Thanks for this mobile productivity goes to the following iPhone apps: NextBus (actually a mobile site, not an app), DropBox, TTC Exit Guide, Kindle, FourSquare and WordPress.

Some of this might seem trivial, but these things enhance my life and make me more productive. Knowing when the next streetcar will really arrive tells me whether I need to take a taxi to avoid being late. Accessing active project documents allows me to some work done even thought I’m in the middle of a haircut. Knowing which subway car to board can save me battling through crowds on the platform, only to end up at the wrong exit. Even reading a book is business in this case: ironically, it’s “Empowered”, all about allowing people to use their own tools and methods for getting things done better.

In case you were wondering, the ringer is off: I take calls and read email on my schedule, not just because my device tell me to. Use your mobile device to work the way that you want to, not to turn you into a phone and email slave.

You can find all the details here, including how to reserve tickets. At $20 per ticket, it’s a deal if you’re in the mood for a bit of culture. Also, it’s a great neighbourhood to dine on Portuguese churrasqueira and Italian gelato before or after the show.

I wrote to the info email address on the website, asking if they publish the nutritional content, and received the answer that they don’t publish that information, and were just writing a statement about why that is. I checked back on the site today, and here it is:

At Fresh, we have chosen not to have nutritional breakdowns for our food and juice menus. Here’s why:

We believe that for the last few decades, food industry marketers, nutritional scientists and journalists have confused us about what to eat. Knowledge that used to be passed down from one generation to the next has been taken over by a money-making agenda put forth by people looking to profit from the confusion. We are taking a stand against this and want to follow a philosophy closer to what Michael Pollan talks about in his book “In Defense of Food”. His mantra is deceptively simple.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Meaning: Eat real food-real ingredients that haven’t been processed beyond recognition. Don’t stuff yourself. Be mostly vegetarian.

Nutritionism started in the 70s, and is basically the science of breaking down food into its various components. For instance, rather than saying “Oranges are good for you”, nutritionism would say “Oranges have vitamin C, fibre and calcium. These elements are good for you”. Nutritionism suggests that food is simply the sum of its parts and that the effects of individual nutrients can be scientifically measured, and that eating requires ever changing expert advice. One day it’s saturated fat that is bad, next day it’s carbs, then it’s trans fats…what’s next?

I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it for me. For a restaurant chain to basically say that they don’t need to publish nutritional data because everything there is good, when they serve foods that are high in sodium and fat, is total nonsense. I want the data, not a patronizing statement that implies that Fresh knows more about my nutritional needs than I do. I responded:

I read the new section on your website but have a pretty serious problem with it because it implies that I’m not smart enough to handle data such as how much of any particular nutrient is in my meal. I like to know what I eat, in particular, I want the calories, fat, carbs, protein and sodium content so that I can manage my overall food consumption. Sorry, but I just don’t trust you — or any other restaurant — to pick the right choices for me since you have no idea what my specific needs are. I already eat mostly vegetarian, and not too much, as Michael Pollan advises, but I notice that my overall health suffers if I consume too much sodium, or if my protein-carb-fat balance is too much out of whack. That means that I track those things, and unfortunately, if I can’t track what I eat at Fresh, I’ll be eating there much less often.

You need to trust your patrons to make their own choices, not try to make those choices for them. Most people will never go to the website and look for nutritional information; for those of us who do, we really want that information, not a patronizing statement about what you believe rather than the nutritional facts.

If we’re going to get out of the dysfunctional eating mess that we’re in today, everyone needs to become more aware of what they’re eating. For some people, they just want a feel-good nutritional nanny statement like the pap that Fresh already serves up. But for some of us, that means that we want nutritional breakdowns including protein, carbs, fat and sodium. Bring it on, please.

View Toronto Farmers Markets 2010 in a larger map

It covers a slightly different list of markets than the map and calendar that I published earlier this week (and I actually like the calendar view since I can overlay it on my own Google calendar with a single click), but it’s a great consolidated view.

In the meantime, I started to mark my calendar with the other markets close to me, realized that it was too much info for my private calendar so ended up creating a public calendar of all of the Toronto farmers’ markets from the Farmers’ Markets Ontario site:

You can add this to your Google calendar using the button at the bottom right of the calendar so that you see it overlaid with your own calendar, or go to it directly so that you can bookmark it. Click on each item in the calendar for details, or switch to Agenda view using the button at the top right to see them in a date-ordered list.

