challenge blog 3: ramen noodle stir-fry

Ok, I promise I did this assignment like three days ago... I just didn't get my act together to post it until now. Sorry!!

Anyway, here's what my adventure to 8th Street Market yielded:

Firstly, I try to let the Harvard School of Public Health's Healthy Eating Plate guide my idea of what a balanced meal looks like. It's a little more cumbersome than the USDA's MyPlate but I think they make some important points.

Here's an interesting comparison of the two, images included: 
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate-vs-usda-myplate/

As for the meal planning--my immediate thought when I first walked through the store was chili and cornbread. Canned beans, onions, a limited range of fresh vegetables, and corn muffin mix would have definitely been a good start to a pretty inexpensive meal, but I wanted to see if there was anything else I could come up with based on what they sold.

I was inspired by the huge selection of ramen they had. I think they had a greater variety of ramen noodles than anything else in the store.

#1 lazy/broke college student food

A whole grain would have been preferable, but I got the ramen idea in my head and ran with it. I know there are people out there who buy it and use the noodles for different things, minus the salt seasoning packet, because they cost next to nothing and you can cook them in a microwave. I figured they would work well in a stir-fry with vegetables and some kind of protein.

This was their (underwhelming) produce section. For stir-fry purposes I would have used the cauliflower and baby carrots. I think there was a sign for bell peppers too, but none in the cooler, which I also would have bought.

I didn't actually make this, as you may have gathered (almost wish I had, just to see how it would turn out!) so you'll have to content yourselves with photos of the ingredients at the store. I got some funny looks from the staff that day even though I explained myself to them...

Onions, garlic--a necessary base for many, many things. I made some assumptions about having pantry items around to make a stir-fry sauce. Depending on what's in your cupboard, you can use some combination of soy sauce, garlic, ginger (root or powder), hot sauce, peanut butter, rice vinegar, honey or brown sugar, sesame oil... or you can get it from a bottle, which they did sell. But hey, if you've got a few of those things around, you have free stir-fry sauce at home already.

The choices for protein were basically limited to cheese, canned beans, tuna, and one or two kinds of deli meat. I settled on tuna because it was one of the healthiest options and I figured it would work well with a stir-fry. How you prepare it is up to you, I'd probably mix it with a little mayo and Sriracha, personally... coincidentally, their mayonnaise was half off that day. I'm not sure why and I didn't ask.

Heyyy mayo sale

At the end I decided to throw in some oranges for fruit, because I had a few dollars left.

So--the breakdown!

Ramen: 2x $0.33

Tuna: 1x $1.59

Onion: 1x $0.69

Garlic: 1x $0.33

Carrots: 1x $1.49 (1 lb bag)

Cauliflower: 1x $2.49

Mayo: 1x $1.25 (on sale!)

Oranges: 2x $0.69

Total: $9.88

Just under $10! Not bad. Really, though, I would not want to be living off of what's available at a corner store. In terms of making good eating choices, the lack of variety would make things really boring really quickly, since the healthy options are so limited. It's good to know I could put something like this together in a pinch, but it's not the best place to be buying most of your groceries.