Welcome to The Receipt, a series documenting how Bon Appétit readers eat and what they spend doing it. Each food diary follows one anonymous reader’s week of expenses related to groceries, restaurant meals, coffee runs, and every bite in between. In this time of rising food costs, The Receipt reveals how folks—from different cities, with different incomes, on different schedules—are figuring out their food budgets.
In today’s Receipt we follow a 40-year-old physician making $850,000 a year in Piedmont, California. Keep reading for his receipts.
The finances
What are your pronouns? He/him
What is your occupation? Physician
How old are you? 40
What city and state do you live in? Piedmont, CA
What is your annual salary, if you have one? I don’t have a salary as I do my work through 1099 contracts, but I earn roughly $850,000 a year. My wife earns $105,000 a year doing marketing work.
How much is one paycheck after taxes? I do a lot of shift-based work, so I look more at my monthly income. I gross around $70,000 a month and after setting aside money to pay the tax man, I pocket around $46,000, some of which goes into retirement accounts.
How often are you paid? (e.g., weekly) Biweekly. Some contracts pay monthly.
How much money do you have in savings? $700,000
What are your approximate fixed monthly expenses beyond food? (i.e., rent, subscriptions, bills)
- Rent: $6,600
- Mortgage on a rental house: $2,200
- Student loan payment: $1,600
- Gym membership: $70
- Car payment: $1,150
- Miscellaneous monthly subscriptions: $30
- Total: $11,650
The diet
Do you follow a certain diet or have dietary restrictions? No red meat in general and typically no meat at home, though I do eat a lot of seafood. When I go out I sometimes make exceptions to these rules. I also eat minimal dairy. The bulk of my diet is plant-based.
What are the grocery staples you always buy, if any? Berries, mushrooms, tofu, nuts, avocado, almond milk, oatmeal.
How often in a week do you dine out versus cook at home? We generally cook at home five nights a week and eat out twice a week.
How often in a week did you dine out while growing up? Very rarely. We would occasionally order in fast food or Chinese takeout. Otherwise, going out to restaurants was reserved for special occasions. Even then, we would usually go to generic chain restaurants.
How often in a week did your parents or guardians cook at home? My mother cooked almost every night. She was and is a very good cook.
The expenses
- Restaurants total: $720.08
- Groceries total: $116.06
- Most expensive meal: Dinner at Pomet in Oakland, $317.52
- Least expensive purchase: Persian cucumber from Berkeley Bowl, $0.62
- Restaurant trips: 6
- Grocery trips: 2
- Total: $836.14
The diary
6:35 a.m. I just got back from a long weekend in San Diego visiting friends. This means there’s not much in the house, and I’ve also got to get into the hospital early, so no breakfast today. I brew a pot of hot water in my gooseneck kettle and weigh out and then grind my newly obtained Kawa Coffee beans ($26/200 grams) in an excessively priced burr grinder. I’m making myself a v60 pour-over with a jug of distilled water ($2.38/gallon) I’ve added a Third Wave Water packet ($1.58/gallon) to. I take my morning pour-over ritual entirely too seriously.
7:05 a.m. I arrive at work and contemplate grabbing a couple or seven hard-boiled eggs that are hanging out in the cafeteria fridge. In a moment of sheer laziness, I decide that taking the 45-second detour toward the cafeteria is more than I can muster this morning. Up the elevator to my office on the third floor it is.
10:08 a.m. I am busy seeing patients, but I also happen to be passing by the cafeteria (where food is free), so I make an impromptu stop. The fruit salad is particularly rich in blueberries this morning, a welcome sight. I pick through unripe cantaloupe and honeydew to capture as many of the little blue balls of goodness as I can.
I notice another hospital employee coming up behind me to line up for their turn at the morning feeding trough. I quickly scoop a few pieces of melon onto my plate to give the impression I am not intentionally depleting the morning’s bounty of the highly prized blueberry. I also hope the pale green and orange pieces of melon hide the small treasure of berries I’ve accumulated. A few seconds of shame threaten to overcome me when I think about what I’m actually doing, but this quickly washes away as I dig into the berries.
6:52 p.m. The day has flown by and I haven’t eaten anything since the morning’s berry heist. On the way home from work I swing by Berkeley Bowl, an absolute gem of a grocery store. I pick up a variety of things, mostly organic fruit and vegetables and some fish. ($108.05 total)
For dinner, I season and sear one pound of opah (Berkeley Bowl, $18.59) in a cast iron skillet. In another pan I add some olive oil and shimeji mushrooms ($5.64). While the mushrooms brown l slice garlic. Whenever I slice garlic, I think about that scene in Goodfellas where Paulie is slicing garlic with a razor. This inevitably turns into a thought exercise of how I might fare in prison. (I know the answer: not well.) I throw green beans (Berkeley Bowl, $2.84) into a pot of boiling water. I can’t be bothered to do anything else with them so I’ll eat them with some salt and pepper. Lastly, I chop some leftover parsley and dill, mix with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a dash of red pepper flakes for a quick pseudo-chimichurri to go over the opah. It all comes together quite nicely and I’m proud of myself.
