Genesprite

Thursday June 5, 2008
Entry by Genesprite
The return of Plunderer's Wife...
I arrived home from the conference I attended at 2 am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Thursday morning I joined my husband in the food pantry challenge, ill prepared for the concept of going to work on six hours of sleep without making myself a cup of coffee or buying one at Dunkin Donuts. Why, just yesterday I bought lunch at the airport and paid ten dollars for a bottle of water and a ceasar salad. Sure, they jack up the prices at the airplane terminal, but that one meal cost as much as I should be alloted for the whole week. So, bleary with lack of sleep and jetlag, I contemplated the coffee issue. Sure, I'm the only coffee consumer in the house, and one can lasts along time. On the other hand, if I were to buy a new can for the challenge, it would cost about $3.60-$4.00. That is more than one days worth of food, and therefore, a luxury I could not afford. It felt as a special luxury, especially thinking of how meager my husband had been eating for two days, and how hungry he was in the morning and last night when he stayed up for me to arrive. How could I be so selfish and spend so much on coffee?...So, I didn't make coffee, thinking that if it was really bad, I would cheat or suck up the cost of a small coffee at Dunkins. Before leaving I asked my husband "Is it breaking the rules to drink the crudy office coffee?..." He informed me of the rule against taking free things that are offered to you by your co-workers, on the premise that I could not reciprocate. No coffee.... NO COFFEE!!!!

I ate a frozen bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. The frozen bagel was 30 cents. The cream cheese was .99 on sale, and I used a little more than aserving. So, I'm guessing around 17 cents. I ate this meal around ten am, since I had slept in to catch up on sleep. In the afternoon, I had two snacks, the first a plum we purchased last weekend that cost about sixty cents, and the second, a granola bar from the box of granola bars I chose as my snack for the week. Plunderer thinks I'm cheating by including the box of granola bars as a snack. I think he might be right on this one. A two-fifty for the box, the granola bar was .40 cents. By the time I came home from work, I was extremely hungry, I ate some cereal straight from the box. It was sort of like a snack. Before preparing dinner, I put together my pantry stores for the rest of the week. I realized that doubling the pantry was not the way to go for two reasons, the first being that I am starting on day three, and the second being that a family going together to the pantry might get a little more from the pantry, but not double. So, I added one box of pasta, one can of beans, one can of tuna, one can of soup, one pastaside, one canned vegetable, a ramen noodle packet, and one more meat. Tonight we ate from the pantry stores. That kilbasa and noodles tasted delicious. My total for the day was 1.07, or 1.50 if you count the granola bar, but that was only possible because of what we had from our pantry stores.

Friday June 6, 2008

Genesprite:
I had to plan my meals carefully today. I knew I had a long day
ahead at work, and needed my fine motor skills, without a shaky hand. I am a
scientist, and had to do dissections under a microscope with ultra fine
instruments, followed by tissue culture which requires a clear head and careful
hands; No room for a sugar low mid-way. For breakfast, I had a frozen bagel and
cream cheese again (47 cents). It was very filling. I also made two hard
boiled eggs in the morning, so that I could take them to work. They seemed to take
forever to cook, even though it was only ten minutes to boil. For lunch, I
usually bring a sandwich with deli meat, left over dinner, or a frozen meal
from the freezer section of the supermarket. All these items are either to
costly for my food stamps budget, or presume that I would have plentiful left overs
from the meal the night before. Today for lunch, I had a can of soup from our
pantry items, and two hardboiled eggs. I was pretty much OK for most of the
day, but the experiment I was doing took much longer than I had planned and by
the time the last dish of cultured cells was in the the tissue culture incubator
around 7:46 pm, my head was swimmy. I briefly pondered the energy requirements
of the neurons in our brain. They need glucose, without glucose in our blood,
we can't think straight. Coffee would have helped me today, but I couldn't work
without a good breakfast and lunch.
For dinner we splurged and had chicken breast, the package had three
pieces, for six dollars. I picked bbq sauce as my additional condiment for the
pantry. I wished I had a packet of McCormic's Chipotle grilling seasoning, but
that costs a dollar, and you need vegetable oil to mix it with. I made all
three pieces of chicken and we each had one piece (2 dollars for each person,
and a left over piece for tomorrow). On the side I made a pasta side dish
from our pantry. The directions called for milk and butter, but I made it with
just the butter to save money. I also made two ears of corn (40 cents per
person, although Plunderer didn't eat his piece). I also had a glass of juice
from the panty. So, my total for today was $2.87. Again, I stayed within budget
because of the food pantry items. Eating a nice dinner felt good, but I wonder,
would I have purchased boneless-skinless, chicken breast on a food stamp
budget, or would I have bought a cheaper cut of meat?...How would we fare on a
foodstamp budget without the food pantry?... not very well I fear.