them right down the middle. Mine will probably last me the rest of the month; hers only have to last her another 4 days.

While she was getting all this, I was looking for my next few day’s meals. For the past 4 days, I’ve had a loaf of bread (with butter) – it’s been thoroughly enjoyable, and I could quite easily just get another loaf and live off it again, but I thought that I’d make it a bit more interesting, take a risk. Buy something else – maybe it will be more enjoyable than bread, maybe not. Risky!

It occurred to me today that I’m not really a big risk-taker, when it comes to food. I eat spaghetti bolognaise, steak,mushrooms, peas, corn, sausages, bread/toast, breakfast cereals, and cups of tea. That literally describes about 80% of my diet.

Wandering around the aisles of the supermarket, trying to find something cheap but delicious and maybe a little bit nutritious as well, I came across dozens of foods that I’d never even heard of, let alone tried. (obviously, being unable to afford any of them, I was filled with the urge to try all of them.)

So I came up with my project for next month – it’s going to be a reward, as much as anything. It’s a project celebrating food, and the joys of eating it:

I will eat a different meal three times a  day, for the entire month of March. I will not repeat a single meal. “93 Meals, 31 days” is not what it will be called. (I’ll try to come up with a less shit name.)

I’ll refine the rules closer to the time, but I suspect that some of the attractive and clever people reading this blog can cook unique and interesting meals. If you’re interested in having me over for breakfast, lunch or dinner, some time in March, just send me an email with details. I need to know where you live (preferably the inner suburbs of Brisbane – anywhere within public transport zones 1-3 are fin), what your unique meal is, and whether or not it’s okay for my housemates Cannibal Kate and Gavin to come. (it’s okay if it’s not, but they’re good company, and would probably enjoy the feed.) In return, you get the pleasure of my(/our) company, and a picture of your food on my blog! (plus a little write-up.)

More on that as we get closer.

Meanwhile, in this month’s project, I settled on spaghetti and tomato sauce as my new main, because that’s as close to spaghetti bolognaise as I can get for the price.

The spaghetti at Coles is exactly the same price as the spaghetti at Woolworths. It amazes me how much this matters.

I was looking around for some kind of spaghetti sauce, or pasta sauce, or even salsa, but the cheapest that I could find was about $2.50. Pasta sauce is definitely cheaper at Woolworths.

So I started searching for something to act as a pasta sauce substitute. My eyes lit up when I saw this:

Campbells Soup is seriously one of my favourite foods. The best way to eat it is to make up a bowl (two parts soup, one part milk, one part water) and then buy a packet of original crisps (thin cut, not ruffle) and pour them in. Make sure they're soaked in the soup, then get a fork, and chow down. It sounds ridiculous, but it's actually quite delicious. You may want to only pour the chips in a few at a time, to avoid sogginess.

I got even more excited when I saw this:

"You'll Love Coles" is actually the brand name. I think it's a little silly.

But then…jackpot:

Coles $mart Buy is the other in-store brand. Coles has two!

Spaghetti and tomato soup wasn’t my first choice, but I seriously couldn’t find anything else that would be cheaper.

 ”Oats are cheap,” I thought at one point, and I did manage to find a 900 gram bag for only $1.19, but I refuse to eat oats without milk (I am not a horse), and the cheapest milk we could find was $2.39 for 2 litres (half a gallon). For that money, they would have to last me about 6 days, and I wouldn’t trust the milk after 48 hours.

I also found some Wok-Ready Noodles for a dollar, but I don't actually own a wok.

So, considering the fact that I went halves in the lime biscuit ingredients, today’s totals:

Cannibal Kate: $2.54 (just over half of her total budget)
Me: $3.01 (leaving me with $7.54 remaining.)

See all the ticks? That means we did a good job!

While we were looking at the flour, Kate and I were discussing how many grams go into a standard “cup”. To our surprise, a customer walking by heard our conversation, and answered us – 250grams in a cup. (or, if you’re American, 400 feet to the cubit.)

He also let me take a photo of him, even after I explained it was “for the internet”:

He was a cool dude.

We ended up chatting for about 10 minutes (a long time for a random guy you meet in a supermarket) – his name was Luka, and he was actually pretty cool. He had all kinds of great suggestions for the project – I have the memory of a goldfish (it’s hard to work out how much of this is normal, and how much is due to the project. If I were to do this again (NEVER AGAIN) I would do a daily brain-teaser, or something like that, to measure change in mental capacity.)

We exchanged email addresses, and I gave him the link to this website, but I can’t for the life of me find his email address anywhere. Luka, if you’re reading this, drop me a line. I remember your suggestions being really great, I justhave no clue what they were. (except that one of them was possibly about sesame seeds. Also, you have a five-year old son. I don’t think you were recommending I eat your son though.)

If anyone else reading this knows Luka, let him know I’m looking for him. We could start a “Find Luka” campaign!

From the comments:

Regular commenters “Dan Beeston” and “RIUM+” are both extremely pro-toothpaste. Dan:

Toothpaste does two other things you haven’t commented on here. It contains tiny abrasive particles that make brushing more effective. Like taking a tiny scouring pad to the tooth. This mean you can brush quickly and be done rather than spending a longer time. No problem for you because you seem to be happy spending the extra time.

