Bread, part 1

Here is my current favorite bread recipe, originally from here with a few procedural modifications for ease of baking:

Water (for heating mixing bowl/measuring cup)

2/3 cup sugar

2 cups warm water (run the tap until it is noticeably warm to the touch without being hot/steaming)

1 1/2 tbsp yeast (2 packets)

1/2 tbsp salt

1/4 cup canola oil

6 cups flour

Oil/butter for greasing bowl/pans

1. Boil ~2-3 cups water, and pour into large mixing bowl (preferably stand mixer bowl with a dough hook). Swish around briefly and let sit for a minute or so. Pour water into 2+ cup measuring cup and let sit again. Put sugar into mixing bowl, and dump out measuring cup before measuring out warm water.

2. Pour warm water into mixing bowl, and add yeast. Let sit until yeast shows some signs of activity (usually 2-5 minutes). Add salt, oil, and first 2 cups of flour.

3. If using a stand mixer, attach dough hook. Mix in mixer or by hand until flour is mostly dissolved. Add 2 cups of flour and repeat. Add final 2 cups of flour 1 at a time, mixing/kneading as necessary to get all flour incorporated in the dough. Dough should be a little sticky, but not excessively so. Add more flour as necessary.

4. Oil a second large mixing bowl, and flip dough several times in it to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and leave somewhere warm (I like to put it under an incandescent bulb when the house is cold).

5. Let dough rest an hour, or until doubled in size. Punch down dough and split in half. Grease two bread pans. Fold each half of the dough into an oblong loaf shape and place in bread pan. Cover loaves with damp cloth and let rise until dough is above the edge of the pans (about an hour).

6. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Bake loaves for 30 minutes. Remove from pans and move to cooling rack immediately.

And now, the numbers! Calculations here.

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Sugar	$0.13	2/3 cup	480	$0.18
Yeast	$0.07	1 1/2 tbsp	55	$0.85
Salt	$0.03	1/2 tbsp	0	N/A
Oil	$0.07	1/4 cup	480	$0.10
Flour	$0.39	6 cups	2640	$0.10
Bread Totals	$0.69	2 loaves	3655	$0.13

Um... wow. Before writing this article I had priced out a different bread recipe that used milk and butter at $0.40 per meal, and assumed that this one would be about the same. This recipe is a third of that cost. I should mention at this point that I buy sugar in 25 lb bags, yeast in 2 lb bags, oil in 2 packs of 3 quarts each, and flour in 50 lb bags, all at Costco. Running the numbers using prices for smaller containers is a lot less efficient, especially for the yeast. Switching to packets of yeast (at 3 for $1.39) more than doubles the price!

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Yeast	$0.93	2 packets	55	$11.17
Other	$0.62	N/A	3600	$0.12
Bread Totals	$1.55	2 loaves	3655	$0.28

Admittedly, $0.28 per meal (and about $0.77 per loaf) is still really, really good. If our goal is to reduce per meal costs to $1.50 or less, either recipe could help significantly. Using $0.28 per meal bread as half of a dinner would let us spend $2.71 per meal on rest of our food and still average out to $1.50.

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Bread	$0.14	~1/5 loaf	333	$0.28
Fancy Food	$1.36	Enough	334	$2.71
Fancy Dinner	$1.50	2 loaves	667	$1.50

As the title suggests, there is more to say about bread, but I will save that for the next post. Happy baking!

Good Ol' Granola

Here is my recipe for granola:

6 cups oats
1 cup walnuts
1 cup almonds (preferably sliced, but whole works fine)
1 cup honey
1 heaping tsp cinnamon
Dash salt
Oil/cooking spray for baking pan
2 cups raisins or craisins

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together oats, walnuts, almonds, honey, cinnamon, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Grease a 9x13-ish baking pan or sheet (I like to use a glass one) and pour in the granola. Press it as flat as you can. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring once halfway through. After stirring, press the granola flat again. Let cool, and sprinkle with either raisins or craisins. Break it up into pieces and store in a closed container.


And here's our cost analysis (google drive version here):

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Old Fashioned Oats	$0.85	6 cups	1800	$0.31
Walnuts	$0.89	1 cup	800	$0.74
Almonds	$1.15	1 cup	680	$1.13
Honey	$1.78	1 cup	960	$1.23
Cinnamon	$0.05	1 tsp	6	$5.48
Salt	$0.00	1/16 tsp	0	N/A
Oil	$0.02	1 tbsp	120	$0.10
Raisins	$1.57	2 cups	960	$1.09
Granola Totals	$6.30	~10 cups	5326	$0.79

After trying a few granola recipes and mixing them together, this is what I ended up with. It's a solid breakfast with milk or yogurt, and a nice dessert with some M&Ms or chocolate chips mixed in. I also like to add sliced strawberries or bananas.

