A documentation of my journey to improve my life
Tag: goals
My name is Richard Groves. I’m 33 years old, a native of Kelowna, BC (one of the few who actually grew up here!) and I like long walks on the beach. I met Ryan about a year ago through the Kelowna Jaycees (Jr Chamber). I live a fairly frugal lifestyle. I walk to work so I won’t have any vehicle expenses to worry about this week (the 50cc scooter isn’t insured..yet!), I never really stopped eating like a Uni student...
THE CHALLENGE “In an effort to BE BETTERTM I’m going to challenge myself to live on $250 for the entire calendar month of March”. Ryan said it with a completely straight-face. I nodded and smiled and made all the right encouraging noises but in my head my initial reaction was ‘why would anyone actually want to do this?!’ My wife Lee and I, both being accountants, already run monthly family budget spreadsheets that we use to regiment our spending. We’re...
I had it all planned out. This was the last night of my 1 roast 3 meals challenge and I wasn’t going to let it kick my ass again. The first night was a marathon of beef cooking and the second was a chaotic pot pie experiment. Both nights I got distracted and both nights we ended up eating after 10 o’clock. But that wasn’t going to happen again. This time I had a plan. Step 1: Where did I go wrong?...
After making possibly the best roast I’ve ever had, I was feeling pretty confident with my cooking skills. I mean sure my friend Drew saved me from destroying my roast and dinners for the next 3 days but I was the one who slaved away to make it work. Thankfully Drew’s American Test Kitchen cook book had done most of the trial and error for us so I just got to follow along and look like a pro. Now it was...
Over the last few days my cooking challenge has really started to build some momentum. After investing into some essential meal planning hacks, I spent my evenings in cultural exploration. First I got to prepare Salt Fish and Ackee, the national dish of Jamaica with my friend Daniel who grew up there. Then Brittney and I were treated to an amazing authentic Chinese cooking night with our friends David and Sophia who went all out with cool Chinese robes, samples of traditional teas...
Cooking Reflections If this month’s cooking challenge has taught me anything its that I suck at planning ahead. I don’t know if it’s just a male thing or maybe something to do with my birth month (I’m a Libra if you were curious) but scheduling, and planning ahead are just not my areas of forte. This has really seemed to bite me in the ass this month as apparently cooking a good meal is only about 20% actual cooking and 80%...
Pan Fried Chicken, Risotto & Roasted Radishes Friday was finally here. I had survived my first working week of cooking and other than a few late nights, a lot of grocery runs and some hard relationship lessons everything had gone pretty well. This was the day I had been waiting for though. Up till now every dish I had attempted I had been at best winging it and hoping for the best. Now I was actually going to work with a...
Wednesday: Meal 3 – Tofu Pad Thai By the time Wednesday rolled around I have to admit I was pretty exhausted. Late night dinners, grocery store guessing games and relationship tightrope walking had all taken a lot out of me. That being said I was really looking forward to Wednesday’s meal as my friends Justin and Alex were hosting us over at their place. This meant way less stress and way more wine. Justin is a vegetarian and part of...
Tuesday: Meal 2 – Greek Moussaka Having survived night one relatively unscathed I went into day two with much of the same approach (I’m a slow learner). It was late Tuesday afternoon when I decided it would be fun to make this week a cultural week. Upon hearing this my girlfriend decided we were having a Greek night so I went to work trying to find a nice authentic Greek dish. Since last nights dish was relatively simple (other than the...
This first week with my new ‘cooking challenge’ can only be described as a wild roller-coaster filled with frustration, accomplishment, stress, and delicious success. Who knew home cooking would be so hard and cause so much anxiety? First of all it’s not like I’ve never prepared a home cooked meal before. In fact I try to eat at home as many nights of the week as I can to save on expenses from dinning out. Usually though my home cooked meals are...