RIUM+:

In general, any toothpaste is better than none, simply due to the fact that it adds another abrasive, more liquid to the mouth, and forces you to rinse, plus providing a slight antibacterial wash for the mouth in case you don’t use mouthwash and freshening your breath. There’s more specific toothpastes that have differing compounds to reduce tooth sensitivity etc, as there always is. Just using baking soda will provide pretty much 90% of the benefits of toothpaste at a fraction of the cost. But there are some benefits to using something vs nothing; it doesn’t do everything perfectly but it does lots of things a little in case you don’t do them otherwise. 

All I can say is…you’ve fallen for the toothpaste propaganda campaign, boys! I’m disappointed in both of you.

Also from Dan:

Toothpaste makes your mouth smell nice. Not just clean,… nice. Like a garden full of mint. Girls like to kiss mouths that are minty.

Yes, but prostitutes don’t kiss on the mouth anyway.

From “Jen”:

If Kate or someone else buys some food, say, some icecream, then re-sells it to you for something like 10c – is that allowed?

No! Obviously that’s not allowed.

I get a lot of questions like this. Can people give you food, what if your housemates cook it, can you rebuy food off them, does it count if it’s eaten off a prostitute’s unconscious body…

What people seem to be forgetting is that Cannibal Kate was actually quite worried when I came up with this idea. If she was allowed to give me food, she’d just cook me a decent meal every night. If she was allowed to resell food to me for cheap…she would.

And then the project wouldn’t be very interesting.

So in answer to any kind of question that involves Cannibal Kate making or buying me food, the answer is no. (the exception, of course, are the lime biscuits that she is making tomorrow morning, because I paid for half the ingredients. In payment for cooking said biscuits, I am giving her some of my butter. A fair trade!)

I also had someone ask me if I was a vegetarian: no, not normally, but this month I have been (except for fish.) At my friend’s house, helping her move, the question of vegetarianism came up. I pointed out that I was eating like a vegetarian, but not like a vegan. We worked out that living a vegan diet is actually quite expensive. I wonder what the minimum budget for a project like this would be if one was vegan? (it would have to be well over $1/day.)

Lastly, someone suggested that I go to Coles, and hang around until closing time, and pick up a chicken for a dollar. Cannibal Kate and I got there at around 4:20 (Coles closes at 5 on a Sunday.) I asked the guy behind the counter when they were planning on dropping the prices, but apparently that’s not the right thing to do, because he got defensive and told me that they probably wouldn’t.

Needless to say, at about 15 minutes to the hour, he went around and dropped all the $11 chickens to $8, and all the $8 chickens to $5. Cannibal Kate and I had agreed that if any went down to $2, we’d go halves in it – half a chicken would last me two or three days, easy.

At 4:50, he went around again and reduced the $5 chickens to $3. 

It felt incredibly dodgy, hanging around the chickens, waiting for them to be cheap enough that I could buy one. I kept myself amused by going through the health section, nearby, and comparing the prices of “all-natural, healthy” cereal to the regular type. Every time someone picked up a chicken, I mentally cursed them – the more left, the more likely they were to be dropped down even further.

I also spent my time trying to work out what I’d buy if the project wasn’t “28 Days, 28 Dollars”, but simply spending a dollar each and every day on food. I don’t think you could really afford to live – you’d need at least $2/day. I’m not likely to do it any time soon – I don’t go to the shops each day, and after this month is over, I don’t think I’m ever again going without a few decent meals each day.

By 5pm, there were two chickens left:

Chickens left at 5pm, Cole's closing time. (although they do let any customers in the store finish shopping and get through the checkouts.)

Seconds after I took this photo, a man came and took the $8 chicken. It was 5pm, and no one had actually asked me to leave yet, but I was getting strong, seductive suggestive looks. They did not suggest anything sexy, they suggested “GET OUT”.

I waited another 5 minutes, but the doors were closed, and there were only a few customers left in the line, but there was still one chicken left…

Words can hardly express how much I wanted this damned chicken.

 It was quite abundantly clear that no one else was going to buy it, so I approached one of the Coles staff:

I had taken a photo of the fellow earlier in the day, for reasons completely unrelated to this project.

I asked if the chicken was going to be reduced any further (“The chicken, man! The chicken!” I felt like shouting, but didn’t.)

He said that it probably wasn’t, not at this hour. (it was about 5:05pm at this point.)

I asked why – no one else was going to buy it, and I was quite happy to pay a dollar for it.

He told me that at this time of day, the man in charge of reducing the price of chicken was busy doing something else, and that no one else was authorised to lower the price.

Confused, I asked what happened to the chickens that no one bought.

He told me that they got thrown out.

They get thrown out. The staff aren’t even allowed to eat them!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but feel that this is a travesty. Think of how many chickens must get thrown out of Coles around the country, when there are people perfectly happy to pay for them (or take them home for free) and eat them, instead of just letting them become garbage.

