THE $20 EXPERIMENT: DAY 3

Hello dear friends!  Whew!  Having a busy day here today!  So far this little experiment is going pretty well.  Ran, Jamie and I were up early because we needed to drive a few villages over to take advantage of sale going on at a grocery store there.  Once a year they have a big meat sale.  We bought chicken leg quarters for 29 cents/lb. and their sirloin beef roast is $2.79/lb.  We bought about 12 pounds of the roast and I'm canning it up as we speak.  Here's the first batch:

Right now I'm sterilizing the jars for the second batch.  Been on my feet all day.  Which is why it irks me so much when people say how "lucky" we are to have such a big garden and a well-stocked pantry.  Luck had very little to do with it.  It was by the dint of the sweat on our brows that we have what we have.  When other men are out playing a round of golf, Ran is in the garden hoeing and weeding.  When ladies are sitting under the air conditioner in the Summer reading their novels, I'm sweating puddles in the kitchen canning up our harvest.  Luck has very little to do with it!

And of course, whenever you write about eating cheap, you'll get the inevitable response."Food is lot cheaper where you live!"  Which may or may not be true.  Yes, it's cheaper than in Europe and Canada, but I dare say that I could go into a grocery store in any of the states, except Alaska and Hawaii, and  find some deals.  I know!  I've traveled and one of the things I  like to do is check out groceries stores.  Some things may be higher but I wager some things will be lower.  And even in places where the food is expensive, you might have a longer growing season, so there's an availability of fresh veggies longer the five months we have here.  (Our frost date is May 31st and usually bu mid-October the our first frost hits.)  So when people tell me they "can't" I want to say, "Do you mean can't or won't?"   So there!  Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

 BTW, the purpose of these posts isn't to show you what to buy, but to get you to think about how you eat and purchase food.  I don't expect you'll find the exact same things as I and at the exact same prices. But we can all learn how to maximize what we do have.  How to look at what we really need or what we want.

What We Had To Eat

Lunch:
We were out for all of the morning, so when we got back home we needed something that was quick so I heated up the soup for Ran and I.  Jamie treated himself to Burger King. (I was tempted to tell him to grab a few sugar packets while in there) Having  soup in your fridge keeps you from running to the fast food joints when you want to eat NOW.

Dinner:
I made a quick red beans and rice with the package of rice, 1 1/2 C. of the beans, 1/3 of the can of the fire roasted tomatoes and a squirt of that barbecue sauce.  I topped it witj a shave of the cheese.

This was not my most favorite meal I made this week, I have to admit.  The seasoned rice was very garlicky and it sure could have benefited from some sort of seasoning. But on the good side, there was plenty left over for making burritos with the remaining tortillas, if that's what I choose to do with them.  Got to say, I'd much rather have more of those quesadillas that I wrote about yesterday than use this on my tortillas.  At the end of the day, it was food and it filled us up.

Thoughts So Far

So far it's been pretty easy to live on the $20, but I'm worried that my green leafies will soon run out.  I think $5 more would make all the difference in living well, or just getting by.  For $5, I could have bought another head of lettuce, some eggs, maybe a few more oranges or sweet potatoes.  One of the things about living thriftily, is portion control.  What constitutes a serving and what we eat are often quite different.  Have a gander at the nutritional info on the side of a box once, you might be surprised.

  While we were out,we stopped at the salvage grocery store and here is something I found:

Jiffy blueberry muffin mix for 15 cents!  It was only two months past the expiration date, so I'm sure they will rise.  This had me thinking; if I were a single person, I wouldn't bother stocking up on baking supplies.  One of these little boxes of mix makes up six  muffins, that's six breakfasts for 15 cents!  Can't get much cheaper than that!  They can be made into pancakes too.  Even if you can't find these little mixes at your grocery store for this price, regularly they are 75 cents I believe.  At the store that had the meat sale, their boxes of cornbread muffin mix was 2/ 88 cents for their regular price.  So for 88 cents, you'd get enough bread to go with soup for two weeks.  Are Jiffy mixes a nationwide brand or is it just a Michigan thing?  Even if you don't have that brand, you can buy these sort of mixes for $1 at the dollar stores.  Bread is such a good filler.  BTW, I wanted you to see my other bargain at the grocery salvage store, pure maple syrup, in date for $2 for 12 oz!  It's a lower grade, but I like the flavor of it better, so it was fine with me.  Taste more mapley!


 Also, we stopped in at a thrift store and  found this beautiful lambswool LL Bean sweater for Ran for a grand total of 50 cents!

Just the thing to wear with a down vest when we are walking.  He looks very handsome in it.  Someone had given the charity a  bunch of mayonnaise that was reaching its expiration  date and they threw that in the bag for free.  I'm sure it will be fine, I haven't looked at the mayo in my fridge now, it's probably past its expiry date too.  So far we haven't died!   When people complain about the cost of living, I always say "You don't know where to shop"!  And I might add, "how to" also!

Until tomorrow!

Hugs
Jane