Lunch, Day 7

Note to self: if you do an eat cheap challenge again, eat the produce early in the week.

Otherwise, you'll be doing what I had to do with half my "lunch" today - which is pick out the pieces of lettuce that had started to rot. Now, I got this bag of salad mix for 50 cents, but I measured the bits that were edible and less than a cup qualified. So I chopped up my last freegan find - a green pepper that I truly did take out of a garbage can (5-second rule) last week at my cooking/knife skills class.

2nd note to self: Find a way to work potatoes into your budget, because that 1/2 a potato I had really held me for more than 5 hours. And if I'd gotten one that wasn't green, I could have eaten the skin.

Cost of lunch: 5 cents for salad, 3.5 cents for 4 oz. soda (really, it's only a shot glass' worth, just to have SOMETHING semi-sweet.): 8.5 cents total

Total spent on Day 7, not including dinner: 28.25 cents.

Running total so far: $4.62.

Less than the Big Mac Meal I'm eating Monday when this daggum thing is over.

Dinner TBA. There's always potatoes or lentil soup. Or both.

*Original post edited to add photo.

The Final Day....

First, a wrap-up of Day 6. After some, um, discussion over whether the sandwich I got from a coupon my sister was going to trash counted as "dumpster diving" (which had been defined and accepted earlier in the week not as putting your feet in a dumpster - hello, I'm too prissy for that - but rescuing food that was headed directly FOR the trash), I decided that to keep the peace, I would count the sandwich as my third and final free meal.

So today, it's spending $ for food...

Had a half-banana last night for dinner after drinking enough water to float a ship, so grand total for day 6 was: 49.9 cents.

Grand running total through Day 6 was: 4.339. (would probably be like two cents lower if I went back and counted minute fraction of cents all the way through).

Breakfast this early afternoon was probably the healthiest I've had this week: sauteed baby spinach (rescued from the trash, freegan fashion, a week ago at a cooking class) and 1/2 of a green-tinged potato bought on the Easy Way cheapo table. When I was pondering why the potato was green, another shopper told me that the green part is not good for you, but just eat the inside, and I'd be fine.

Except when you microwave it and start mashing up the inside, some of the green gets in there. So I ate green. Hope I live. But the 2 potatoes were 79 cents, and I just had half of one, so breakfast on the final day is: 19.75 cents. I don't feel FULL, but filled, and the spinach - Popeye would be proud.
Just two meals to go...