Cooking on a budget

     Right now I have two goals for the food we eat: it needs to be tasty, and it needs to not cost very much. (Truthfully, the food needs to be fairly healthy, but I pretty much always achieve that with our food.)
     We've been buying a lot of food at Aldi in the last year. They have crazy cheap prices, and we can't go to warehouse stores to take advantage of Costco-style pricing. (Where would I put all those staples in my tiny apartment?) There's a hidden advantage to Aldi shopping, too: there's not a lot of choice. I didn't realize how much I would like not having choice, but it simplifies my life in so many ways.  I can grocery shop in about 20 minutes, because the store so small I can walk through the entire thing in about five minutes. If I'm buying non-processed foods (cheese, vegetables, beans, etc.) I know that anything I buy at Aldi is going to keep me under the budget. And I don't have to think a lot. You want dried beans? You can have white beans or pinto. That's it. Cheese? There are 8 types, but only one size and only one brand of each.
     The only real negative for me is the handful of items that we really can't live without, but that Aldi doesn't sell: spices, red wine vinegar, and brown rice. We can usually stock up on those items once a month or so, so it doesn't result in too many trips to different stores.
     I'm feeling confessional tonight, so I'm going to account for my successes and failures in my effort to feed two people cheaply and tastily:

SUCCESS- I have learned how to make two "fake meats". I make fake bacon with this recipe and I can now make lunch meat or sausages by making my own seitan using this recipe. This is a double win: I save loads of money, and I know each and every ingredient that goes into each imitation meat, and that's not necessarily true for the supermarket stuff.

FAILURE- I bought a 50-lunch meal plan at work last year. I hoped this would encourage me to go to the faculty club (i.e. the campus restaurant where only faculty can sup) and socialize with the rest of my department. But their vegetarian selection is abysmal. Since I was also allowed to "spend" my meals at the student cafeteria, I went there sometimes. But eventually I remembered that I hate cafeteria food and I decided I'd rather waste all the meals than eat them. Andrew came to my rescue, in the end. He can't use my meal card (with its picture ID on it) but every day for the last two months I went to the cafeteria, loaded up a to-go tray, and delivered it to him. (Andrew is less pick than me.) This was a huge waste of money for bad food and I'm so glad we've almost used them up.

SUCCESS- I love premium (i.e. expensive) ice cream. My parents-in-law bought me an ice cream maker, and now I'm eating good ice cream and frozen yogurt cheaply. I did the calculations, and if you are happy eating store brand, it's better to just buy the ice cream. But if you're buying Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's, the cost of ingredients is much less than the finished product. (And that's even after accounting for the cost of the extra gadget.)

SUCCESS OR FAILURE - STILL UNKNOWN- We've been drinking awful Aldi coffee for a year, and I'd like to do better. We're going to buy the materials to roast our own beans (i.e. a grinder and a popcorn maker). Unroasted green beans are less than $6 a pound, which puts them on par with very cheap supermarket coffee (which is sneakily sold in 12-oz, not 1-pound bags here). If this works, we could be drinking artisanal coffee every morning. Or it may fail spectacularly and we will have 20 pounds of unroasted beans on our hands. Time will tell.