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Granola	$0.63	1 cup	533	$0.79
Yogurt	$0.36	1/2 cup	80	$3.01
Strawberries	$0.38	1/6 lb	25	$10.20
Fancy Breakfast	$1.37	1 bowl	638	$1.44

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Granola	$0.63	1 cup	533	$0.79
Skim Milk	$0.11	1 cup	90	$0.83
Cheap Breakfast	$0.74	1 bowl	623	$0.80

Food Item	Cost	Quantity	Calories	Price per 'Meal'
Granola	$0.63	1 cup	533	$0.79
M&Ms	$0.16	1 oz	140	$0.77
Dessert	$0.79	1 bowl	673	$0.78

Granola is pretty darn cheap! Almost every ingredient is less than $1.25 per meal. It takes less than an hour to make a week's supply, and doesn't require any tools beyond a mixing bowl, a baking dish, and an oven. Roasting some meat or veggies? Baking cookies? Cooking a frozen pizza for dinner? Just mix up some granola while you wait for your food, reset the oven temperature, and let it bake while you eat!

This recipe is one where I rely a lot on Costco prices to make it cost effective. While oats are inexpensive anywhere you go, I have found that walnuts, almonds, and other nuts are significantly cheaper at Costco than at other grocery stores. Buying a 3 lb bag of walnuts is a bit intimidating, but most nuts store very well in the freezer.

The Method

The formula we are going to use over and over again in analyzing food involves only multiplication and division:
\[Cost\ Per\ Meal = {(Item\ Cost) * 667 \over {(Number\ of\ Servings) * (Calories\ Per\ Serving)}}\]
Let's walk through an example, finding the price of a gallon of skim milk. I have the following values at my local Costco.
\[Item\ Cost = $1.79\]
\[Number\ of\ Servings = 16\]
\[Calories\ Per\ Serving = 90\]
Using our formula above, this gives me a cost of \$0.83.
\[Cost\ Per\ Meal = {$1.79 * 667 \over {16 * 90}} = $0.83\]
What does this mean? Well, we looked at the jug of milk and found that it contained 1440 calories in total (the denominator of our formula). If we eat 2000 calories a day, a 'meal' consisting of one third of that total is 667 calories. Thus, our milk jug has a little over two 'meals' in it. If we get a full third of our days calories from that \$1.79 jug of milk, we will have spent \$0.83 on those calories. Imagine spending less than \$3 a day on food!

Now, I don't survive entirely off of milk, and I'm pretty sure you don't either. However, if I drink a more realistic amount of milk in a given day, such as one 8 oz serving, the 90 calories I get from that serving are actually pretty cost effective at a little over \$0.11. This is the actual price we eventually want to consider, but we will start by looking at the cost per meal to compare foods on a level playing field. Below, I've listed a few food items and the analysis described above for prices at my local Aldi or Costco.

\begin{array}{|c|c|} \hline Food\ Item&Cost&Quantity&\#\ Servings&Cal/Serving&Price\ per\ 'Meal' \\ \hline Skim\ Milk&\$1.79&1\ gal&16&90&\$0.83 \\ \hline Walnuts&\$9.99&3\ lbs&45&200&\$0.74 \\ \hline Strawberries&\$2.29&1\ lb&4.54&33&\$10.20 \\ \hline Onions&\$5.99&10\ lbs&45.4&40&\$2.20 \\ \hline Pears&\$6.99&6\ lbs&27.24&57&\$3.00 \\ \hline Flour&\$6.39&25\ lbs&378&110&\$0.10 \\ \hline Jasmine\ Rice&\$17.99&25\ lbs&227&180&\$0.29 \\ \hline Oats&\$7.99&2x80\ oz&113&150&\$0.31 \\ \hline \end{array}

Clearly, some foods are a lot cheaper by this metric than others! The cheapest foods here are mostly carbs, while vegetables and fruits are more expensive. Just eating rice and never touching vegetables will probably not go well, so we will rely on averaging our pricier but important foods with our cheaper sources of calories. If we can get a whole dish down to a price tag of \$1.50 or even \$1.00 per 'meal' without sacrificing the diversity of our food, then we have found a good recipe. Again, though, if we have a more expensive dish we want to eat on occasion, we just need to average it out against cheaper meals on other days. It all comes down to planning and balancing costs.

So What's the Big Idea?

Food is central to our lives. There are few things more important to our day-to-day survival than ensuring we get enough to eat. Shared meals are one of the best ways to build community, network, and spend time enjoying life with friends and family. However, much of the food that is available to us is expensive, unhealthy, or unappetizing. The goal of this blog is to work towards cutting food costs without sacrificing health and flavor.

Food cost can vary wildly, but to analyze it we will consider the cost of a “meal”, or 667 calories. For the origin of this idea, check out Mr. Money Mustache’s excellent blog post, Killing your $1000 Grocery Bill (and while you’re at it, check out some of his other articles). By pricing out all of the ingredients in a recipe on a per-meal basis, we get a sense of what parts of our food are helping or hurting our grocery bill. From there, we can adjust our recipes to be more cost-effective without having to give up favorite meals.

Health and flavor can be argued over to no end, but for this analysis we will be making some simplifying assumptions. I am not a dietitian, and you will know your body’s needs much better than I do. If you have restrictions on your diet, I hope I can provide tools that will work for your situation.