Since someone had created nice Google map locations for each of the markets, I also pulled those together into a single map so that you can see what’s close to you:

View Toronto Markets in a larger map

You can zoom and pan directly on this map, or click on the link at the bottom of the map to open it directly so that you can bookmark it.

If I’ve missed any, let me know by adding a comment to this entry. I did not validate that the FMO entries were correct, I just used them as printed on their site; until today, they still had the St. Andrew’s market listed as active for 2010 and there may be other errors.

In early May – when we should have been planning for the opening day – MyMarket informed us that not enough vendors were interested in participating in our market this year. We looked into the possibility of organizing an independent market to replace it, possibly with the few vendors who did want to participate plus those that we could approach on our own, but it wasn’t possible to get everything in order for a market this year: there were issues of negotiating with the city for use of the space, licensing and insurance, managing the market on a weekly basis, and organizing the farmers and other vendors. As unpaid volunteers with no government mandate behind us, it just wasn’t possible.

We haven’t given up, however: 2012 will mark the 175th anniversary of the original St. Andrew’s market, and we are working at resurrecting a market in 2011 that will be sufficiently successful to carry us over into 2012 and the years to come. That could mean getting the city involved to run the market, or some local fund-raising to cover the costs of rent, licensing, insurance and a market manager.

Hyper-local markets like St. Andrew’s are the only access that many city-dwellers have to farm-fresh produce: nearly 100% of our shoppers arrived on foot (or bicycle), and a large percentage don’t even own cars, which makes a trip to more distant farmers’ markets unlikely. We have a few other farmers markets downtown; although none are close enough that I’ll be walking home with a load of fruits and vegetables, they’re worth checking out. The closest three are weekday markets in non-residential areas, targeted at workers on their lunch hour rather than full-on weekly shoppers:

• Closest to St. Andrew’s, at just over 1km, is Metro Hall. Thursdays, 8am-2pm.
• A close second is Nathan Phillips Square, 1.5km. Wednesdays, 8am-2:30pm.
• Closest MyMarket (certified Ontario farmers), at 2km, is Sick Kids. Tuesdays, 9am-2pm.

The next two closest markets are on evenings or weekends, and in residential areas, although each are 2km or more from St. Andrew’s and its dense residential surroundings:

• Closest evening market, at 2km, is Trinity Bellwoods (the park is closer, but the market is in the northwest corner of the park at Dundas and Shaw). Tuesdays, 3-7pm.
• Closest weekend market, at 2.4km, is Liberty Village. Sundays, 9am-2pm.

Stay tuned in the coming months for more information on our plans for St. Andrew’s Market in 2011.

Being green is a trendy thing to do, but some people have been doing it long before it became fashionable: the members of Tower Power Toronto, for example, who focus on energy savings for multi-unit buildings such as condos and co-ops. I attended a meeting of the Tower Power group earlier this year to hear all about solar photovoltaic (that is, solar panels that make electricity directly rather than heating water) and some of the recent government initiatives to make this a reality for small condo buildings like mine. We met at the Windward Co-op, where they have already undertaken a number of green initiatives such as thermal solar (solar hot water heating as a pre-heat for domestic hot water) that has reduced their hot water costs by 40%.

My other half is an electrical engineer, and when I told him that I was attending a meeting about solar PV, he pooh-poohed it as inefficient and expensive, costing more per kWh than we could save. He’s right about that: the high cost (and relative inefficiency) of solar PV panels makes it infeasible for generating power for our building directly. Furthermore, even if we felt that it was a good thing to do, the condo reserve fund cannot be used for solar PV projects, meaning that we would have to create a special assessment such that the owners would pay the costs directly. In a building like ours, where the resale timeframe is fairly short, that just wouldn’t fly.

This is where the government incentives come in: the provincial government would really like us to start greening up, in part to reduce the load on current electricity infrastructure, increase the resiliency of the power grid, help phase out coal-fired electricity generation by 2014, and reduce the cost of having to buy electricity from other provinces or states during time of peak loads. If you take a look at the ISEO website, which shows Ontario electricity demand and the price paid for external electricity during peaks, you’ll see that prices for buying electricity from outside the province can be as high as $1.50/kWh. This also has a social value as well as an economic value by promoting micro-generation and green thinking.

