Normally I wouldn’t give the following things a second thought, but since I’m watching my food pennies and trying to be true to only spending $4.50/day I’ve started to stumble over trivial issues. For example:
- Being a good guest: Our faith community always has snacks after our meeting. Should I take a snack? (I decided to take some left over chips and salsa from the stock we had before Lent)
- Free food: Should I eat the snacks that others bring? Wouldn’t this be like taking advantage of free food so I wouldn’t feel the brunt of eating only what I could buy? I decided to refrain this time in order to have the full experience. (I don’t think anyone noticed, but I did have the company of one member who is a diabetic.)
- Fish Fry: I wanted to support the Lenten fish fry at our son’s school last Friday. I had, however, already overspent on our Food Stamp budget for this week, so I wasn’t sure if I should buy anything. I decided to buy the cheapest food they had, a slice of cheese pizza, and drink water. I chalked the cost up to the fact that we served lunch to a friend the other day out of our budget. Since I only spent $2 on the pizza I decided to splurge and buy some “split the pot” raffle tickets to offset my puny dinner donation for the school. Wouldn’t you know, I WON a whopping $17! Now, do I donate it back, buy some nutritious food, keep it…? What would a person on Food Stamps do?
- Pot Lucks: I’m going to a potluck dinner/dance tonight. There will probably be about 100 people there, so there will be plenty of food. I’m bringing the table cloths. Is that enough? I think I’ll take what our family calls “ants on a log” – celery sticks filled with peanut butter with raisins lined up on top. We have all these ingredients in stock, it’s cheap, and at least I’m contributing.
I know I’m probably being overly picky about these decisions (that’s what Jim says and he’s usually right) but it is certainly raising my consciousness and making me think. What about you?
