Happy New Year.

We just came home from our one year anniversary celebration. We are ready to rock and roll for the $20 a week journey. We have the food (Going shopping tomorrow), and we now have a pasta machine!
No more expensive pasta in the store, we can now make our own. Its our little anniversary present.

Pretty cool eh? :-)


Look at the size of the pasta we made (pre run!)

Please remember to get your "essential grocery" list tomorrow. The one labeled in the post below as "BJ's list". This will hopefully last you 6months through the winter and spring, so you can eat cheap and good.

As I said before...We are working towards finishing a short sale purchase on a house, and each week we will be putting the money we saved from buying food, towards an item we want.

This week we will be ordering the...
To go with our amazing pasta maker...Hopefully it will hold our long linguini.

If all turns out well, we may end up selling some at a farmers market on weekends!

Wishing you all a happy new year!

MEAL PLANS+SHOPPING LISTS

This morning while drinking my coffee, I saw a program on extreme couponers....I have to say. I was slightly jealous. Spending $5,000 on groceries and getting them for $300 is a huge deal. But then again, I don't have that much pantry space in the new house.

We will be spending about $300 extra A WEEK outfitting our new house with items. Eeesh.
So here is the first meal plan for January. Also, the bulk buying shopping list for the first 6 months. Shouldn't cost more than $30 to set up.
I will also post the recipies below. As I have mentioned before, a slow cooker is essential! Or a large pot on a low heat, if you are home all day.

This is the bulk buying shopping list. I will be going to BJ's to get a majority of this. We are talking year long supplies. The bigger the better.

Leftover containers are key too...



Italian Chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (About 1lbs)
8 ounces mushrooms (sliced)
1 medium green bell pepper (Chopped....Optional!)
1 medium zucchini (diced...Optional!)
1 medium onion (chopped)
1 jar of pasta sauce

Combine all ingredients in crock pot or slow cooker and cover. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or until chicken is tender.


Savory Mushroom and Barley Soup:
3 cups of water
1 can of diced tomatoes
3/4 cup of each: Onion, celery, carrots
1 teaspoon dried savory leaves
3/4  teaspoons crushed fennel seeds
2 cups white mushrooms
1/2 cup quick cook barley
Salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients, except barley, salt and pepper in slow cooker; cook on high 4 to 6 hours, adding barley during last 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.


Garlic Vegetable soup
2 quarts water
1 can (15 ounces) navy or great northern beans, rinsed, drained
1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded coarsely chopped
1 cup each: diced new potatoes, coarsely chopped carrots, cut green beans (1/2 inch), chopped leeks (Some of these are optional. Its all about what you like)
1/2 cup chopped celery
6 large cloves garlic (Minced)
2 tablespoons each: Tomato paste, dried basil leaves
Salt and Pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients, except salt and pepper, in 6 quart slow cooker; cover and cook on low 6-8 hours. Season to taste with salt and pepper.



Vegetable soup
1 quart vegetable broth
1/2 cup each: thinly sliced green cabbage, chopped celery, onion, broccoli florets, cut green beans, cubed zucchini, potato (Again, pick and choose!)
1/2 cup uncooked ditalini
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup basil (Pesto or dried)

Combine all ingredients, except ditalini, salt, pepper, in slow cooker. Dont add basil pesto yet if you are using it.
In a slow cooker, cover and cook on high for 4-5 hours, adding ditalini during 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in basil pesto at last second!

(Ditalini...http://www.barillaus.com/Products/4/ditalini.aspx.... I had some in my pantry!)



Please comment if you have questions!

A thought for Vegans

This week Nick brought me home some rather odd looking sushi. Normally when I ask for my "Avocado Roll" I get a sushi roll topped by avocado. This time I sent Nick and actually got something completely different. It was some rice paper with avocado, cucumber and carrots inside. It came with a sweet red chilli dressing and it was very good.

The amount of calories in this dish was perfect. A round 200 calories and I was full for a very long time. However it did cost $6 when buying it from the store.

I found a way to buy the rice wraps online and save myself $4. And if I grew the vegetables at home, my cost would me minimal. I love avocado and cucumber. Its refreshing and very healthy.

So after all this research and thinking, it came to my attention that Vegans must have a really great immune system. As well as a cheaper shopping trip.
One week next year we will keep to the $20 budget, and eat completely vegan. I think we will loose a lot of weight. But I am also worried about loosing some muscle mass. Its definitely food for thought.

Happy Leftover Day!