To that effect, the Ontario Power Authority started the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program whereby you can sell up to 10kW of electricity that you generate (e.g., using solar PV) back to your local power authority (in our case, Toronto Hydro) for $0.802 per kWh on a 20-year contract. Given the current cost of installing solar PV, and the fact that the panels are expected to have nearly zero maintenance costs during the 20-year period, the panels pay for themselves in about 13 years: in other words, that provides seven years of electricity revenue free and clear after the panels are paid off. Current domestic electricity costs in Ontario are around $0.012 per kWh, so OPA is willing to pay you over six times the current price of electricity in order to subsidize your solar PV installation, since they will eventually save the cost of having to build new power generating facilities.

As mentioned previously, condo reserve funds can’t be used to fund solar PV installations, so there needs to be some other form of financing. Alternatives include:

• Work on getting the condo laws changed so that reserve funds can be used for projects like this. Our local MPP, Rosario Marchese, is working on this, but this could take some time and may never occur.
• Sell debentures to raise the money for the initial costs, then use the electricity revenue to pay off the debenture with interest. Residents of the building may choose to buy debentures, or anyone who is looking for an investment with a decent interest rate. The risk is that electricity revenues are not sufficient to cover the debenture costs, or that unexpected maintenance costs reduce revenues.
• Use PV venture, venture firms that specialize in solar PV installations. They effectively own the solar PV system, installing the panels and taking the electricity, then pay a percentage of the monthly revenue to the building on which the panels are placed.
• Non-profit organizations (including co-ops, but not condos) can take advantage of 0% loans available from the city of Toronto’s Sustainable Energy Funds including the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, which I heard about at a green energy panel that Olivia Chow hosted last year.
• Live Green Toronto (another city initiative) has some limited grant funding for education and feasibility studies; condos are not eligible but could partner with a not-for-profit.

For buildings within the city of Toronto, you’d be selling power to Toronto Hydro, but the contract would be with the Ontario Power Authority, who are backing the FIT and microFIT programs. OurPower, part of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative can perform assessments on a building to estimate the feasibility and costs: there needs to be a place with good sun exposure (usually the roof) to mount the panels, a method for connecting the panels to the electrical room, an inverter to convert the DC electricity generated by the panels to AC, and a metered connection from the inverter to the power grid. That means that you’d have two meters: one for inbound electricity at the usual market rate (e.g., $0.013/kWh), and one for the outbound electricity that you generate at $0.802/kWh. Ideally, installation would be coordinated with the building roof replacement schedule; otherwise, you’d have to remove and remount the panels during any roof repairs. In addition to the panels, costs include cabling to the electrical room, any modifications required to the roof membrane, insurance, and maintenance (considering a 20-year replacement cycle for the panels, but more frequently for the inverter). Solar PV panels are usually stationary; although panels that move to track the sun generate more electricity, they also have higher maintenance costs due to the moving parts. In order to qualify for the FIT/microFIT program, 50% of the equipment must be manufactured in Ontario, but that can include the framing, inverters and labour costs in addition to the panels. There are some local solar PV manufacturers, including Photowatt and SolGate, making it possible to put together a solution that pumps some money back into the local economy as well as providing green benefits.

How much energy could we really generate with this? Well, our building probably has 200-300 square metres of roof space that could be used; using the estimate of 1 square metre generating 150W in peak sun for a total of about 1kWh/day, that means 200-300 kWh/day, or $160-240/day in electricity revenue. I’m not sure if that 1kWh/day/square metre is an average over the year, or the value for a sunny summer day; assuming that that amount could be generated 1/3 of the time, that’s still $19.5k-29k per year in electricity revenue. As for costs, using a provided estimate of $10k/kW; I’m taking a leap in logic and assuming that’s equivalent to 1000/150 = 6.7 square metres of solar panel, which would be a cost of $300k-450k for the initial installation. That gives an ROI of just over 15 years; assume that my estimate of electricity generated is conservative, I can see how this works out to an average 13-year ROI.

At the end of the 20-year contract to deliver electricity to Toronto Hydro, you’d be in a position to renegotiate a contract with them to continue to provide power, or switch to providing power directly to your own building if then-current price of electricity makes that a better deal.

When you talk about residential solar power, many people think of thermal solar, but there are some fundamental differences:

It used to be the case that thermal solar was the only economically feasible alternative for residential buildings; however, the FIT/microFIT program brings the cost-benefit calculations for thermal versus PV much closer together.

If you’re in Toronto and interested in learning more, come out to a Tower Power Toronto meeting. OurPower hosts a wiki page for Tower Power Toronto; it’s sadly out of date, since it shows the next meeting as the January meeting, but it contains contact information and I may take it on myself to update the page when I receive notice of the next meeting.

