This week we went to Food Maxx. A much bigger store than Grocery Outlet, with more selection. Total bill was $87, which included $12 worth of cat food. No, we have not resorted to eating cat food. That's really for the cats. Really. Point is that our food bill was about $75.
Menus this week have included vegetarian chili with cornbread muffins, corned beef (found a $4 brisket) and cabbage (about 18 cents a head), duck soup and biscuits., and lots of leftovers. I'm suddenly not sure our leftovers will really stretch until the next shopping trip. Could be some sandwiches and canned soup in our future.
This week's confession: I used an old frozen duck carcass to make the soup. I don't usually keep bird carcasses; just don't want to deal with it. But, for some reason, I put this one in the freezer a few months back. If not for our Lenten project, it probably would have sat there for many more months until I finally decided to toss it. I'm just too lazy to make soup from a carcass. Well, I'll tell you, I just tasted the soup and it is spectacular. I made the base with all the vegetables and spices (yes, I used spices on hand*) on Sunday. Today I've added some barley. I did all the fat skimming and removed all the bones and chunks of this and that. Reserved some of the meat. I think I'll find time for more bird soups in the future.
*I asked my friend, Debra, who works as a volunteer at a food program in Davis, if they give any spices with food packages. She said, no, other than some salt sometimes. Spices are expensive. Something else we take for granted. Fixing beans and rice, or soups, or other big-pot sorts of dishes without an assortment of spices would result in a lot of bland, uninteresting, unpalatable food. And, people would probably resort to salt, which is unfortunate. Onions and peppers are good sources of flavor, but so many other spices would be very hard to afford on a small budget.
And I am eating a LOT of leftovers. Lunches are leftovers, dinners are leftovers. We've always been pretty good about eating up leftovers, but this is getting crazy. We're not hungry, though.
We bought a big bag of really good navel oranges. I'm eating at least one a day as I have a new sense of not wanting anything to go bad and be wasted.
Thursday, I'll be picking up Sean from UC Santa Cruz. He'll be here for a week, so, I guess we get to be a family of 3 next week. Woohoo! Our budget went up $7 per day! I wonder if we can feed Sean on our original budget and I can use some of his $7 for a latte..... kidding.
Warren's mother will be here for part of the weekend, so we'll see how it goes feeding a guest within our budget.
Things I'm really beginning to miss: good coffee and good cheese. These items are just too expensive to even put on the grocery list.
Starting to think about what we'll eat on Easter, as we break this fast of sorts.
Finally, I'm starting to think about where to donate our savings. My estimate is that we're saving somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500 throughout Lent. That seems high until I start adding up the restaurant meals that are usually part of our weekly budget. Some has been donated to St. Andrew's for a feed-the-homeless project that happened in early March. I'm thinking Contra Costa Food Bank and Hillcrest Food Pantry, but will take suggestions for other good, Bay Area food program.
2 1/2 weeks to go.
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