If you've read my blog before then you probably know that I try to take the "poor me" out of poverty by cooking. Food is often the item on my tiny budget that has to be slashed because there's no room to do so on any other. I don't eat out. Ever. (Except for McDonald's fries at Christmastime.) And I don't buy package mixes unless they are on clearance at the "dented can" store (that's the place where old food goes when it disappears from your nice grocery store--most of the stuff is out of date but its edible.....if you're careful).
And you probably already know that I'm a Foxhole Vegetarian (became one when it was literally Do or Die), so meat is not an option. I buy fresh veg every chance I get, and that means I go to my little local grocery early enough in the day to buy whatever veggies they have on clearance--bumped, bruised, broken. Then I come home to cook whatever it is the store had that day. Sometimes it is stuff that I don't really like (eggplant, oh my, there's often tons of the stuff) but I find ways to make it work.
Here's today's haul (the picture is awful simply because I am dreadful with a camera [actually took four shots and this was the "best" of the bunch] but bear with me):
The cashier was new. He looked at all my clearance sale stuff, and then he kinda looked down his nose at me. I can imagine what he was thinking: Why is this old lady buying this cheap stuff? Who does she think she is and what does she think she's doing? (Or maybe he thought something worse, but I'm trying to be nice here.) I've learned by hard experience that the only thing to do is tough it out, so I said brightly (with a smile plastered on my face): My food budget is $10 this week; let's see how close I came to that. I could see him thinking a bit differently and I could tell that he wanted to ask questions but couldn't--it's good for young people to think outside themselves, means they are learning. He seemed surprised that I came in just over my limit at $10.61, and I told him that I always plan an extra dollar for tax. All true.
The young man even wished me God's blessings as I left. I was grateful for that. And I know that I am being blessed already because I had $10.61 to spend on groceries. I am also blessed because know well enough to consider them bounty and because I know what to do with them.
Let's break this down and make some sense.
.99 two yellow bell peppers
.99 bunch of broccoli
.99 bag of rainbow mini carrots
.99 a cucumber and radishes
1.99 garden salad
1.89 5 lb. bag of potatoes
.89 margarine
1.19 English muffins
Total 9.92 + .69 tax = 10.61
Where happens to the veggies from there? Here's the plan:
Gonna start by cooking some dried beans that I've already got. And then.....
- Make goldfish rice (with rainbow carrots)--two meals. Turn leftover rice into an onigiri (rice ball) for a snack.
- Mix some beans and some of the goldfish rice together; then fill rings cut from the bell peppers to fry later--two meals to freeze.
- Chop the rest of the bell pepper and some of the rainbow carrots to add to the rest of the beans to make chili--about four or five meals to freeze.
- Take the garden salad apart--cucumber slices and little tomatoes will make a nice sandwich, broccoli and cauliflower and some lettuce will make supper with ramen. The remainder of the leaves will cook together with potatoes to make salad soup. About four meals total.
- Pare and slice cucumber to make Quickles. Plenty of servings there.
- Prepare broccoli for individual servings--some to be added to broccoli potato soup, some to freeze. About four to five servings..
I also bought margarine because I want to make some cornbread to use up the cornmeal I bought last month and because I want to bake some apple breakfast muffins. Gotta have fat for baking, and the cheapest is the wax-paper wrapped pound block of margarine (that I really don't much care for). The English muffins were what my mother would have called "a frivol"--yeah, I bought something I just plain wanted. Sometimes you've gotta do that (in moderation, of course) because it's just as important to be happy as it is to be fed because your spirit gets hungry, too.
The point is here (again, I know that I keep hammering on this subject in my blog but it's really important) that $10.61 can take you somewhere but you've gotta be willing to take the journey. And you've gotta adapt and plan while you're on the wing.
Life is good.
I am richly blessed.
And I'm gonna go cook stuff.
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