It also happens to be "Black Friday" but since the blog is about food, I thought this subject was more apt.

I work at an electronics store, and today was HUGE for us, so we were working solid for about eight hours helping customers. We opened at 5:00 am, had people working at 2:00 am. Since it was so busy, the company bought us breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was coffee (desperately needed) and bagels with cream cheese. Lunch was ham sandwiches from the Honeybaked Ham Store, with chips and soda's and bottled water. Definitely beats the pants off of pizza, and way healthier.

Dinner was, of course, lots of leftovers. Turkey, stuffing, broccoli and potatoes (sweet and whipped). There was also blueberry and apple pies which were amazing yesterday, but the leftovers proved to be too filling. I might sneak out for a midnight slice, but the tryptophan in the turkey will probably freeze me in place for the night.

The dog also had thanksgiving leftovers... If Katie didn't mention it before, we found a can of wet dog food that was basically the doggie version of thanksgiving dinner including turkey, potatoes and other treats. He's a tiny little guy so he didn't eat it all, so the leftovers were chilled and he had them today.

The meal was originally pretty costly as far as dinners go with turkey and stuffing and several sides, but it was all put together by my mother and didn't actually cost us anything as far as I can recall.

Total cost for the day: $0.00

Happy Thanksgiving.

Getting ready to take the blog world by storm, coming up with a few more posting ideas. :)

A lot of people have expressed interest in this blog, and we seem to have a lot of non believers!

Today we are having a feast, and running it off later. Yesterday I (K) ran 4 miles and did 30 mins on the elliptical...As well as some free weights. 900kcal total, just to get ready for today. Hopefully tonight I can get in some Plyometrics and cross training.

The key to this $20 a week journey is planning. At the start of the week we will show you what we are buying, what our plan was, and our food shopping trip. We will do a blog, youtube video, and a podcast. So every week you can follow along. Its going to be fun, and a great way to save money.

People are wondering what exactly we are going to do with the money, firstly, we are going to put some in to a 401K. Secondly, we are going to be improving the house we are hopefully buying, and working on our goal to have it paid in 9 years.

Eventually, I would like to get health insurance too. As a sufferer from Crohn's disease, it would be great to eventually be insured.

We are very lucky to have family and friends supporting us through this journey, and people have to realize we cannot eat out anymore. We are going to be the most annoying people for the entire year! But hey! We got a point to prove in todays economy.

What else was there..... This is a very unplanned blog post!

Oh yes! We are kicking the soda habbit. Only teas and water for a year. :) I wonder how that will feel... Another thing is that we will be working on 3 books on eating cheap and cooking. There are so many cookbooks, but none address the cost factor.

So this weeks goal for my reader:
Get your spice cabinet organized. Spices are the key to "Spicing it up!" Haha! They are essential to making food interesting.

Ask for a slow cooker for Christmas, and also some food storage containers.

Think of 10 goals you would like to accomplish next year. Write them down, and stick to them. Put them on the mirror. Put them on the fridge, and put them on your door!

Find your local farmers marker too. This is essential to eating cheap.
We will also start planing vegetables once we are in the new house.

That's it for now!

Busy People.... Still able to survive on $20 a week!

A typical day in our lives is very crazy. We are both really driven to get our degrees; however, we realize we need to work too (Just to survive in this economy.)
Sadly, we are living in one of the most depressed areas of the USA, with little or no opportunity. The wages here are low, and the opportunity for promotion is low.
We spend our days between work, other work, and school. We hardly have two hours together sometimes (Awake time that is…)
One of the comments people have said to us, (Upon mentioning this blog idea) is that “You are too busy to eat on that little of a budget”… Well here we are proving everyone wrong.

Let’s take a look at a typical day for Nick and me:
Tuesday:
5:00AM- Nick up, shower, dressed and out the door. Grab packed breakfast+lunch.
6:00AM- Dogs wake up Katie, take them out, go for a walk, come back in and make coffee.
7:00AM- Read news, update blog, go over homework due, write emails, check up on training clients.
8:00AM-Clip Coupons from newsletters, check out coupon websites, put dinner in slow cooker.
8:30AM- Katie Head to work (Nick eats early brunch which is packed)
9:00AM-Work, I have the best job in the world though!
2:30PM- Nick home, take puppies out, Nick does homework and cleans.
5:00PM- Katie heads from work to college, Nick heads to class (Or on a night off, does homework!)
10:00PM- Finished for the night, come home, eat dinner. Katie pack lunches for next day, prep dinner for slow cooker in the AM, watch some shows, groom the dogs, play with dogs, and pass out.