I’ll leave you with a video of Rob Hopkins from last year’s TED conference, on transitioning to a world without oil:

Although we had the lowest attendance of all the markets last year, it was our first year (all others were in their second or later years), and we also had no meat or cheese vendors. This meant that some people skipped our market in favor of either heading to the grocery store or waiting for the Liberty Village market the following day in order to be able to do most of their shopping in one place.

The numbers of attendees and vendors at each market isn’t correlated, but I would guess that a wider variety of produce than what we had could improve the attendance:

The biggest of the markets doesn’t have the largest number of vendors; in fact, the market with the largest number of vendors (Liberty) had the second-lowest attendance in 2009. I think that Liberty was heavily promoted as the place to be, resulting in the large number of vendors who ended up competing with each other: one of the three meat vendors who was there last year skipped the last month because he wasn’t even making gas money; he had asked to shift to St. Andrew’s market mid-season, but somehow that didn’t happen. The key is finding the right mix of vendors for each venue: items requiring refrigeration, for example, aren’t as popular at Sick Kids market, since it is most frequented by hospital staff who are just starting their shift, and don’t have a place to store cold or frozen items until they head home. There’s also an issue of demographics: Liberty Village, home to more hipster singles per square foot than most other areas of the city, saw declines in sales for most vendors, but Kind Organics with their trendy (and delicious) organic greens did booming business there. We have a similar demographic to Liberty, possibly a bit older but just as child-free, so in general need to have smaller packages for the smaller households, and are very keen for organic produce.

The feedback from the farmers at the meeting wasn’t especially promising, but we’re not giving up hope yet. Only two farmers were firmly committed to returning – Bosco Farms, who had the largest vegetable stand and did fairly well last year, and Cedar Creek Farms, who sold out of their cut flowers every week. There were a couple of maybes, including a meat vendor who could also run a sausage-on-a-bun stand. The combination of low numbers last year plus the Saturday date, when we are competing for the farmers’ attention with all the other Saturday markets in the province, meant that many may not be willing to risk another year at St. Andrew’s in order to see if we can make it the success that we feel we can. Applications will be going out from FMO to the farmers soon, and we should know by mid-April whether enough farmers will commit to St. Andrew’s for another year.

Although the volunteers are doing this in order to benefit our community, we have to recognize that the farmers are running a business, and can’t afford to subsidize our market by showing up when they’re not making money: one farmer estimated a stable repeat customer base of only around 60 people at St. Andrew’s each market day. Saturdays are a popular day for markets all over, and if a farmer can take their produce to market somewhere closer to where they live and make more money, their choice is clear. Although larger famers can deploy at two markets on the same day, the smaller ones just don’t have the logistical support to do that. Unfortunately, since we are using a city-owned parking lot that is in use during the week, we can’t switch to a weekday market unless it were to start fairly late in the day. We’d also be competing with the Trinity Bellwoods, City Hall, Metro Hall and Sick Kids farmers’ market (although not all are certified local MyMarkets) on various weekdays. Add to this the proximity of Liberty Village market, both geographically and temporally, some of the vendors heard that people were going to the Liberty market on Sunday instead of St. Andrew’s on Saturday because they could do more shopping there due to the broader range of foods offered.

Farmers are pretty practical people, however, and realize that without the farmers’ commitments, we can’t get the critical mass of customers there for a successful year.

So what are the possibilities for the continuation of St. Andrew’s market?

First, and we hope that this happens, is that FMO is able to find enough farmers to commit to St. Andrew’s for 2010, including meat and cheese vendors. We believe that we have plans in place to bring in more customers this year, and make it a success all around.

Secondly, we could look at some sort of hybrid market, where we have some of the certified local farmers referred by FMO, but also encourage local businesses to participate. The addition of a local meat or cheese shop, if we can’t get those through FMO, would add greatly to the appeal, as would baked goods or other ready-to-eat food from a local restaurant. I think that we should stay food-focused, disallowing flea market or craft stands (although that’s just my opinion), and not bring in any business that directly competes with the FMO farmers in order to maintain the highest standards of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Thirdly, we could look at some way to combine Liberty and St. Andrew’s market. With Sunday, they clearly have the more popular day for farmers, but they have no one involved from the local community, which puts a much larger burden on FMO to provide all the promotion and logistical support. If we brought our kick-ass group of volunteers to bear on a Sunday market, that could really work. However, all of our volunteers are local to St. Andrew’s (2-1/2 km from Liberty, which is a long ways when you consider that we all walk to St. Andrew’s now) and many don’t have cars; supporting a market in Liberty Village just wouldn’t work for many of us.

