Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Saving money while dieting? who wouldda thunk??

I have a few minutes so I thought I would pop on here and drop a short post up for the evening, I just got done making lunches for my wife for the next twelve days because were on mission to see how much money we can save whilst losing all of our weight. She was eating Lean cuisine's or smart ones for Lunch every day at work and if you buy these little convenient packages of goodness you know that they can be pricey, usually she can get them on sale four for ten dollars, and if she is lucky five for ten. so we were doing our bulk shopping list for the week last Saturday and came up with the idea to make our own little version of these lean cuisine meals since I am a pretty good cook and don't mind a little work to save a few bucks.

She and I just made 12 portions of the BBQ rice beans and chicken that I posted the recipe for a day or so ago and packaged them up and they are in the freezer right now. We bought a whole chicken while shopping this weekend and I baked it this afternoon so that it would be cool to make these little meals this evening, 2 cans of Goya black beans and made a pot of rice. The whole chicken was less than $5.00 we bought the Goya beans for 3 cans for $2.00 so the beans we used cost $1.34 the rice was oh I don't know, we have a 20lb bag that we bought for like $8.50 or something so lets say the rice was $.50 so grand total for these 12 lunches cost us $6.84 if I call the chicken five bucks, that works out to $.57 per portion. we had BBQ sauce in the fridge and black pepper and Mccormick spices in the cabinet so I won't include those in the total.

Each portion contains.

1/2 cup cooked white rice = 100 Calories
1/4 cup black beans = 45 calories
2oz shredded chicken with BBQ sauce on it = 120 calories

Total calories 265 per portion.

Now I came up with the calories for the chicken @120 per 2oz because it is mostly white meat which is about 50 per oz and the dark meat is about 60 or so per oz add the BBQ sauce and I just rounded it to about 60 per oz which I think is pretty close.

I am sure I will dip into these for a lunch here and there myself and I plan on making a Spanish version of these little portions as well as an Asian themed version, I have an idea that the Asian one will be very low in calories as I plan on using lots of veggies. The best part? tomorrow it is suppose to rain all day so I will make a soup with the carcass from the chicken that I used for the lunches, so we will have 3 containers of soup in the freezer by tomorrow evening and a nice home made spicy Spanish themed soup for dinner tomorrow night and all that will cost us is whatever the Veggies cost, which I estimate to be under $6.00, maybe I will figure that out as well and put it in a later post. with gas prices going up the way that they are and with food prices rising daily every bit counts and all of this creativity with my cooking and planning helps a ton there, and look at that! I am on a low calorie diet plan, eating healthy, getting my fill of highly nutritional home made meals and no special buy it now for only 3 easy payments of $39.99 miracle diet plans in sight.

As Ever
Me

4 comments:

  1. There's your next business adventure- healthy food boxed lunches!
    If you lived close, I'd buy them..... maybe write a cookbook? The cookbook could have the recipes, and lots of your blog fun stuff. A follow up book on your weight loss success. Wify can write a book. You guys definitely have the story- Dont let it go to waste.
    I say this, because I believe in you and what you have done. Dont think bout it too much, just do it. You are a success story, go for it!

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  2. lol You do live close silly girl :P

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  3. OK, so whatcha gonna cook me up for lunches?
    We'll have to meet at a 1/2 way point. I work in Farmington, if that helps. If you want to deliver, the people at my work would pay top dollar- They eat out almost daily. Pizza, Chinese, Burgers, Subs. Offer something tasty and healthy- a win/win. What will you charge? Details, Tony, I need details. You hit the nail on the head when you talk about the expense of frozen meals- and they have additives, etc. And the cost to go out is just crazy.
    Let me know!

    Silly Girl in CT :--)

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  4. That is so great Tony! I've thought about making things ahead and freezing them but just never do it. I like to go more by the seat of my pants depending on which 'superfoods' I need in my daily total. But with prices rising on everything all over the place I should probably do it too! LOL, or quit paying over $650 a month in gymnastic fees...haha and that's with an employee discount!

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