Seesters and Brudda: By the numbers

It's been ages since I did a "by the numbers" post. So....here goes!

• My first post after my blogging break was #1300!!
• I have been retired for 1505 days!
• I have two sisters and two brothers - ALL older than me. Yes, I'm the baby of the family! My two sisters are 9 and 12 years older than me. My brothers are four and seven years older. 
• I'm visiting one sister and one brother this week...in Bracebridge, ON (Santa's Village!) My other brother and I are going to Scotland soon and I hope to see my other sister at Christmas in PEI though Kazi has a new job and we'll have to see if we can make it happen. 
• Bracebridge is about a 4 hour drive and at one time both of my sisters lived there.
• We leave for Scotland in 30 days!
• Yesterday I rode my bike for 26.7kms :)
• I used points to purchase a $100 Esso card and two $50 grocery store cards (the budget is tight this month!)
• My property tax went down $7 per month! Woohoo!
• My cell phone bill will be increasing by about $15, so much for the previous savings of $7. I added unlimited long distance minutes anywhere in Canada.
• My natural gas bill was a mere $32 in August...but my electricity bill went over budget by $2.37 due to running the A/C. Considering how deathly hot it's been here for weeks and weeks I'm surprised my bill wasn't sky high!!
• So far this month I've spent a whopping $44 on food plus $7 for lemon tarts to share with my Scotland bound brother. Lemon is his favourite - I go to his place for tea every other Thursday and to make plans for the Scotland trip. 
• I have gone to Dairy Queen THREE times so far this month- I only get a plain cone as it has the least amount of calories!!
• And speaking of calories - between eating better (most of the time), cutting out a few things like bread & pasta and riding my bike almost every day I have lost 10% of my overall weight!! I haven't been below 130lbs in 15 years!! 
• I don't think I'll have any $$ to put into savings this month but that's ok. I paid off well over $1,000 on my Mastercard to cover new hiking boots ($423), almost $200 at the Mountain Equipment Company, Greyhound bus tickets to get us to Toronto's Pearson airport, travel insurance and an early birthday dinner with Kazi. Never fear...I clear off my Mastercard every month and pay no interest. 
• I also did some thrifting with my friend Jules; photos in my next post. Can't remember how much I spent but it wasn't much!

Thus ends "By the Numbers" August edition :)

What I'm Eating.....

...Real food.
End of post......
Not really!

Remember the old food pyramid that advised us to have 6-11 servings of grains?! I hear it is getting updated once again. I offer for consideration the Real Food pyramid. I've been working towards this model for over a week. It requires a lot of thinking at first and I'm taking a gradual approach because there are a lot of things that are hard to give up/replace in order to LOVE what I'm eating and in order to cover all of my dietary needs - for example - protein and calcium.

For me, the most important thing to get away from is stuff that comes in packages and contains very little to NO food. Take a box of Kraft Dinner - one of Canada's favourite "foods". I've eaten a mountain of KD over the years starting when I was a wee tot and you could buy 2 boxes for 15 cents! BUT - it contains next to NO real food and provides no nutritional value. All it does is taste good and fill you up. Well, as a single parent sometimes those are the choices I've had to make. I get queasy thinking back to when Kazi's favourite lunch "food" was Zoodles!! I mean there is no such real food called a zoodle!!  So NO more. No more mystery foods!

Getting enough protein is easy as we love eggs, chicken, turkey and fish/shellfish and we eat lots of vegetables for every meal. Calcium is harder though I take a supplement along with vitamin D every day. I have to start examining labels on yogurt, cottage cheese and other cheeses to see which ones contain food but no chemicals. Sticking with organic should do the trick. I don't drink milk except for soy milk and again I stick with organic as I'd like to stay non-GMO as close to 100% as possible.

I'm not craving anything, so far. I will make things to satisfy my sweet tooth. With my Vitamix I can make my favourite food - ICE CREAM - by mixing soy milk and frozen berries. I will try to substitute honey, maple syrup, raw sugar or other natural sweeteners to re-create my favourite oatmeal cookies and scones. It can be done, it just requires some thought.

My hope is to have a stronger and healthier body. The body doesn't know what to do with UNreal foods so it stores it as fat. UNreal foods don't boost your immune system, don't strengthen your muscles, don't build bone etc. It all turns to FAT. I should know. I have a nice belly made out of licorice, ice cream, candy, pretzyls and chocolate bars. (Pssssst! I'm not giving up chocolate - just making better selections! There are choices that are organic and contain only real ingredients!)

Today I am eating:
Breakfast - organic green tea, 1% cottage cheese with raspberries
Lunch - falafel mixture (ground chicken, green/red peppers, onions, garlic and spices) over a bed of romaine
Mid-afternoon - organic green tea/cheese/half grapefruit
Dinner - green beans, cauliflower and broccoli, grilled shrimp, green salad (spinach, grape tomatoes, cucumber, onion, red pepper)
Before bed - a small yogurt

I'd like to think I can stay away from NONfood products but I know I'll want Dairy Queen eventually (VERY MUCH NOT A REAL FOOD) and I'll enjoy it! But I will try to keep to meals made from Real Food. It's a work in process!

By the Numbers

I'm pretty satisfied with the numbers this month. August ended (can you believe it???!) with a surplus of $284 (in addition to putting $350 into savings). YEAH BABY!! Riding my bike everywhere is really saving me money. Other savings included utilities: natural gas was a low $32 and electricity was $42!! We've run the A/C a little bit but mostly our house stays pretty cool as it is protected by two huge maple trees and a locust tree. The patio only gets about an hour of direct sun per day and a couple hours of filtered sunlight. I can't complain. It was sweltering and humid today but the A/C only kicked in a couple of times.  I keep it set at 25c.

I went over a little bit in the food budget because it was cherry season and I gorged myself. Not even kidding! Cherries are my favourite fruit and no time to be frugal!! I bought quite a few bags at an average cost of about $13+/bag. But I more than made up that overage by NOT having to put much gas in the truck. And recently our gas prices have dropped making the gas budget even smaller.

So what did I waste spend my money on this month?

• went to the movies twice (The Minions and Shaun the Sheep Movie :)
• two albums downloaded from iTunes
• bought several books; a couple new but the rest were second hand
• beer
• yoga x 4
• Yogathon - $25 donation
• played progressive euchre twice plus dinner
• $20 UPS delivery fee for the maps/guide for upcoming trip
• renewed my hiking membership $25.00
• paid for travel insurance
• paid for train x 2 while away
• extra google storage - $2.71
• Hallmark membership
• hiking: food/entrance fee into provincial park
• dinner/beer at the Jazz Fest yesterday
• food/icecream at Rib Fest
• Dairy Queen x 2, 3, 4 times?? But who's counting right?

Some freebies: 

• loaned my truck to my brother and he treated me to dinner at The Waltzing Weasel
• Kazi worked the Beer Festival downtown and treated me to several samples and gave me a T-shirt from her workplace - Toboggan; (there was a long line up to get into the Beer Fest so she threw me a T-shirt over the fence and I put it on and walked right in as if I was working there lol!) Then I benefited from her "beer" expertise (beertise?) and tried a number of yummy samples (I wasn't driving!!)

This was my favourite! Scotch Ale.....

• also free - weekly meditation, weekly visits with my brother, pot luck dinner & MORE!!

All in all a pretty awesome month!! And not just the numbers...!