Rose City Receipts: Meg of Bridgetown Bites Balances Covering Food Events With Cooking At Home

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Welcome to Rose City Receipts, a new feature of Stumptown Savings where Portland-area residents take us inside their strategies for balancing grocery shopping, eating out, and staying on budget. Want to be featured in a future Rose City Receipts? Let me know!

Today, we hear from Meg Cotner, the editor/publisher of Bridgetown Bites, an independent news outlet covering Portland’s food and drink scene. Founded in 2017, Bridgetown Bites reports on restaurant openings and closings, events, and more. She lives in Portland’s Bridgetown Bites neighborhood. Meg walks us through how she managed her food budget for the week while juggling attending events as a food writer.

Who are you? Meg Cotner, editor and publisher of Bridgetown Bites
Where do you live? The Sumner neighborhood in NE Portland
What’s your weekly grocery budget (roughly)?: $200
How many people are you shopping for?: 2
What are your favorite stores?: Grocery Outlet, Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Fresh Love, farmers markets, Organics to You
What’s your top priority when it comes to grocery shopping?: Quality and price

My grocery shopping does not have much of a strategy these days. One thing that is steady is my twice-monthly produce box from Organics to You. I often fit my meals around what’s in the box (veggies, fruit, plus milk, bread, and tofu) — and since it's always seasonal, I don’t always know what will be in it until close to delivery. (Meg has a referral code you can use to get $15 off your first order: 5FLFO&2).

I am less of a meal planner on the regular, but there are spurts. When I do meal plan, I put the plan in a list, and shop for what I need if it’s not in the produce box or already on my shelf. I’m starting a business and life is a little chaotic. But perhaps this project will get me back to meal planning. 

Sometimes I am invited to press/media events that come with food, since I’m a food writer, so that also plays into things. 

Weekly total: $399.80
Eating out total: $197.80
Groceries total: $202
Most-expensive line item: $22 for a sausage pizza at The Pocket Pub
Least-expensive line item:  $0.69 for one lime 
Number of grocery trips: 2
Number of meals out: 3
Stores visited: Safeway and Organics to You (produce box)

I started the day by making coffee and two scrambled eggs that I got from my egg farmer out in the Damascus area. He charges us $11/dozen, but the birds are well-treated and eat lots of everything birds should eat (even, interestingly enough, eggs). I got my twice-monthly Organics to You produce box today, so I made a simple kale salad from that. 

For dinner, there were a bunch of things I tasted at the (free) preview event for Strawberry Shortcake Week from the James Beard Public Market folks, over at the Heathman Hotel.

Monday total: $57.25, no eating out, no shopping, but my produce box arrived that day — right after a power outage (which ended up being brief)!

I made coffee and Greek yogurt for breakfast. For lunch, I used a small head of lettuce I got the previous weekend at the Hollywood Farmers Market as a base for a salad. I took out a frozen piece of Iliamna smoked salmon and added that to it, along with cheese I had bought sometime back from Caseus Diem. 

Dinner was sautéed asparagus from my produce box, and hot dogs. I love the Heinz pickle-flavored ketchup, which I like to eat on hot dogs, along with raw onion. I know ABM (anything but mustard) can be considered blasphemous, but those are the breaks. 

Tuesday total: $0, no eating out, no shopping.

For breakfast, I made coffee and two scrambled eggs from my egg farmer. For lunch, I defrosted some larb from ZabPinto Thai; I had it originally at a tasting the week prior and froze it when I got home. Dinner was out at The Pocket Pub, a favorite spot of ours over on NE 7th and Knott — NA cocktail, wine, meatballs, salad, and their sausage pizza.

Wednesday total: $73 for dinner at The Pocket Pub

Only coffee for breakfast, as I was still full from the night before. Lunch was kale salad and leftover pizza. I made some cheese enchiladas for dinner; I was craving the ones from El Sombrero, but our timing was off for that. 

We did go to the grocery store — Safeway.

Thursday total: $127 on groceries at Safeway

For breakfast, I was back to scrambled eggs. My husband picked up a 12 oz. latte for me from Parkrose Coffee Shop. For lunch, I made a variant of my Summer Salad (more on the below) — I was missing the peppers, but I added a lot of basil that I grew myself. For dinner, we had more Summer Salad and some frozen enchiladas, as I was still on an enchilada kick. They were not very good. 

