Lunch was great! I could certainly have brought left-overs home with me but that didn't seem fair. It was a varied, nutritious, delicious lunch and will certainly take the stress out of how to create dinner from my meagre pantry.
Re last night's grocery shopping and my developing meal plan for the week: for 1.98 I bought a large jar of sweetened applesauce. I chose this to be my sweetener on the 1.97 bag of rolled oats I bought. The smallest bag of sugar was way outside my price range and sweetener was out of the question. So applesauce it is. It was also my mid-morning snack.
“Pasta” choice was cheap (1.97) elbow macaroni (the shape that only kids eat) and a can of NN pasta sauce. I carried around a package of ground beef for a bit before putting it back on the shelf. I'll make do with onions as seasoning in this sure-to-be-bland sauce.
My only meat purchase ended up being a small package of pork hocks (3.16) for the base of my pea soup (1.59...seems several of us opted for split peas). To the soup I'll add onion and some of the 2 lb bag of carrots. I'm assuming that it's fair to use pantry seasonings because even for the sake of the challenge it wouldn't make sense to spend $4 on bay leaves or oregano. I'll caramelize most of the 3 lb bag of onions (1.99) for added seasoning, for a 2-serving soup, and to add to my carrot soup. Lucky for me, soup-making is therapeutic.
I still have no real meat. But I have a .83 kg sweet potato (1.81) that would do for about four meals if I had meat to serve it with! I'll probably shop for a smaller, cheaper package of ground beef that will provide a couple of cooked hamburger patties and leave some for my pasta sauce. A can of herbed, diced tomatoes (1.19) can fill in anywhere, anytime: I can use them in the pasta sauce, make a 2-serving soup or have them cold as a vegetable or snack...love them in anything.
Five bananas (1.36) and a 4-pack of bathroom tissue (1.29) rounded up my food total to the previously-stated $26.04. Five bananas will be enough for the week since it'll be two days before they'll be speckled enough to eat. I picked up a couple of good tips at lunch today on where to buy what and will source out some cheaper milk. A friend told me that 4 L of milk at Shoppers is the best buy. Since I have hot milk in the evening, that will be a nice treat.
My challenge today was to convince someone to lend me $2, assuming that I won't be able to pay them back. Not much of a challenge at a church lunch...everyone was reaching for their purses. Obviously, in the true spirit of the challenge I should have been asking a casual acquaintance, in a different setting, but I took the toonie and ran. Thanks, Bev! As is the intention of the project, we had a lot of lunchtime conversation about local poverty and the challenges of shopping smart. I was really interested in how many people there already knew how to shop smart. I will certainly be more aware of those values and bargains when this week is over and I hope it will carry over to my "real life."
I have a Palliative Care Training session tonight for which I'll use my van because I don't want to ask anyone to drive me. Many friends have offered to give me rides this week, but again, in the spirit of the challenge, would I likely have that many generous, mobile friends to call on if I truly were impoverished. So I'll drive and either pay $1 or slide it into the category of“transportation for work, family commitments or other non-personal reasons will be allowed without penalty.” I'm voting for door #2.
My biggest personal challenge today will be tv. I checked what channels are covered under basic cable, $29.95/month. I'm not sure if this should be factored into my $52 budget or if I'd assume it was part of my rent+utilities. But it's going to be way less convenient than my complete satellite menu. For the sake of the challenge I'm going to assume that I don't have a recorder and can only watch the available channels and only in real-time. It's going to be a long evening...
I'm struggling with computer time. I'll assume that someone 'gave' me one of the several old laptops I have in my electronics graveyard, and that one of them worked well enough to get me online. Basic dial-up internet is $8.95/month for 10 hours of air time. That's half an hour a day! I'll consider 'blog time' and responding to challenge-related emails outside that range. That isn't going to allow much YouTube surfing or internet look-ups.
I've made a reservation for tomorrow at Knox Church Agape Table for 11:30, table for one. Actually, I'm hoping to have some conversation with the patrons as well as the volunteers in the kitchen there. Now off to make some soups.
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