Knowing that I didn’t need to get up and get to work early, I did something rare. I slept in past 7:30am. Yes I was tired, and I also knew that the longer I stayed in bed, the longer I could delay breakfast and make the meal last longer into the day! And it did. Our morning smoothie of frozen bananas, soymilk, spinach, and peanut butter lasted me until 12:30pm. And for the two of us, that cost $2.58. That was more than twice what yesterday’s breakfast cost!
Lunch was soup leftovers and cost us a minor $1.72, including 3 slices of bread. We decided the soup tasted even better the second day.
Dinner was a little more complicated. I decided that I wanted to make a new butternut squash recipe that I found online. I made sure I had all the ingredients (or substitutes that I thought would work) and followed the recipe. As I finished and told my husband that dinner was ready, I got nervous. What if it wasn’t any good? If this flopped and we hated it, we’d have to eat it anyways! I couldn’t watch as my husband took the first bite. I took my first bite…whew. It was really good (if I do say so myself)! And it only cost $1.54 for the two of us!
Our snacking was a little more under control. We shared an apple and my husband ate another yogurt for $1.11. I might have snagged a sample at the Baltimore Book Festival, too… I’ve always been a fan of free stuff. But walking around knowing that my food choices for the next week are completely limited to the basic foods that are sitting in my fridge and my shelves made me appreciate ANY taste of something different!
Lessons of the day: Experiment carefully, and be prepared to eat the consequences. And free food is good food when the other choice is lentil soup.
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For the Love 
This reminds me of my dad. He would go to the food court at the mall when he couldn’t afford lunch. They had free samples at almost all of the places. He taught me the valuable lesson of making slight changes to your appearance and making rounds to get free samples until you at least weren’t hungry anymore. That came in handy on more than a couple of occasions when I was hungry and couldn’t afford lunch at work. Once everyone got to know me from working at the mall it didn’t work so well, but those samples can be a lifesaver when you’re sick of eating the same things over and over.
This is actually why we don’t try many new recipes. We’ve got a family of 5 to feed and we can’t afford to waste food if I make something no one likes. It’s definitely challenging.