We’re crossing our fingers and waiting for mid-April to find out which farmers have decided that we’re worth taking another chance on. Think positive thoughts, and hope for the best!

A bit of history: the Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket is one of five verified (that is, the vendors are verified to sell only their own produce) farmers’ markets in the urban Toronto area. I’m on the local volunteer committee for the market, and worked on much of the social media side of promoting the market. The farmers, Farmers’ Market Ontario (the organizers) and volunteers from all of the markets met in December to review the season; check out my post about that meeting (including the presentation that we gave, below) for more details.

The highlights of our first year:

• Opened on June 6th, ran every Saturday until October 24th
• More than 25 volunteers actively involved in organizing events, promoting the market, and helping with market-day logistics
• 11 vendors, although not all were there every week, depending on the growing season of what they were selling
• Almost 5,800 visitors over the season
• 8 cooking demos with local restaurants
• Banners, postcards, sandwich boards, email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blogging and even an Ignite presentation for promotion

We were the smallest of the five MyMarkets, as could be expected in our first year: the more established markets in a family residential neighbourhood have as many as three times our visitors, although we came in at more than 60% of what the trendy Liberty Village MyMarket drew, even though it had 18 vendors including meat and cheese (sorely lacking from, and missed at, St. Andrew’s).

Tomorrow, we have a meeting with FMO and the farmers to talk about this year’s market; I’m headed out to Brampton with one of the other volunteers to talk to them about St. Andrew’s. Going to a market is a big committment for the farmers: they have to pay FMO ($500, I believe) for the season for each market that they attend, which covers the booth space and marketing costs; plus, they have to get themselves and their produce to market every week at the assigned time, rain or shine, and stick around even if a lot of people don’t show up. It’s a tough job, especially when you consider that they’re spending the rest of their time actually producing what they sell. This should be obvious, but if they don’t sell enough at a market, it’s just not good business for them.

We’re all hyped for the meeting, then received an email from FMO two days ago that said “Realize it sounds ominous…not much interest from farmers…it will be an uphill climb.” Eeeek! This is the first that we heard that there might not be enough interest from the farmers in order to have a market this year: we’d been focusing on ensuring that we could get access to the city-owned parking lot where we hold the market, lining up chefs for cooking demos to try and hold one every week, and working at increasing our volunteer base to a solid 30 people. We were a bit taken aback to think that the farmers might not want to come back.

Not much that we can do now except to show up, lay out our strengths in terms of volunteers, what we learned last year and how we plan to start earlier and ramp up faster this year. Stay tuned for more details after tomorrow’s meeting.

Let’s look, for example, at the dinner that I made last night – note that this was not a dinner made with the purpose of proving a point about low-cost dinners (since I hadn’t yet read this morning’s article), it was a dinner that I chose to make because it’s healthy, delicious and easy to make. In a slow cooker, I put the following (prices are rounded up):

• Lamb shoulder chops on the bone, 0.5-0.75 lb., $4.50 (price is accurate, not sure about the weight)
• Large can diced tomatoes, $1.50
• 2 huge sweet potatoes, about 3 lbs total, $2
• 4 large carrots, $1
• 1 cup dried green lentils, $0.50
• Spices (1 tsp cumin seeds, a whole red chili, 1 cinnamon stick, 3 whole cloves), $0.50 or less

That’s $10 for a lamb and vegetable stew that makes at least six servings, or about $1.70/serving. I served it with a slice of whole-grain bread that I happened to make myself, but adding bread or pasta or rice for a carb would not add more than $.50/serving. The key is to use meat for flavor, not as the main event: the lamb on the bone makes the stew very rich tasting without adding a lot of meat, while the lentils boost the protein. As an added bonus, there’s almost no fat in this except for small amounts in the lamb, so this is pretty healthy. If you’re vegetarian, do it without the lamb and add more lentils, or some other legume; if you don’t like lamb, substitute an inexpensive cut of beef or chicken, but be sure to include the bones in the stew for full flavor. If you don’t want to eat the same thing several days in a row, package some of it up in serving-sized containers and pop it in the freezer, for those days when you come home hungry and didn’t plan ahead.

