Ladies and Gentlemen....Start your Juicers!

© istockphoto.com/ Sven Hoppe

All right, Veggies.  Here is your mission should you choose to accept it….
Starting Monday, the following will be strictly off limits for 3 weeks:

Gluten

Soy

Dairy

Sugar

Bonus points if you give up these:

Meat
Eggs
Corn
Caffeine

"But, Jen, what can I eat?!?!"

GT'S KOMBUCHA…how do I love thee???

No, seriously....how do I love GT'S KOMBUCHA???  It is excessively bubbly, very stinky and has a weird, gooey thing living (I think..like…literally living…) in bottom of the bottle.  It also tastes like vinegar.  Nevertheless, I love it so.  I love it with unconditional, arms wide open, look the other way, reckless abandon.

GT'S KOMBUCHA purports to provide every health benefit under the sun and I would drink one everyday if I could.  But I can't.  The one thing I don't love about GT'S is the price.  They are a whopping $3.50 a piece.  That's a nice treat once in a while, but drinking them regularly would cost as much as my monthly cell phone bill.

While doing this $2.36 Challenge I can't fit even one itty-bitty GT's into my budget.  But I need my fix...

Man of My Greens

I should preface this by saying that, even though I have been teasing him about not being on board with this challenge, I have been blessed with a very accommodating husband.  He has very few requirements when it comes to food. As long as there are no beets, olives or oddly textured slimy things in a meal, he is quite content. He is also the type of person who could eat the same thing for breakfast for a year and not bat an eye.

His pleasant disposition has made the $2.36 challenge (I really need to come up with a catchier title…) MUCH, MUCH easier. Cooking a big honking batch of something and spreading it out over a couple of days has really helped me squeeze the pulp out of every last dollar. John's game plan for this week is pretty similar to mine, but with a few adjustments....

Plan of A Snack

Me: "You really should go easy on that chocolate bar. We only have two for the whole week."
Him: "Why are you being so unreasonable?!?!"

-Overheard in my living room last night.


Ok.
$98.91.
Whole, organic, vegan food.
One week. Two people.
Let's do this!!!
(Cue inspirational music!)

I have devised a plan.
And that plan….
is this:

Organic, Vegan Meals…$2.36 a pop.

Me: "You can't get the Sweet and Savory."

My husband stared at me blankly.
He looked down at the bag of delicious, chocolatey trail mix in his hands.

Him: "Why not?"

Me: "It's not on the list."

Him: "What list? What are you talking about?"

Me: "I'm trying to see if we can eat three meals a day, for a week for less than a hundred dollars and the Sweet and Savory is not an essential. Besides it's not vegan."

Him: "I'm not a vegan."

Me: "I know, but this week you are going to eat vegan, too."

Him: "What?! Why?! Why are you doing this to me?!?!"

I will spare you the lecture that I then proceeded to unload on my husband.
The lecture included a commentary on the great food divide that is growing in this country and this ARTICLE and the fact that more than 50 million people are what is known as "food insecure" and are not sure if they will have enough food to last the week let alone concern themselves with all the luxurious trivia we debate over like "in season" and "locally grown" and "organic"…which, by the way, should NOT be a label or a description because ORGANIC is the way ALL FOOD SHOULD BE GROWN and not a privilege for those can afford it…and we can not ask people to change their eating habits if the system makes it literally impossible for them to do so and those of us who do have the luxury of choice need to fight for the weaker amongst us and demand food equality for all and if we truly want to see things change we need to…as Gandhi said… be the change we want to see in the world.

I carried on all the way to the canned goods aisle.

I'll just give you the cliff notes...