For dessert I throw some bing cherries (Berkeley Bowl, $10.43) into a bowl and make a game of seeing how far I can spit the pits off my deck. Sometimes I feel like a child trapped in a 40-year-old man’s body.
10:03 p.m. Still ravenous, I throw a handful of cashews and dried cherries ($1.20) into a small bowl and make this my nightcap. The dried cherries are still a little plump and pop with a slightly tart but generally sweet flavor. The cashews are unfortunately a bit soft and obviously beyond their shelf life. Rather than tossing them, I rationalize by reminding myself of all the wonderful omega-3’s I’m ingesting. Getting into bed feels fantastic and I fall asleep quickly.
Monday total: $108.05
7:10 a.m. My wife and daughter are still out of town visiting my wife’s parents on the opposite coast, which means I’m on my own this morning. I again make a cup of Kawa coffee, this time grinding it ever so slightly finer in hopes of chasing the delicate citronelle flavor. I kind of taste it but it’s probably a placebo. Fortunately my day is light, so I go to the gym before heading to the hospital. I spend about an hour lifting weights before doing some incline treadmill. In my younger years I would have thrown together a kitchen sink protein smoothie, but I’m too hurried to do that now. I quickly shower, towel off, and throw on my scrubs before racing over to the hospital later than I’d like.
12:02 p.m. I planned to get down to the cafeteria but am disappointed to learn it’s meatloaf day. Hard pass. I skip lunch and plan to eat when I get home later.
5:13 p.m. I look in the fridge and thank myself for picking up a bag of frozen shrimp ($14.99/pound) sometime before. I quickly slice some red chard ($2.29/bunch) and chop a few pieces of broccolini on the diagonal, which go into the sauté pan first. Next I add the shrimp, which have been lightly tossed in oil and dukkah seasoning ($22.99/pound); all the while I am boiling a small pot of French green lentils that have been sitting in the back of my dry food cabinet since the new year. I mix everything together and quickly whisk lemon juice, diluted tahini, pressed garlic, cumin, and black pepper into a sauce, which I throw around the bowl like some avant-garde painter. It has hints of smokiness that are balanced by the lemony bite of the smooth tahini sauce.
7:30 p.m. I again raid the fruit drawer and pour a bowl of raspberries ($3.39/basket) and a handful of blueberries ($4.99/pint) into a bowl. I savor each little bite of the chilled, plump berries as I think about going back to the store to get more. I never seem to get enough.
Tuesday total: $0
6:50 a.m. I soak some steel-cut oats in a pot of almond milk and turn it on high while I overthink another pour over coffee. I get dangerously close to bubbling the milk everywhere, but I turn the heat down just in time and simmer those oats to a perfectly chewy tender consistency. I toss in some frozen bing cherries, a handful of pecans, and give it all a light dusting with Royal Cinnamon from Burlap & Barrel ($9.99/1.8oz).
11:55 a.m. Somewhat sick of hoping lunch will be something appealing only to be sorely disappointed, I’d made a small salad of Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced red chard, and grated carrots dressed with a sesame oil rice wine vinaigrette. It’s a perfectly suitable lunch that gets the job done. Better yet, it’s consumed quickly because I’m trying to get out of here early today.
6:40 p.m. My wife and our daughter are flying back home tonight, so I rationalize getting to San Francisco a few hours early before shooting down to SFO. I brave the west-bound traffic across the Bay Bridge and find myself in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. I’d crossed my fingers and hoped for walk-in availability at the always packed Flour + Water. Tables are all accounted for but the bar is completely open. I saddle up and splurge on the pasta tasting menu ($135 before tax, tip, city mandates). The bartender recommends two fantastic wines by the glass, a Mourvèdre from a Bay Area winery ($17) and a Barbaresco ($24) from Piedmont. Course after course of this-ain’t-your-grandma’s Italian food are laid down before me. A total of 10 courses including the squid ink corzetti, black truffle sformato, and the classic tortellini en brodo. The total comes to $250.52 but it’s worth every penny.
Wednesday total: $250.52
6:20 a.m. Another day, another coffee. Still not happy with it. My perfectionistic tendencies clearly come with a downside. I skip breakfast at home and instead load up on eight hard boiled eggs at the hospital, picking out the yolks and sticking to the whites. It’s boring, I am painfully aware. Sometimes I wish I had more time in the mornings because breakfast is truly my favorite meal of the day. If nothing else, this exercise of documenting my weekly food consumption is making me realize I have less time in my day than I think I do.
7:10 p.m. Dinner is far more pedestrian yet more enjoyable than last night. I’m home alone with my daughter while my wife is attending a work function in the city. I let my daughter pick dinner and she chooses chicken nuggets. I will say she is becoming quite the adventurous eater, but the chicken nugget habit is a hard one to kick. I give her the tiny dinosaur nuggets and I have the slightly more grownup chicken tenders from Costco. I again throw together the aforementioned cucumber and chard salad, slice up a perfectly ruby red plum that’s dripping with sweet, floral juice, and call it a night. She’s happy and we have great conversation.