If you really think that you need more meat than that, check out Amanda Laird’s crock-roasted chicken: a whole chicken, a bit of spices to rub on it, and you have four or more generous portions of chicken for about $7, or $1.75/serving. You can often get whole chickens at a cheaper price than this, so could do it for less. You can eat the chicken as is, add to pasta, or make sandwiches from it; it can last you an entire week if you’re careful. Save the broth that collects in the bottom of the crock to make another soup or stew, it’s very rich-tasting and can be used instead of a cut of meat, which will reduce the cost significantly. The nice thing about a slow cooker is that you can just throw some things in in the morning, turn it on, and head off to class for the day, coming home to a home-cooked meal.

Okay, that’s the main meal for the day. For breakfast, fresh fruit, yogurt and cereal will set you back another $2 if you buy the large-size yogurt rather than the individual servings, and a large box of cereal, shopping at regular grocery stores rather than convenience stores. An apple or pear weighs about 1/2 lb so will cost $0.75-$1; a liter of house-brand yogurt will be less than $3 and provide 4 servings for $0.75 each, and a large box of cereal will provide 10+ servings for about $4, or $0.40/serving. Oatmeal, if you buy in a large bag, is even cheaper, and can be made quickly in the microwave. Throw in another piece of fruit for good measure for a breakfast total of less than $3.

That leaves $2.50 for lunch, which means that you’re not eating meat. Load up on veggies: buy salad greens (preferably something like cabbage, spinach or arugula that can double as a cooked veg if you like), carrots (unpeeled, not the overpriced “baby carrots” in little bags), cucumber and other veggies that you can eat raw – it’s better for you, and easier to carry to campus if you need to. If you must have dressing, make it yourself with oil, vinegar and dried herbs. Add some bread if you’re carrying out, or cook some rice or pasta at home. I often make a lunch of whole wheat pasta, a few veggies lightly microwaved or sauteed while I’m cooking the pasta, and a drizzle of olive oil or a spoon of pesto as a sauce. A few capers or sundried tomatoes (which I buy in bulk at Costco) add a lot of flavor without much cost. If you need a protein boost, cook an egg or open a can of chickpeas. Consider $1 for the veggies, $0.50 for the carb, and another $0.50 for olive oil, pesto or whatever you use to dress the pasta or the veggies. If you got your apples on sale, you can even afford to thrown in one of those as well and stay under budget.

I am definitely not on a food budget, and I spend more than $7.50/person/day, but to be honest, I don’t spend that much more unless we eat in a restaurant, or it’s a special occasion with a more expensive cut of meat, such as a rack of lamb or that amazing Berkshire pork roast that we had at Christmas. I also don’t spend a huge amount of time on cooking: the slow cooker is definitely my friend for evening meals, and lunch will be leftovers, salad and whole-grain bread, or a quickly-prepared meal such as pasta. If you don’t have a full kitchen, get yourself a slow cooker and a rice cooker (you can often pick these up at yard sales for a few bucks) and a microwave (which you probably already have), and you can do pretty much everything with these three appliances.

There are a couple of keys to success in low-price eating:

• Don’t buy processed foods. They’re not good for you anyway, and that processing costs money.
• Eat less meat. There are many other sources of protein that cost less, have less fat, and are easier to learn to cook if you’re intimidated by the raw meat aisle in the grocery store.
• Skip the junk food.
• Buy larger-sized packages of items that you know that you will eat, since they are cheaper per serving. This includes non-perishables such as rice and pasta, but also meat and vegetables if you can consume them before the best-before date, or if you can freeze them for later use.
• Shop at a regular grocery store rather than a convenience store. If possible, shop at a discount chain, such as No Frills or Costco. For example, I buy a case of canned tomatoes and a case of chickpeas at Costco, bringing the cost to around $1/can (half the price of grocery stores), since I use the tomatoes in stews and soups, and have the canned chickpeas on hand to add to a salad for lunch. Costco requires a membership and a car, of course, but that’s what parents are for. If you go to your local No Frills and buy the No Name house brand, it’s not much more expensive.
• Plan your menus a couple of days in advance, so that you can shop for what you need, think about cooking a meat dish that can be reused in another dish later in the week, and do any preparation needed in advance. For example, buying dried chickpeas then soaking and cooking them yourself is way less expensive than canned, but you need a day of lead time.

You don’t have to eat poorly when you’re on a budget, even one as tight as $7.50/day. And if you want to eat more meat, you can always get a job to pay for it – that’s what the rest of us do.