Day 2: Food

Another day done! Another day of food consumed. You will see there is a general theme to what we eat around here. When the USDA encourages us to eat a varied diet, it fails to account for how difficult it is to buy a varied diet when one is living day to day on $4.50.

Breakfast: oatmeal. Kids had theirs sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and cooled off with some organic skim milk. I had mine with banana and a bit of brown sugar. I'm getting nervous about the number of bananas we have left in the house (9). I think I'll probably have to cut out my own consumption to make it through the next 5 days. Clare has at least one per day as does Josh.

Lunch: James had peanut butter balls and a bowl full of raw carrots. I had a peanut butter sandwich on homemade bread with an apple. The apple was borderline mealy. Any other week, I would have chucked it into our compost bin and tried another one. But this week, I only have 16 left to get us through Sunday, so I dealt with the mealiness.

Nora said she chose the yogurt option at school today because she did not like the available entrees (chili or chicken strips). She got crackers, a mini salad with ranch dressing, apples, and chocolate milk. She said she ate everything except the apples because they tasted like they had salt on them.  I wonder if that is some sort of anti-browning agent?

Clare had chili with cheese, canned peaches, mini salad with ranch, and chocolate milk. She ate everything.

For after school snack, the kids had bananas and apples with peanut butter for dipping. I had a bit of a heart attack because it was my babysitter who served them, and I only saw the leftover bowls. The bowls were so coated with peanut butter, I thought she must have given them each about 1/3 to 1/2 cup each of peanut butter. What will James and I have for lunch?! Luckily, it didn't actually look like any peanut butter was missing. So we're safe...phew.  My stomach growls just thinking about it.

Interesting note about the sitter: When I told her what we were up to and why there was basically no food in the house (at least in comparison to what we normally have), she said that her parents started off their married life on food stamps and would go to the grocery store with a calculator much like I did. She thought what an interesting project it would be for them to try it out again. We both agreed though that with the internet, life on food stamps (SNAP benefits) is probably easier now.

Now onto dinner:

Tonight we had a Barley Hoppin' John, which included

• Barley
• Black-eyed peas
• Onion
• Carrots (not in the linked recipe)
• Celery
• Vegetable Bouillon
• Red pepper flakes
• Dried thyme
• Lemon juice

*Garlic is pictured up there, but I actually forgot to add it.

Final product!

We have this fairly regularly at our house because it's easy, simple, cheap, and can be done in the slow cooker.  Normally I make some corn bread to go with it, but I hadn't bought any cornmeal.  Enough cornmeal to make some muffins probably would have cost me next to nothing at Good Foods.  Too bad I didn't think of it earlier.  I also pulled out our bottle of Sriracha, which may be cheating, but it needed some pizazz.

James was pretty convinced we were having Papa John's for dinner, but still ate the Hoppin' Johns he was actually presented.

The astute observers among you might notice that James is wearing the same thing he had on yesterday.  James lives in his "ninjun turtle" pjs when he is at home.  I can just barely persuade him to put on regular clothes for school, and the first thing he does when he gets home again is strip for the pjs.

After dinner while the kids ran around outside in the freezing cold, I fretted more about how much fruit we have left:  13 clementines, 16 apples, and 9 bananas.  I forgot about the bag of grapes I had, so pulled that out to get them cleaned and pulled off the stem.  I got a good 2 cups of fresh ones to keep in the fridge and another 2 cups to put in the freezer (frozen grapes are such a treat!).  Normally whatever has fallen off the stem goes right in the compost because they tend to be squishy.  I don't even bother to sort them, but tonight I did.  Even though I got just a handful, that was something.

So all told we have most likely just enough fruit, but it'll be close.