Budgeting and Trader Joe’s
This year I decided to start cooking for myself. After spending my first two years hiking to Carm to obtain gluten free meals (I stand in pain with all other gluten free folks), I decided to start cooking at my new dorm in a Tufts house.
Most of my meal plan is covered by financial aid, which as a low-income student is extremely useful as I can use the same money to buy my ingredients. However, budgeting is hard, especially when you are trying to keep a balanced diet as a college student. I had to establish a weekly goal to spend the same amount each week, and still vary my meals so I can break free from dining food monotony.
At the beginning, I ended up eating chicken in all its variations. Chicken with asparagus, chicken with broccoli, chicken soup, chicken with potatoes, chicken parmesan, chicken, chicken, chicken. After two weeks, I decided to change it up. I decided to learn how to cook properly and still on a budget.
Using our Tufts provided access to the New York Times, I embarked on a journey of discovering recipes each week. I set a minimum of five recipes, and decided to do different themes each week. I started by continents, first with Asia, moving on to Europe, then North America, then central and south and lastly Africa. I skipped over Oceania because seafood was a bit out of my budget. The journey had to continue under budget, of course.
Each week I travelled to the nearest Trader Joe’s, located in Alewife, and found my ingredients following the recipes. If something was either too expensive or too niche (as some of the spices for African week and some of the cheese or ham for European and South American week), I looked for replacements or easier modifications. At the same time, I tried to cook in bigger quantities so I could have leftovers for lunch the next day.
Almost every week, I was able to keep myself on check with both budget and balanced meals. But I did learn plan-ification is key, and good planning makes all the difference. There are multiple resources online that also offer easier budgeting, and there are some people on social media that make specific content oriented to balanced yet low budget meals.
I would say, what I do miss a lot of the dining halls is the accessibility and how easy it is, as you don’t have to spend as much time cooking and planning your meals. Yet, I would not change the satisfaction of learning different recipes from different cultures and getting to know myself better through what food I enjoy for a meal plan. My journey of budgeting and Trader Joe’s shall continue...
Enjoy a picture of our homemade Friendsgiving dinner at our dorm!