Welcome!

Welcome to Eat More, Spend Less -- a blog about thrifty cooking, shopping, and eating based in Toronto, Canada.

Why this blog? I am passionate about local, healthy, and affordable food. 

For the past 3 1/2 years I have been living on ODSP, which is a government support program for people with disabilities. My monthly cheque is $1,200.00.  Out of this I pay rent, transportation, groceries and for therapy. Money has been tight.

photo by Adityo Sastromuljono
Bloor/Lansdowne

Last spring I decided that I wanted to take steps to leave disability and retrain as a commercial photographer. Now I am a first year student in Photography at Sheridan College.  This means that money is even tighter.  I received a combination of loans, grants, and scholarships to pay for my tuition. School pays for therapy. But everything else comes from my ODSP cheque.

Just so you know what we are talking about, on a very concrete level, out of my $1,200 a month I receive, my budget is $750 a month for rent, $40 for my cell phone, and $310 in commuting costs (subway, GO train, and Oakville transit). That leaves less than $100 a month for everything else. 

There are, of course, additional costs for school on top of tuition, such as printing my assignments so that they can be handed in and graded, as well as props and accessories for photo shoots. 

So now I have a grocery budget of $60 - $80 a month (that's $15 - $20 a week), which leaves a little bit for everything else (printing, postage, vet bills for the cat, and savings for a rainy day).

So that's a little bit about my background.

photo by Adityo Sastromuljono
Bloor/Lansdowne

But what you really need to know is that I LOVE to cook, and I LOVE Toronto. I live in this amazing city. Our population is about 2.5 million (6 million if you count the outer boroughs), and it is incredibly diverse.  30% of our population are recent immigrants, and collectively we speak over 140 languages.  50% of Toronto's citizens were born outside of Canada.

Within steps of my apartment, in the Bloor/Lansdowne neighbourhood, you will find a Latin American grocery, a Bengali supermarket, a mosque, 2 West Indian restaurants (Queen of Patties and Vena's Roti) , a South-East Asian vegetarian restaurant, a Middle-Eastern fast food shop, a French bakery, and a Portugese bakery, a Vietnamese restaurant, assorted art galleries, a Brazilian capoeira company, a bicycle DIY place, and I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of places.

I look forward to sharing thrifty recipes, cooking, and shopping tips with you in the coming months! Welcome.