I also created a Salad Alignment Chart as part of my planning for Salad Week, which is coming to Bridgetown Bites in mid-July. My husband plays D&D and we both get a kick out of seeing various alignment charts we run across on the internet. For those who don’t know, an alignment chart is a grid with nine general moral and personal attitudes for RPG players (e.g., D&D, Pathfinder), from Lawful Good to Neutral to Chaotic Evil, and six others. 

So for fun, I created one in honor of Salad Week. Examples: What is Lawful Good? A cobb salad. What is Neutral? A green salad. What is Chaotic Evil: A Bloomin’ Onion. And everything in between. I’ll reveal the rest during Salad Week. 

Friday total: $5 for coffee at Parkrose Coffee Shop

Saturday morning I attended the No Kings demonstration in Gresham, and we stopped at Jazzy Bagels on the way home. Wow, was that place packed! I then had a date with the Wasabi Festival at 1 p.m. (I was there as press), where I met Wally Wasabi and tasted a bunch of things — from wasabi rhizome to a mango wasabi vegan ice cream from Kate’s, to square slices with wasabi ranch from Pizza Jerk (plus a fun conversation with Tommy Habetz about ranch dressing, Grandma pies, and Northeastern U.S. styles of pizza). There was a wasabi-eating contest that went by shockingly fast.

I also came home with a bunch of HAB sauces — they have a new barbecue sauce that is pretty good, and worth seeking out. Later on that day we headed to the Oakshire Brewing Beer Hall for one of my favorite NA beers (Untitled Art Italian-Style Pils — it’s on tap!) and a few snacks. 

On Sunday morning I made a couple of scrambled eggs, dropped off my green BottleDrop bag at Safeway, then went to Hi-Top to check out their new coffee service, where I got a latte. My husband went ahead and got a croissant (made by Flour Market) and a breakfast taco. Lunch was post-backyard cleanup, and it was some young broccoli sautéed with a little of the chili oil I bought the day prior and the penultimate serving of the Summer Salad. 

For dinner, I had what the kids call “girl dinner” — cured meats, dates, nuts, spicy cheese, and the final serving of Summer Salad.

I also was able to pick a big bowl of raspberries from my raspberry canes, which are exploding with fruit. I’ve eaten them throughout the day.

My husband spent $17.47 for party food for a BBQ he went to with his gaming pals. I was editing content for the coming week. 

Weekend total: 
Saturday: $99.80
Sunday: $37.47

If you can, use a supermarket app (like the Safeway app), as it will give you deals. That could be a discount on an item; a two-for-one deal; a chunk of change off your bill (i.e., $5 off a bill of $50 or more). It’s basically clipping coupons all teched up.

I also love having a produce box delivered to my door twice a month, which takes away some of the responsibility I have for shopping.

I’m an advocate for eating and enjoying leftovers. Sometimes I just want to make a recipe and it feeds 4 to 6 people. So I’ll make it anyway, as-is, which will be more than the two of us can eat in one setting. So, it goes in the fridge or the freezer, and we have it later. I especially like leftovers for lunch during a busy workday.

This is the time of year when I start to make what I call Summer Salad: it’s a mix of cucumber, tomato, peppers (anything but green), avocado, mozzarella, scallions, basil and/or oregano, lemon juice and EVOO.

I absolutely love this salad and will never refuse it. In fact, after I write this, I’m going to go have some leftover Summer Salad. 

I'm impressed with how Meg balances covering food events while still cooking at home. Freezing leftovers is brilliant — if I ever break my Midwestern "Clean Plate Club" habit when dining out, I'll try it.

I second Meg's recommendation for store rewards apps. Safeway and Fred Meyer offer robust apps with digital coupons on hundreds of items. New Seasons' Neighbor Rewards lets you earn cash back. Those rewards scored me a pint of local Mary's Peak strawberries for 99 cents last weekend. I'm planning deeper dives into grocery store apps and reward programs this summer. Stay tuned!

Each week, Stumptown Savings highlights a different reader's meal planning and budgeting strategies through Rose City Receipts. Want to be featured? Email [email protected].

Happy saving!

Bryan M. Vance,
Founder/Publisher,
Stumptown Savings