Eating Habits

As the rain & cold winds come and go, I’ll pass the time writing about nourishing oneself on a student budget. Since I don’t have a job that pays, I’m forced to limit my spending because my account is only going down. With that kind of financial picture, only one word becomes your best friend: bargain(s). You have to look for the best deals on groceries and everything.

Living in a different part of the world sounds wonderful but once you calculate the annual cost of living there, you uncover the hidden, and sometimes difficult, challenge of surviving. For me, money has to cover tuition, residence, food, school supplies, laundry, transportation, health products, and entertainment! Yeah, quite a challenge, although I’m glad I’ve saved several hundreds of dollars by not having to buy textbooks.

So, what does my diet consist of? A little bit of everything . . . I think. Since I don’t eat much, I aim for two meals a day plus little snacks in between, as well as stopping by the nearby Woolworth’s twice a week to restock. There’s also a Countdown but I haven’t stepped foot in it yet. I arrived with the plan of spending $100NZD a week. In reality, I spend no more than $70NZD. My parents think I’m starving, but like I said, the ‘b’ word is now my close friend. I’m not sure what the exchange rate is between Canadian & New Zealand dollars so I just treat NZD like they were CAND.

My older brother, Roman, is currently studying in Australia and he says he only spends $50AUS a week on food. I can’t seem to imagine that since I’m living on an expensive island in the southern hemisphere. Maybe he goes into detail on his BLOG - The Great Journey Continues.

For breakfast I have either dry cereal, yogurt, eggs, juice, and vitamin pills for the extra boost. It took a bit longer to find the right kind of milk because New Zealand uses a different classification system. In Canada, there’s 1%, 2%, 3%, and skim milk. Here, it’s original, trim, lite, extra trim, and extra slim. Turns out trim suits me; original was . . . too original.

For lunch I’m mostly a sandwich man. Since New Zealand doesn’t sell the ham I like (Black Forest), I’ve had to rely on smoked salmon. I eat it once or twice a week. As for bread, I usually buy a baguette ($1.48) or a pre-made loaf ($3.40). To save money, I put in pieces of spring mix salad so that I don’t have to buy a whole lettuce. And I can’t forget the mayo and tomatoes! I just found the Chinese noodles aisle so I’ll be able to save more because each package only costs about 65 cents. For the curious Canadian, there’s no Kraft Dinner but that’s not a problem for me. I made KD once and I’m never doing it again – it was that bad.

Dinner is usually a snack meal and I just have a spring mix salad. Last time, I decided to be creative and added smoked salmon to the tomatoes, vinaigrette, and green mix. The concoction was edible but I decided to confine the salmon to sandwiches. Since I treat dinner as a more formal affair, I sometimes snack on crackers and Brie cheese.

If I need to stay awake during class, I sneak in a nutritional bar (like granola) or a mandarin.

Before I could enjoy all the delicious food mentioned and those I have yet to taste, I had to buy several kitchen items. First was cutlery; even though my flat came with them, there were always being used by my roommates so I bought store brand plastic cutlery. It’s the cheapest and now I have enough knives, forks, and spoons for my needs and for a party. I also bought two wooden bowls, bread cutter knife, egg slicer, and corkscrew opener for wine. Well, what can you expect? It is campus residence. My flat has a stove but not an oven, but a micro-oven. I’m thinking about buying a steel drainer bin because it’s tough to make Chinese noodles without it.

So that’s what I’ve been eating since I arrived and have been feeling fine. I save $30 weekly meaning money for other priorities. As my time here progresses I’ll expand my food making knowledge . . . and do my best not to blow up the kitchen while doing it.