Food Stampery: The rest of the week
Tuesday
Old Wessex for breakfast. Rice, beans, and kale for lunch.
Tuesday night I went to a software gathering in Harvard square. Afterwards, I did end up going out for dinner and spending an entire week's allowance on a biryani and a beer. If it is any consolation, I had to take the Red, Green, and Blue lines to get home, and they were all broken.
Wednesday
Old Wessex for breakfast. I had the day off, so didn't eat breakfast until late, around 10 or so. I ended up skipping lunch.
For dinner I made cream of mushroom soup. From mushrooms. That was new. I was using the Joy of Cooking to start off with, but their recipes always call for other recipes, and the soup had too many prerequisites. In the end I faked it with about half of the mushrooms mangled with a hand blender, some chicken broth, onions, and corn starch.
The soup got mixed with half a box of pasta and about half the left-over chicken and baked like a casserole. That was probably the best meal of the week I made.
Thursday
Old Wessex for breakfast. Rice, beans, and kale for lunch.
My cousin was in town from Florida to attend an award ceremony, and my Grandmother was having a dinner for them. Dinner at Grandmother's is not an optional sort of thing. Meatloaf happened.
Friday
Old Wessex for breakfast. Rice, beans, and kale for lunch.
I made chili for dinner with the can of tomatoes, some beans I'd saved from the week's lunch prep, the peppers from the garden, and half an onion. This was where the spice rack rule was most useful.
The Weekend
I know already that the weekend is shot. I have some standing plans I can't change. If this had been another week, almost any other week, it would have been a different story.
Let's see what's likely to be left over.
- 4 apples.
- Large bowl of chicken broth.
- About a cup-and-a-half of chicken meat.
- Half a bag of uncooked brown rice.
- A pre-made rice, bean, and kale lunch.
- A cabbage.
- Half an onion.
- 1 potato.
- 1 tomato.
- Some soy milk.
- A serving of Old Wessex.
- A couple cups of chili.
- Half a box of pasta.
- An acorn squash.
- About half-a-cup of mushrooms.
- Make that 3 apples nom nom nom.
I believe I could have made three more dinners out of that list. Something with the pasta and chili, something with cabbage, rice, and tomato, and chicken soup. I probably will end up making those next week anyway. It looks like there might be some kind of cabbage/apple slaw lurking in there too.
Congratulations to whoever wins the food stamp challenge, but let's not forget about the people who aren't doing this voluntarily.
Friday did it
I am officially out. Visited my parents on Friday, rummaged through their fridge and enjoyed leftover chicken and a broccolli salad, which I'm guessing were about $7 total. But free, because my parents love me.
Then, my friend's birthday happened. And in one quick exchange involving mozzerella sticks and a drink it was all over. I'm fortunate that making that decision was even an option. The one thing that is sticking about this whole project is how isolating food insecurity or for that matter any severe financial restriction can be. Almost every social thing we do, in some form, revolves around the ability to have discretionary funds. We go to lunch with colleagues. We meet old friends over a pint. We go to the movies. We were lucky, that so many of the United Way staff decided to do this (19 in total) we had a network. I keep thinking about the people who are cutting back on food to pay the heating bills, or isolating themselves because they can't afford to meet up with friends -- and hiding it. Anyway, it's been an interesting week for me. After this comment I'm clicking over to the Community Support Fund to give what I can.
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