I survived Day 1!

Day one was exhausting and I didn’t even have to work.  I began ambitiously and, with the enthusiasm of a wealthy person pretending to be poor, I thought it would be fun and frugal to go foraging for herbs.  I now have two souvenirs from a visit to Fort Mason park:  something that smells like sage and something that smells like rosemary.

I used them to make tea.

Sage tea is hydrating, if not delicious.  Rosemary tea is even further from delicious but probably equally hydrating if you can keep it down.  Fortunately, Safeway sells black tea for 2 cents per bag and it provides caffeine, hydration and more pleasure than its herbal counterparts.

There will be no more rosemary tea in my future, and I doubt that puts me greatly at odds with my brethren in the minimum wage community.

Foraging for herbs

Sage tea

I also did a lot of shopping today based on my theoretical spreadsheet analysis. Enlisting the help of family, we walked to Safeway and bought the following: (Sorry, but this will necessarily be boringly encyclopedic as I catalogue my spending and recipes)

Pinto Beans: $9.99, Rice: $5.99, Tomatoes: $1.99, 60 eggs: $9.69, Margarine: $2.49, Ground beef: $7.80, Chicken Thighs: $9.99, Sweet Potato: $2.13, Carrots: $1.49, Garlic: $1.00, Toothpaste: $0.99, Dental Floss: $1.99, 100 Tea bags: $1.99.

Total spend: $57.78.  Budget remaining: $295.

I then spent what seemed like all day preparing these raw commodities into edible food.  It is very easy to create a spreadsheet that provides cheap, nutritious food in theory, but much harder and more time consuming to wash, prepare, store and tidy away the mountains of stuff required to transform cheap produce into meals.

I am usually comfortable operating in a world where I have good ideas and then I ask other people, backed with authority, whether they’d like to make these ideas happen. Now I can’t stop at the ideas phase, and the implementation phase involves a lot of rinsing, peeling and chopping of things, and all I can think about is how much quicker it would be to walk a few blocks to Taco Bell.

Just today I (and probably a good portion of you reading this think this seems like a normal day and I should stop complaining):

• Chopped garlic
• Peeled and sliced carrots
• Rinsed, soaked and boiled pinto beans
• Boiled, shredded chicken and made stock
• Constructed tomato sauce from raw ingredients
• Experimented with putrid permutations of herbs and hot water

Soaking Pinto Beans

And now I will stop complaining about how hard it is for me to complete basic tasks, and tell you what I cooked and ate today.

Meal 1: $0.77

White rice, 2 eggs, shredded chicken, hot sauce (which was generously donated by my wonderful cousins).

Meal 1

Meal 2: $1.30

White rice, chicken stock, shredded chicken, hot sauce.

Meal 2

Meal 3: $0.45

Garlic sweet potato fries.

Meal 3

Meal 4: $1.24

Pinto beans, homemade tomato sauce made from tomatoes, garlic and margarine (it’ll sound more appealing if we pretend this is butter), shredded carrot, ground beef, hot sauce.

Meal 4

Total cost of today’s food: $3.76. Total calories: 2750.

One final thought as we go into tomorrow.  I still don’t have soap or shampoo. This morning I scrubbed hard with a loofah, which probably worked reasonably to clean my skin, but was likely insufficient to clean my hair.  I should fix this soon!