How An Oak Grove, Oregon, Senior Eats Well On $75 a Week

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Welcome back to Rose City Receipts, where we take you behind the scenes of how your fellow Portlanders manage their grocery budgets and meal plans. Today, we hear from Stumptown Savings reader Jevan W. of Oak Grove in Clackamas County. A senior on a fixed income, Jevan manages to cook delicious meals using a mix of fresh ingredients and bulk purchases he preps and freezes or stores for quicker meal assembly. It’s a masterclass in how a little prep allows for endless flexibility. 

Who are you? Jevan W.
Where do you live? Oak Grove, Oregon
What’s your weekly grocery budget (roughly)? $75
How many people are you shopping for? 1.25, my adult son, who is a professional athlete with a specialized diet (think pasta), comes around a couple of days a week, often for sporting events in person or on TV.
What are your favorite stores? Fred Meyer, WinCo (bulk foods, deli, bakery), US Foods ChefStore (fresh meat), Costco, H-Mart (specialty items), Trader Joe's.
What’s your top priority when it comes to grocery shopping? Price and convenience. 

I’m a senior on fixed income and I recently downsized and am still getting used to life with a smaller kitchen and no real pantry. I love to shop, I love to cook, even when it’s just for me. I always make sure my son's favorites are on hand — which means lots of pasta, and plenty of ingredients for different sauces.

Weekly total: $77.57
Eating out total: $0
Groceries total: $77.57
Most-expensive line item: $15.26 package of chicken breasts
Least-expensive line item: $0 Dave’s Killer Bread Good Seed bread with a voucher from a Winterhawks game.
Number of grocery trips: 2
Number of meals out: 2
Stores visited: WinCo, H-Mart, Fred Meyer 

I made a trip to WinCo and bought a large pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts on sale, which will likely be four dinners. Four chicken breasts were kept in the refrigerator for this week's use, while the remaining half of the package was frozen in two-breast servings.

I made a one-pan chicken, rice, and baby kale with a garlic butter sauce for dinner, with a couple of breasts reserved for something later in the week. I pulled a frozen pork loin from the freezer for later in the week.

Monday total: $39.97

Sometimes I look and see what I have that needs to be used up and build a meal around that. Today, that list is a yellow squash, a small head of broccoli, a couple of carrots, some tomatoes, a red bell pepper, and a bag of apples I’ve been meaning to do something with. I’ve got the pork loin thawing in the fridge, so my first thought is to do a stir-fry but then my son texts to invite himself for dinner. A quick change of plans, results in pasta primavera for dinner and an apple crisp for dessert!

Tuesday total: $0

I pulled the pork loin out of the fridge and sliced it into three medium-thick chops. For dinner, I seasoned, floured, and pan-fried the chops and served them alongside a (microwaved) baked potato with sour cream and some frozen peas. A simple, quick dinner for the win.

Wednesday total: $0

I had to go to the doctor’s office for a couple of injections. On the way home, I stopped by H-Mart to pick up Thai basil and Thai bird’s eye chiles for dinner, along with other items like sweet chili sauce and black bean paste for more general use, and then stopped by Fred Meyer for a couple of other things.

For dinner, I made spicy Thai basil chicken (recipe below). I prefer chicken thighs for this, but this time opted to use up the chicken breasts left in the fridge from earlier in the week. My son is not here, so I was heavy-handed with the bird’s eye chiles. These tiny Thai chiles are approximately 15 times hotter than jalapeños, so they are not for everyone. 

This is a super quick and easy meal, but you need to have your Mise en place locked in and rice cooked because the cooking time is about 10 minutes from start to finish. The fiery dish made my lips tingle and cleared my sinuses in a good way.

Thursday total: $37.60

I love to cook, but today I looked at my options, and although there were a couple of (homemade) premade meals in the freezer, nothing motivated me to defrost anything. I considered several possibilities, and eventually I boiled some water, tossed in a hot dog from the freezer, put some frozen fries in the air fryer, put some mustard and sauerkraut on a piece of bread, and called it good. A really lazy day, but the weekend was shaping up to be a busy one.

Friday total: $0

My son swam in a local recreational meet. He rarely competes in town these days, but is using this as training for a “real” meet in Barcelona in a few weeks, so my Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning are spent at the pool. A little digression for a dad brag — he set two American records this weekend and currently holds 14 American records. The kid is pretty good! 

Sunday afternoon was a celebration of life for a long-time soccer friend of mine. My son and I went to the Winterhawks hockey games both nights, so dinner was at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, burgers one night and pizza the next. The burger was OK, and the pepperoni pizza was fine. It’s average to slightly better than expected for overpriced arena food. 

My son pays both nights, which is unusual, but I’ll take it. The total cost for the two of us was about $80, but my cost was $0.

Weekend total: $0

I sometimes do a Sunday prep/cook for the week/month. I have a lot of prep and freeze recipes that can be pulled out of the freezer and cooked as needed. Everything is more difficult with a tiny kitchen, but I always have a few homemade meals in the freezer as well as pre-portioned meats (pork loin, 80/20 ground beef, and salmon are staples). Some weeks, I have each meal planned; others, I figure it out as I go. 

This week was mostly unplanned. I can take random ingredients in the fridge and make a decent meal. Slow-cooker or one-pan meals are my friend.

This quick, easy, and flavorful dish is simple and comes together in minutes. All I need are a wok, a bowl, a cutting board (two, really: one for chicken and one for vegetables), and my rice cooker. When my son eats it, I use fewer chilies, and he enjoys it as well. If you don’t have a wok, a large wide skillet — preferably carbon steel, stainless steel, or cast iron — works as well.

Jevan proves you don’t need a large kitchen or a complex meal plan to make flavorful meals. His approach to prepping meats he buys in bulk is a time-honored tradition that I grew up watching my parents do in the Midwest. He takes it up a notch by regularly preparing meals that can be partially cooked and frozen for a quick thaw and reheat later, that way he always has options that don’t take a lot of work.

I’ve started doing this with things like New Mexican red and green chile sauces, and certain curries. I’ll make big batches of these sauces and stews, then portion out some of it into quart-sized mason jars that go in the freezer. The result? I always have some green chile prepped and ready to top enchiladas, simmer tortilla chips in, or use as a base for a stew — I just need to thaw it for a few hours beforehand. 

That type of prep is a total game changer. And Jevan is inspiring me to take it a step further and start prepping some fully-assembled dishes, like enchiladas, that freeze well.

Also, I LOVE hearing that the weekly Stumptown Savings deals roundup is helping him shop smarter. That’s exactly why I do this. 

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