Day Three

Today has been my best day yet for keeping my costs down.  I had a small bowl of cereal with milk for breakfast ($0.26), a piece of toast with jam as a late-morning snack ($0.10), then I had a whole tuna sandwich ($0.12 for bread, $0.06 for half a piece of lettuce, “free” tuna since I paid for it in yesterday’s budget), chips ($0.06), a carrot ($0.11), and an iced tea ($0.05) for lunch.

Here was a picture of my lunch today:

You may be wondering how the nice bread on that sandwich is so cheap.  Well, there is a lady who has a booth at a flea market up here, which goes on every Saturday, and among other things, she sells Pepperidge Farm breads (that are a day or two away from expiring) for a dollar.  I buy them and put them in the freezer to keep them from going bad.  So at 16 slices a loaf, each slice is just $0.06.  If I had bought the bread full price at the store, it would have been $3.69 - $0.23 per slice – way too expensive!

I’ve noticed that I’ve started having somewhat of a scarcity mentality when it comes to food.  Today at lunch, I was eating the second half of my sandwich when I thought how I might be hungry later this afternoon.  So I put most of the rest of it in the fridge so I would have something to look forward to eating later.  I have heard about kids saving some of their free breakfast and lunch at school to take home that night so they have something to eat, or to share with brothers and sisters who are not yet in school.  The thought of this breaks my heart, and I know I have no idea what THAT scarcity mentality feels like.   

Rather, I find myself having selfish thoughts like: I miss snacking!  I realize now just how often I normally grab a little something to eat.  The snack I miss the most is my post-dinner snack.  Since the kids keep me so busy, I’ve been fairly used to not eating too, too much during the day.  But once they are in bed at night, I’ve gotten accustomed to making up for it by sometimes having a true fourth meal of the day – a big salad or a bowl of cereal, or yogurt, nachos, it could be anything - usually followed up by some sort of sweet.  Last night after my one bowl of soup for dinner, my tummy was growling before I went to bed.  Is this how many people feel at night?  How much worse do they feel when they’ve had no dinner at all?  And for an extended period of time?

For dinner tonight I plan to eat the leftover corn chowder I set aside.  I think it was only yesterday that I was blogging about “loving food” and sacrificing simplicity in favor of variety.  Well, here I am eating the same thing two nights in a row.  I am about to calculate the cost of making a loaf of bread.  If it’s not too expensive, then I may make some bread to go along with the chowder tonight.