Our sleep schedule is REALLY bad right now. Some nights its 11pm before we are in bed, other times its 9pm. It’s an exhausting schedule but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Although most people would grab fast food and rack up a huge bill, we choose not to. I like to be in control of what I put in my mouth, and especially in to my husbands. We love running and working out. Fast food just is not good for us.

While we were trialing our $20 a week diet. We ate a lot more vegetables, and at our work we got a lot of compliments on how healthy our food was.
The key for busy people is preparing the night before, and SLOW COOKING. I can’t emphasize how much I love my slow cooker. I make everything in it.
It’s actually really energy efficient too.

Another great idea, is buying certain vegetables in bulk. I use onions in everything. Until I can grow them next year, I will be buying a huge bag of these every month to keep me going.


These are just little ideas that we will go over day by day in the New Year. Just to give you a idea of where this is going.

Welcome to the new blog

This blog will be started on the 1st of January 2011. It is going to be a 365 day journey of a young couple proving to the world that you can survive on $20 a week. Not only that, but it’s also possible to lose weight, tone up and feel great with that $20.
Our names are Nick and Kate; we were married on New Year’s Eve 2009. We have spent the last year spending quite a bit of money and now need to cut back. Both of us have 2 jobs, plus full time school, and one hyper puppy/fur kid.

This is K right now, I am a 21yr old female who moved countries to marry N. :) After paying for all our visa expenses, we saved up to buy a house and pay off a car. It wasn't easy but when N married “Miss Money Saver” it made it so much better.

Every day we will be showing you: How much food we ate, what we ate, and when. I will also be doing some Podcasts starting January 1st and some Vlogs.
I am a Personal Trainer and Lifestyle Coach. I spend my weeks convincing clients over, and over again... That they can eat healthy for just as cheap as eating sugar. I hope to now be able to prove it.

Before the year begins we are allowed to make some big purchases to supplement our eating. They are the following:

* A vegetable Patch
* Two fruit trees
* fishing equipment
* Some Herbs and Spices
* Bread-maker
* New cook wear (Trust me, we need it!)

All of this is on our "Santa" list. It’s also going to help us eat healthy, and keep our food at $20 a week. We also have a slow cooker, and an egg cooker.
Once a month we will also be having a themed week. Such as "Vegan week", "Raw food week" "Meat Week" etc. It will be good to change it up a bit, and I would be interested to see how our fitness levels do.
We will also be composting, recycling and working out at least 5 days a week.
One other thing we will be using is weekly coupons. For anything from Groceries to Medication.

We would love it if anyone wanted to follow along with us. :-) This is something we are very passionate about.
It’s a huge change, I hope to start a movement eventually... This sugar eating environment needs to be stopped somewhere.
So around now you may have some questions….

What does the $20 a week buy you?
You should be able to get $20 worth of food only. If you can do it on less, and still afford necessities, so much the better!
We will be setting aside $10 a month for items such as detergent, toilet paper etc. I will also be doing some videos showing you how to make detergent and cleaning products yourself. 

Can you eat out?
We are actually going to try and not eat out for a whole 365 days if we can. If it’s something that we cannot avoid at all (Nick is in the Navy Reserve) then we will allow for this and show you how he saved money.

What about Alcohol? 
 Both of us have made a commitment to stop drinking as much by the New Year. We are thinking of actually eradicating it for 365 days…But we have too many nice friends who buy us beer and wine…
That being said, on New Year’s Eve we will give you our decision. We are thinking of going T Total and making our own beverages for cheaper….We shall have to see.


My family is bigger than 2 people. Can I still do it on $20?
I would recommend $10 for every family member, if you feel as though you still need another few $$ to get better food for children and babies. Go ahead. I do not endorse starving your children.



You can’t possibly eat enough food for $20 a week?
Actually yes you can. Nick and I trialed this for 2 weeks and ate like kings. We roughly had 2100 calories a day each, and burnt off 400 calories running. We didn’t actually think it would work either, but somehow it did.


Meat is more expensive, how are you going to get enough protein?
This is one of my biggest concerns. It’s a dream of mine to compete in a figure competition one day. I believe where there is a will, there’s a way. We will start of the year with some protein shakes that we have left over. Hopefully we will be able to find some new methods for getting in protein, without having to pay huge amounts of money.


I will add more when I think of it. But that’s all for now!
Until January 1st 2011, I will up updating this blog with how to save money on cosmetics, and what big purchases to buy to help you on this journey.

See you next time!