I initially thought of doing home cooking and to bring ‘baon’ to my workplace ever since I started to learn some of the local dishes. This is one of the ways to tighten my budget and also to control what food I eat. This is highly possible since the ‘super’ market, which basically got all the ingredients I need, is just two blocks away from my bhaus. The next question is: how much cooking budget do I need for the week?

Let us start by figuring out what is the menu for the week. That is planning out the dishes to cook and is specific on the range of consumption in the number of days. Here are some quick steps:

1. Monday menu – What dish to cook and then the no. of times of its consumption (lunch, dinner, etc)?
2. Assuming it will reach until Wednesday’s lunch, the next dish will be cooked that night. What is the dish again and its consumption period?
3. By Thursday night, I will then cook for Friday and Saturday. That Saturday’s market goods will be for the menu on Sunday-Monday.

I will then plan the expected range of prices of the ingredients and total them according to my budget. I would base those on my previous grocery and market receipts & then I’d usually cut those unnecessary components as I am not really choosy on the dish I cook if it is by some sort of standard or something like that. I range the budget to about P300 per dish that is good for 4 to 5 meals. The dish variance is pretty basic lutong-bahay such as Adobo, Laswa, Pancit and the like.

The next concern is time. Since it is now a full-blown work schedule at the office as compared to the GCQ days in the previous months, I would then need to drop by the supermarket after work, buy the ingredients, and then cook them right after arriving at home. Before that though, I would need to thoroughly clean each one that was exposed or open with the plastic cover.

Since we are using the traditional uling stove, this will take additional time to setup plus the messy smoke pollution. Anyhow, preparation and cooking time usually takes about two hours for common dishes and so I will just eat some for dinner. The rest are placed in small containers for refrigeration and serves as ‘baon’ for the next day.

I have not yet come up with a menu list but I will try to do so for the remaining of this week. Please wish me luck that I can pull this through and post a cost breakdown by next week.

Until then.