After dinner she cajoles me into turning on “crazy music” and we gyrate like wild animals to 140 bpm bass-heavy electronic music pumped to near full volume. I’m absolutely certain the neighbors can hear; I just hope they don’t look in and wonder if I’m going full tonic-clonic seizure while my daughter is jumping around me on the sofa. Belly and hearts full tonight.
Thursday: $0
7:27 a.m. Coffee. Rush out the door. A breakfast of six egg whites at the hospital cafeteria. More utilitarian than anything else, but I feel good about starting the day with ample protein. I plan on being too busy to worry about potential hunger pangs this morning so figure the egg whites will be enough.
1:51 p.m. A later lunch consisting of a hodgepodge of quinoa ($4.99/lb), roughly chopped zucchini ($2.99/pound), tofu ($3.99/12 ounces), broccolini ($2.99/bunch), and a tahini maple dressing I mixed up earlier in the week and stored in my fridge for moments like this. The crispy bites of quinoa are a nice contrast to the soft tofu. The veggies provide a nice bite as well; they were quickly roasted in the oven the night before with a little salt, pepper, and olive oil. I feel good about eating healthy knowing it’s Friday night and I’ll likely be cajoled into eating something less than healthy later.
5:24 p.m. We really are blessed with an abundance of fabulous pizza options in the East Bay (and the Bay area at large). We happen to be in Berkeley running an errand or two, so we pop into Rose Pizzeria on University Avenue for some of the best in the area. Dinner starts with a couple glasses of chilled lambrusco, an arugula salad, and a snack plate consisting of olives, salumi that my daughter quickly devours, and pickled peppers. We share a margherita pizza that comes with a very nice crust and creamy white mozzarella from a local cheesemaker in Sonoma County. We finish off with a tiramisu that hits on every level. ($98.11 total)
Friday: $98.11
6:45 a.m. We’re going out of town for a month this summer, so I’m picking up extra shifts at work to feel better about taking this extended absence. That means a quick coffee at home and another breakfast of egg whites at the hospital cafeteria. Boring but functional.
1:30 p.m. I’m surprisingly hungry today, so on the way home I stop into Hashtag Poki for an ahi tuna bowl. These places are pretty ubiquitous, but I love this one in particular. With very fresh seafood and ingredients, it’s the perfect afternoon hold-me-over. It comes to $20.65, which feels like a reasonable price to pay for the higher-quality tuna in abundance.
3:50 p.m. We’re meeting friends later this afternoon, so I pop into Whole Foods to pick up a couple pounds of cherries to eat in the park ($4.43/lb). On the way I grab a quick turkey, avocado, and havarti sandwich on a whole wheat roll from Mulberry’s Market in Piedmont ($15.99). A quite satisfying pre-dinner snack on one of those picture-perfect Northern California afternoons drenched with plenty of sun.
6 p.m. Dinner is at a friend’s house for his birthday. He’s from Myanmar and takes pride in his cooking, so he puts together some specialties from back home. This consists of a large bowl of pungent and slightly spicy shan noodles, a chicken soup that probably has a more specific name I do not know, and, of course, birthday cake. We have a nightcap at Friends and Family in Oakland later: a glass of petite syrah with some slight funk, a nice way to end the evening. The tab is picked up by someone else in the group, so no cost on this one.
Saturday total: $55.44
7:15 a.m. On the way to work, I stop by my favorite local coffee shop, Ain’t Normal Cafe. This is a shop for the true coffee nerd, with shelves stocked with hard-to-find beans and single cups of pour-over coffee going from $6 to $30 per cup. I opt for an anaerobic pour over ($6.50 with tip) from April Roasters out of Copenhagen, which has light, tea-like qualities. Another fantastic start to the morning.
12:05 p.m. Lunch is again had at the hospital cafeteria and consists of a vegetable lentil soup, a side of raw carrots, a handful of sliced cucumber rounds from the salad bar, and a few pieces of chopped watermelon. We are going out tonight for Father’s Day so I try to eat slightly lighter to compensate.
5:01 p.m. Not far from home on Piedmont Avenue is the absolutely wonderful Pomet, which opened a couple years ago and has a strong focus on high-quality, locally sourced produce. Dinner starts with a peach salad, a few Parker House rolls with house-made butter, crispy turnip tots, and duck leg. The main consists of a perfectly cooked 22-ounce rib eye topped with charred black garlic butter, which we all share. It comes with a side of beef-fat-roasted potatoes that are creamy and delicious. Never one to avoid an opportunity for direct comparison, I get a tiramisu for dessert. It’s delicious but ever so slightly less so than Friday’s. ($317.52 total with tax and tip)
Sunday total: $324.02