Thinking in Bulk

Last Friday, we decided to tackle our first grocery shopping trip using our first community stipend for food. It was definitely a challenge to think in bulk for me, as I am used to shopping for myself. Last year in college, all my roommates had different eating habits and diets that we rarely cooked the same meals together or shopped for the same foods. So to properly execute our shopping excursion, the past two nights previous, we had all sat down together to plan out what meals we would cook for dinners in the next week or so in order to plan out what to buy. Because Jamie and Mary are vegetarians, we really tried to incorporate more veggie friendly meals so that we could all eat together. And since a lot of meat tends to be more on the expensive side, I’m not too bummed to figure out how to creatively integrate protein in our diets. Especially since most of us really enjoy cooking, I’m excited to cook dinner together every night and learn new recipes!

Now, don’t worry, there’s no way I could become entirely vegetarian, although it sounds like I might... My mom would be the first to tell you I could never give up a good steak or a hot dog. However, when it interferes with living a more simple life, it’s become easier to live without it.

So with my handy calculator in hand, we perused the grocery isles to find items that would fit our dietary needs and feed us for the upcoming week! It was definitely a challenge to have to discuss questions with all six of us such as, "Can we live without this for a couple weeks?" in order to meet our budget of $100. I'm pleased to say that we not only bought everything on our grocery list, but we were under our budget and had some extra cash left over for extra miscellaneous things we might need during the week! We were so exuberant with each other that we posted our receipt on the fridge as a token of our success!

Another task we tried to accomplish was learning how to figure out the not so easy public transit, aka, the bus. Annie, Kate and I all have to take the bus in order to get to work every day, because Laura will be driving herself, Mary and Jamie to their jobs that are literally right next to each other. It was very overwhelming at first; trying to read the different maps and decipher which bus we would need to take to transfer to a second bus at what time, in which direction, and praying that the buses would be on time. We did manage to test a route successfully to where Kate and Annie’s jobs are located (since mine wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity), but during the getting home portion, we took a route that wasn’t exactly the most efficient. In the end we ended up walking part of the way home and still managed to beat the bus we were hoping to ride, home. All in all, it was a long, tiring, and stressful experiment that left us only a minuscule bit more confident in how to get to work.

(But to give you an update, we did eventually manage to find the best and easiest routes to work with the help of Lindsey the FJV! More on my bus adventures soon!)

But to end on a good note... that night we made "Sunshine Squash Casserole" (recipe from Laura's mom!) that's a combination of two types of summer squash, zucchini, onions, cream of mushroom soup, sour cream and bread crumbs. Yes, mom, I had squash. And it was delicious!

Annie holding our Squash Casserole leftovers!

 After a wonderful dinner together we had our very first Community night and decided to watch a cheesy movie and share a night of laughter together! If not fitting enough, we found "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," a movie from the 80s with a really young Sarah Jessica Parker, cheesy 80s songs, super dance moves, cute boys, and parents that just don't understand... Haha, needless to say, it's now become Annie's favorite movie and the perfect start to our Community nights!