Monthly Archives: October 2009

Food

Steak and Eggs as Cheap and Easy Breakfast

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There’s nothing quite like a hearty breakfast to start the day off right, and there’s something special about the way steak and eggs wake you up in the morning. Well, steak isn’t particularly cheap, but the eggs are! So between the two, you can enjoy a great meal with plenty of fat and protein for about a buck and fifty cents. That will hardly buy you a cup of coffee at a retail eatery!

Here’s two tricks to making pan-fried steak and eggs into an easy meal:

Butter, butter, butter the pan

Without a bit of real butter on the pan, those eggs get sticky. If they’re even slightly overcooked, cleanup can become a huge pain! So make sure to thoroughly grease the pan with some butter or olive oil before cracking the egg and cooking it up.

Get some thin cut steaks

There’s two advantages to the thin cut steak. First, you have cheaper and smaller portions: you can eat the “whole piece” and still only consume 2 to 3 ounces. With a $4/lb steak, that’s just about $1 worth of meat for a very decent breakfast.

The other distinct advantage of using thin cut steaks when frying steak and eggs is that they cook as quickly as the eggs do. There’s nothing worse than having the perfectly cooked egg and seeing a bloody piece of meat that needs more time or a higher heat!

For the last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying this meal for breakfast almost exclusively. Once in a while I’ve switched in some fried pork and vegetables, but the egg and meat combo is still one of the best ways to start a day!

Food

Eat Well, Eat Cheap

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Here’s an example of what I got on my last trip to the grocery store. Just because you can’t eat gluten and don’t have much money to spend on food doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy healthy and delicious meals:

3/4 lb lean steak – $3.50
1 lb 93/7 ground beef – $3
1 lb asparagus – $2.50
2 lb broccoli – $3.25
2 boxes Chex – $6.30
1.5 lb muscadines – $4
1 gallon milk – $2.50
8 oz mozorella – $2

That’s about $6.50 for meat, $6.50 for green veggies, and $6.50 for grains. Dairy and fruits are about $4 each.

This will last me a week in addition to some things that are left over. Eggs, coffee, sugar, butter, all those basics are pretty cheap and don’t have to be purchased every week.

Just make sure you’re stocked up on pepper, salt, garlic powder, and some basic herbs like oregano, thyme, and rosemary. From there, you can make a lot of delicious meals in no time, for low cost!

Right now, I’m sitting around, waiting for a few of those thin-sliced lean steaks to sear up a little bit. There’s also about a half pound of brocolli steaming next to it. Despite the steak and eggs I had for breakfast, and the multiple bowls of cereal in between, my body is ready for the next round of healthy foods and my energy levels are staying high.

Now, if I could just get a little more disciplined with exercise, I might actually resemble a healthy person! For all the years I ate gluten unknowingly, I never would have dreamed that I could feel this good again. Healthy food and a bit of physical activity just makes it even better.