Day 2 - free pizza!

Confession: Those who know me well know I'm a night owl. Regularly up until 2 or 3 a.m., working and doing some of my best writing, but then, not out of the bed until like 10. Or 11. Or later. 

So my breakfast this morning was free - and came directly to my door from a dear friend who lives out of town and ordered me a pizza. Yes, she took pity on me and sent me a medium pizza with pepperoni, sausage, and mushrooms. That was like the best pizza ever.

Lunch - which was much later - was salad mix. Honestly, that's all I had an appetite for.

Dinner, which I'll probably eat before midnight to keep the days separate, will be lentil soup.

So total for today: 12 cents for the salad mix, 21.5 cents for the soup equals: 33.5 cents for today. (If I eat more at dinner, I'll update in the am.)

Went to a fancy event with a carving station and free wine and all sort of buffet food - but I was working, and I don't like to eat the food when I'm working. But I really could have had a slice of that roast beef. I drank water instead. 

Ran into Susan Sanford, president of the MidSouth Food Bank at this event (Tennessee premier of Oscar-nominated documentary "The Witness") and she talked about some programs they're working on to give those in Memphis who want to help those who are hungry. Stay tuned for more info on that. 

Total to date: $1.45 and a half cent

Day 2 - details to come soon

Today has been busy - workwise, but I'll update my progress tonight. I'll share this - got my first free meal in a very unexpected way. And taking a page from my brother, I ate like a bear headed for hibernation.

Not sure what I think about "pretending" to have just come through a drive-through to score some jelly.... Is that cheating or being creative?

Old Faithful

Peanut butter, that is. Growing up, I ate a peanut butter sandwich pretty much every day, until my mother stopped making my lunch (junior high?). My sisters liked to mix it up - different cold cuts some days, maybe a PB&J every now and then, but not me. Those who knew me in elementary school knew I was a young man of routine. Part on the left side of my afro, blue windbreaker, peanut butter sandwich, and let's keep it moving.

The jelly I would normally put on this sandwich is a luxury I can't afford, so these sandwiches are literally peanut butter and bread. I do have a plan to fix it up, however - I am going to try running into a nearby fast food joint and pretending like I just came through the drive thru to see if I can score a few jelly packets. I'll keep you updated.

Now, the raw data: I got a loaf of bread with 26 slices (yes, I did stand in the store and count the slices in different brands' loaves to see who had the most slices) for $1.29. That's about 5 cents a slice. The peanut butter was 1.32 for the jar, 18 2-tablespoon servings worth. I use just one tablespoon of PB per sandwich, for a whopping 7 and 1/3 cents of PB in my lunch. 27 and 1/3 cents for lunch today. What.

Running total after lunch today: 70 (and 1/3) cents.

Please Eat Me, I'm Delicious! (Day 2)

Breakfast, Day 2 version.

So apparently I missed the part of the rules where extra points were awarded for style and presentation. I'll try to do better from here on out. Wait, just checked the rules again - it's just whoever eats the cheapest. Oh well, Wendi, you can always try this for your next challenge.

Both my lunch and dinner yesterday were free (couple slices of donated pizza for supper), so my first day total was: 21.5 cents. That's how we like to start things off.

I've doubled that total with breakfast this morning - oatmeal, cinnamon, banana. And regardless of how pretty it is, it still tastes just fine. Got a cheap lunch already packed up in my office as well - I'll update early afternoon with the details.

Dinner, Day 1

A mug full of lentil soup and cornbread, plated on beautiful dishes a friend gave me.

Look closely and see how much (how little) I spent! Lentils have lots of protein, soup called for lots of chopped veggies and a can of tomatoes - so I got my servings of veggies in today.

If I weren't on a budget, I would have replaced some of the water with chicken stock. And it would be SLAMMING with a sliced kielbasa in it - but that is so not in the budget. Meat in general, is not in the budget.But the soup was good. I would eat it even if I weren't on a budget. And the bitter celery tastes fine in the soup.

Total cost for three meals on my challenge first day? $1.12.

And I think we can all agree this tops the picture of puke that Aaron posted and pretended it was his breakfast.

