Seventh (and final) day

At the end of the week this is all that is left. The oil was a 48oz bottle and we used about 10 oz and the sugar was a two lb bag and we used about 12 oz. Not buying these in the next week would give us $2.71 to spend.


Saturday, day 7, was definitely bottom of the barrel. If we hadn't eaten out last night, we might have had to boil old shoes. We went out early this morning and bought a quart of milk with our last money. It cost $1.20 but we couldn't find anything to buy for 20 cents. We combined breakfast and lunch into a 5 egg fritatta with fried onions and peppers with cheese on top and a bit of toast. I also sliced very thin and fried up the last of the smoked sausage. Paul tried his hand at noodles and was much more successful than I. I roasted our last 2 teeny chicken thighs with the last 2 carrots and 2 onions and made them into soup. I had saved a bit of the juice from the chicken paprikash, so I was able to give a bit of color and flavor to the soup, which tasted just how you would expect. There was a bit of the beans & greens left, which Paul ate out of a sense of duty. We finished off the bread and cheese, but there was not much of either. We did have 7 peanut butter cookies for dessert. We are going ballroom dancing tonight and there is a cash bar. We will have to drink out of the water fountain. Tomorrow I am planning Eggs Benedict with asparagus and for dinner, a great big spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, croutons and hard boiled eggs. And a steak. I think I will make a rhubarb crumble for afters.

What I learned: This is a difficult way to live, especially if you like food. I would have liked to vary the starches a bit more, and fresh fruit and vegetables were out of the question. I am really tired of bread.
Marilyn

This was a good experience. It certainly helped me understand why why people who are on food stamps usually experience poor nutrition. Marilyn and I are very good cooks and bakers. We take time to cook (especially Marilyn). We are very savvy shoppers and we know a lot about nutrition. But even we found this tough. We could have done better but it would have meant going over to subsistance eating ... beans, rice and maybe cornbread or tortillas .. breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There is a trade-off if you are a good cook and if you want to eat cheaply. Being a good cook helps to make basic ingredients into good meals. However, being a good cook usually means that one is interested in food. It would be a bit easier if one knew the basics of cooking but didn't care about the quality of what one ate. That's a tough line to walk.

The other thing I learned is that it is easier to eat proper amounts when you have to do so. It is too easy for most of us to make more than we need and eat extra helpings. Marilyn pointed out this moring that when you eat a lot for dinner (she ate a bit more at the dinner last night than she usually eats) you wake up hungrier than you do when you eat a modest amount. So ... sticking to a weekly set of menus can help to keep you thin.

Marilyn will find out that we will visit the cash bar at dancing tonight :-)

Paul