One week down.
Warren made a huge pot of minestrone soup early in the week, and I've had that for at least 3 lunches and a dinner. Still some left. Had spaghetti with jar sauce one evening, and have leftovers from that. Had grilled ham and cheese with tomato soup one night. Very thin sliced ham. Stretched one small can of tuna into 3 lunch sandwiches.
Breakfasts haven't changed much. I eat a yogurt or a piece of fruit and have my Taster's Choice. Lunch, though, has been interesting. Just remembering to pack one is a start. Sandwiches, carrots, fruit. All good. And much less than I'm used to eating for lunch, since I usually eat out. I do get pretty hungry by the end of the day, but eating less lunch is probably a good thing.
I had a working lunch with a colleague from outside my office on Friday. She asked if we could meet over lunch and I had to explain what I was doing and that I'd have to bring my lunch. We had a lovely, productive meeting outside at Yerba Buena Center. She brought her lunch, too. And she even brought me a bag of limes from her tree. Before giving them to me she asked if it was within our rules to accept them, and the answer was a resounding "yes."
Conversations at work continue to be interesting. One topic that keeps coming up is how hard this kind of budget would be if we had dietary constraints. As it is, we can both eat just about anything. But, what if one of us were diabetic, or lactose intolerant, or had to eat gluten free, or low salt? I think it would be a challenge, but I also think that if we were really in poverty, we may not even realize we had food issues for lack of health insurance. I mean, how do people figure out they have food allergies, tolerance issues, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure? They go to the doctor. So, until something manifested itself in a serious way, we'd probably be clueless and go along eating to sate our hunger without thinking about other health issues.
This weekend, we discovered Grocery Outlet. Well, we didn't exactly discover it. We'd driven by it often, and my friend, Debra, said we should check it out. So, Saturday, with some skepticism on Warren's part, we stopped into the store in Concord. And were amazed. We spent $75 for our weekly supplies. Menus this week include fish (frozen whiting at $4 for a large package we'll be able to get about 3 meals out of) with beans and rice, chile verde (with pork roast that cost $5), falafel (from canned garbanzos). We bought a lot of produce, tortillas (to serve as bread for many meals), yogurt, milk. Great deals on cereal, which we thought would be out of our budget ($2.50 per box for huge boxes of raisin bran and frosted mini wheats). Even had room for some beer and wine in there. Unfortunately, I do not like the style of beer we bought (rye saison), but that's probably just as well. We'll be back there.
So, again, we seem to be a little ahead of budget, but I have to fess up. On Friday we are headed to Santa Cruz to hear Sean sing in a concert with the UCSC Concert Chorus. We'll be staying over night at a bed and breakfast. My guess is that the breakfast portion of that might be well over our daily food budget. We are planning to take sandwiches for Friday night dinner and then be home for lunch on Saturday. For us, that will be a pretty frugal approach to a road trip.
So far, we're eating well (plenty of fruits and veggies, a little bit of meat). Feeling a little hungrier than usual. We're putting a lot more thought into our menus and time into our shopping trips. Biggest challenge so far continues to be loss of convenience.
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