My First Breakfast, Lunch

21.5 cents. And yes, we're counting half cents. I had, probably not coincidentally, a serving (a full one) of oatmeal with some cinnamon and a banana, same meal as Wendi (just twice as big). Unlike Wendi, I'm fine with oatmeal. This is actually the same breakfast I used to have on one of my health kicks a few years back. I could easily do this all week. I got 7 bananas for 90 cents, so they're about 13 cents each, and my serving of oatmeal was 8.5 cents. I'm guessing Wendi found some bananas for cheaper than I did...

Today we had a luncheon at work where my boss ordered in sandwiches and chips from Jason's deli. 2 meals down, 21.5 cents spent. I usually don't even eat a breakfast as big as I did this morning, so I wasn't super hungry. But I utilized a skill I picked up during my super-broke college days: when you can eat for free, eat like a bear storing up for hibernation.

Making Dinner for Today... and several other days

Lentil soup - yum! I love lentil soup - lentils are high in protein and a bag of them, dried, is amazingly cheap. I won't say how cheap until my brother has coughed up some info. Starting coughing, Aaron.

Buying veggies cheap has its drawbacks... I'd planned to snack on celery during the week, but this stuff is so bitter (old? stale? picked too soon?) I'm not sure I'm going to make it on celery. 

Just read where a CNN reporter is going to eat on what he'd get in food stamps, $176/month. Do you know what I could get for $176 a month?? Well, for starters, celery that doesn't taste gross. 

Day One Breakfast: Oatmeal and a Banana for...

11.5 cents. That's right. Only ate half a serving of oatmeal, because I really, really don't like it, and half a banana. And a 16 oz bottle of water (refilled from the tap, of course).

One morning down, 6 to go. Am eager to see if oatmeal is as "filling" as everyone seems to claim. It's still not the tastiest breakfast food to me - only the banana kept me from gagging. 

Not sure if we're counting 1/2 cents, but it could be the difference between winning and losing. The longer the oatmeal sits on my stomach the more I think - that wasn't intolerable.

5 Hours and Counting....

The challenge starts tomorrow. Had another last-supper today - unexpectedly, as my parents wanted to go to PICADILLY'S after church. This is the second trip to old-folks-buffet land (don't get me wrong, the food is good) in two days - but Moms paid. 

Total bill for the six of us, $55 or so, and I could eat on that for a month. 

I took an continuing education class tonight - Knife Skills (on food, not people) - and lucked up on some spinach, a half-chopped pepper and some cilantro - out of the garbage, which was headed into a compost pile at the Botanic Gardens. 

There were probably 20 people in the class, and we chopped up all sorts of stuff (Melissa Peterson of Edible Memphis was our great teacher and she's a prepper for the Neely's cooking show on the Food Channel) - and I didn't keep anything I sliced and diced, just stuff that was in the garbage and didn't look like this:

About to do some serious math on the meals to see how I can follow the rules on fruits/veggies AND try to win. 

Eating Up While I Can...

It's Superbowl Sunday, and I am fully aware than I will likely spend more money on food for the superbowl party I'm attending than I will the entire next week. Mentally preparing myself for what will likely be an eye-opening week.

Even though I haven't started, I already feel like I've come to some significant realizations. I spent a considerable amount of time in grocery stores yesterday, and realized that a lot of the foods that I thought were the cheapest foods one could eat were luxuries compared to what I'll probably be eating this week. I had planned on making eggs and tuna staples of my cheap week of eating - nope. Too expensive. At the farmer's market, most of the fruits and vegetables did not even provide the most bang for my buck.

I was able to score a bunch of bananas to give me one of my fruit/vegetable servings each morning for 90 cents. And I also stumbled upon this at Kroger:




That's right. 4 cans of blackeye peas for a buck. Normally $2.80 for 4. Sure I'll probably eat more blackeye peas this week than I have the entire past 3 years combined, but I imagine that folks on restricted budgets also end up eating whatever their grocer puts on sale.
Packs 8 grams of protein per serving, and there's 3.5 servings per can. Which brings me to my next realization - I'll probably be eating healthier this week than I normally do. One concern was that it was much cheaper to eat unhealthy than to eat healthy. I think that may be true when you are talking about food that has been prepared for you. But even cheap unhealthy food has to factor in the cost of preparation. The absolute least expensive food out there hasn't been processed - it's pretty much a straight line from the fields to you. Which is about as healthy as you can get. Oats, beans, rice: all inexpensive, and good for you. Now if I can just figure out how to make these things taste good...