I “toughed it out” at the last St. Francis DeSales fish fry by purchasing only the cheapest meal for $2. My son, who teaches at the school, gave me a hard time since it’s a fundraiser for the school. He said I could have made a bigger donation even if I didn’t eat more. He’s […]
Living Lightly
Susan Vogt on living more simply but abundantlyBrowsing Posts tagged Food
Following are some food trifles and questions that trying to eat on $4.50/day have raised in my mind: Apples: Jim had been gone for a few days and I had carefully rationed out the apples left for the week. The day he returned I went to the refrigerator to eat the last apple. It was […]
Week #3 Grocery Shopping: Depending on how you figure it, this week we came in either $4.06 under budget or $5.06 over budget. We’re under budget if I figure just this week. We’re still a little over budget if I factor in the $9.22 we overspent last week. Bottom line? It’s getting quite complicated to […]
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 […]
Week #2 Grocery Shopping: Since we didn’t use up all the food we bought for Week #1, (we had enough leftovers from one of our meals for next week) we figured we could be a little more lenient about our food purchases for Week #2. This week we decided to buy food that we knew […]
Our first week on the Food Stamp budget is almost up. So far, so good. The hardest part so far has been all the calculating to figure out how much to spend and how to count the food we already had in the house. We tried to be pretty strict with our food purchases this […]
Week 1 Grocery Shopping: Well, today Jim and I went grocery shopping with the goal of buying one week’s worth of food for $63 ($4.50/day for each of us for a week). Our self-inflicted Food Stamp Challenge starts Wednesday. Our total bill was only $ .81 over the limit but we took a few liberties […]
Since next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday – the day we start the Food Stamp Challenge – I figured that I only had a few days left before I wouldn’t be eating desserts (and a bunch of other beloved foods). In the spirit of Mardi Gras I made my favorite dessert – mousse – and portioned […]
$4.50/day (or $31.50/wk.) is the national average food stamp allotment for about 49 million Americans. Could you do it? I’m pretty frugal and my husband, Jim, (who does most of the cooking in our family) is a careful and health conscious grocery shopper. We decided to try to do it as part of the National […]
During Spring planting season, I had already anticipated the title for this September entry. It was going to be “Do Zucchini Count?” I planted about 10 squash – mostly zucchini. Knowing the reputation of how prolific zucchini are, I was sure I would have so many to give away by this time of year, my […]
…because I’ve got too much lettuce. It’s one of the mysteries of nature that the more one picks and prunes the more one gets. I’ve tried to grow lettuce before but got too little. This year I used the “just sprinkle the seed” approach and I got way too much and it needed thinning. What […]
Birdie was my Kris Kringle partner at our parish last Advent. I never met her but prayed for her and sent her a card. I know that she is African American from the parish directory. Jim and I have been trying to get to know more people in our parish especially people of other races […]