Obviously I have a slightly selfish reason to care about this, but I can’t help but feel a bit of outrage. (they throw them out.)

When I passed on the news, Cannibal Kate was equally shocked – “They throw them out? They could at least give them to the poor or something. Or to us!”

So I went home, and instead of feasting on some chicken, finished off my can of sardines:

I'll start on the spaghetti tomorrow.

They were nice, but still not very filling. My sister texted me earlier today, telling me that apparently eating the sardine bones gives me some calcium, which I desperately need. I ate the bones.

While we were at the supermarket, waiting for almost an hour to buy some cheap chicken (which they instead threw out), Cannibal Kate had bought some meat to go on her sandwich. (I believe it was devon.) I can’t remember the exact cost; I’ll get it for you tomorrow. (she’s asleep right now)

She also bought two or three bananas. For dinner, she enjoyed a piece of bread with meat, and a banana. To me, that sounds like a feast.

Kate and her Feast.

She was originally smiling, but I was in a bad mood (they threw it out) and so I told her to look sad instead.

I drank a lot less water than I should have during the day today, but caught up again when I got home. Between shopping and helping my friend move, I cooked up a heap of rice, and put it in a travel container – I didn’t actually get a chance to eat it until about 4:30, as we were waiting outside Coles for the chicken to go down in price. I didn’t feel woozy or dizzy, but I did feel like I wanted a nap.

Then when we got home, I slept for about 3 hours (after 7 hours sleep last night.) Cannibal Kate says that I’m sleeping more than I normally do, and it seems to be true…I’m really tired while writing this, and can’t wait to go and curl up in bed. (it’s about 1am.)

I was feeling quiet all the way home – whether or not this is because of my dietary habits or not, I can’t tell. Sometimes a guy just feels quiet? (yes, even me.)

I can’t really think of an objective way to measure all of this, so I’ll just keep typing up how I feel, and occasionally asking my housemates if they’ve noticed any changes.

Tomorrow: Daily Weigh-in! (and Kate makes lime biscuits!)

(total money spent so far – $20.67)

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and today will mark the end of the first week of 28 Days, 28 Dollars! One week of spending very little on food is over! (For the month of February, I’m spending no more than $28 on food. It has been an exciting adventure so far! I hope I do not die!)

My housemate, Cannibal Kate, holding the $5 that she's going to be living on for the next 5 days. Coincidentally, her other nickname is "Five Dollar Kate", but that's nothing to do with her budgetting skills. (wink wink)

Following a bet we made last night, Cannibal Kate has to live on $5 worth of food for the next five days – I told her that there was no way she’d do it (she has the willpower of a gnat) and she challenged me to put money on that.

So if Cannibal Kate welches, and eats outside of her five dollar budget (which she totally will), she has to give me $28. If she manages to stick to her budget, I will give her $28.

So in a few days time, she’s going to be paying for my entire month’s food. I will have been fed for a month for no expense to myself at all!

My weight today:

There are four little silver pads on the scales. I assume those are for positioning your feet, but...do you really need that? Won't you weigh the same no matter how you stand?

71.7kg (48 pounds) means that I’ve almost lost two kilograms this week. Apparently this isn’t a particularly unhealthy weight loss, but I don’t think the method in which I’m losing it is particularly healthy.

I don’t really exercise much – I work as a video editor for my day job, (from home; my office is three rooms away from my bedroom.) The nearest bus stop is less than five minutes walk away, and as a rule, I don’t have to walk more than that on the other end. I live right down the road from a shopping center, and I don’t participate in any sports. (I occasionally performed in some improvised theatre, but I don’t think that really counts as “exercise”.)

It makes me wonder if I was regularly gaining weight before I started doing this, or if I’d managed to fall upon a diet that roughly matched the amount of exercise I was doing. I’ve never really thought about my weight before (I’m tall and skinny. My Dad was tall and skinny, my grandpa was tall and skinny…they both developed stomachs around the age of 40, but that’s not something I have to worry about for quite a while yet. My Dad’s arms and legs are still ridiculously skinny.) but daily weigh-ins, and posting photos of myself in my underwear to the internet have brought it to the forefront of my mind.

So far, I’ve lost close to two kilograms (six pounds) in five days, as this handy graph will show you:

With the exception of Day 4, I've been losing weight at a fairly steady rate.

If it continues at this rate, by the end of the month, I shall have lost about 9kg. I don’t think it will continue at this rate, but we shall have to wait and find out!

Daily cheesecake shot:

I'm laughing because I just suggested to Kate that we take photos of her in her underwear for the internet. She decided not to.

Comparing it to Day 3’s photos (Day 2’s are too blurry) I can see a marked difference. If I end up losing 9kg (which, I repeat, I really don’t think will happen) I’m sure the changes will be much more obvious!

Cannibal Kate and I are going to go food shopping now, then we’re helping a friend move house. Will we collapse from hunger? Will we cause a couch to fall on us? Will Cannibal Kate cave within the first few hours? Stay tuned to find out!

Up next: Daily Food Post

(total money spent so far – $17.66)