Tuesday: The Building Blocks Are In Place

With a trip to Kroger complete there was no reason not to be ready for this challenge. The biggest challenge for the day was that it was Fat Tuesday and the office was celebrating with a shared-food luncheon in which I could not participate. There was nothing that I would be willing to share that could be made with the measly $4.29 allocated for the day’s budget.

Breakfast
Breakfast consisted of one Nature Valley Trail Mix Fruit and Nut Bar, purchased for $0.30 from a co-worker. In addition to that I drank coffee that is provided for free by my employer.

Total cost = $0.30

Lunch
Since I skimped on breakfast I felt the desire to “splurge” at lunch — I would eat two sandwiches instead of one!

The loaf of bread I purchased from Kroger was $1 and with it containing approximately twenty slices, this meant a slice of bread cost $0.05. Given that I planned to eat two sandwiches my bread cost was $0.20.

Each sandwich was going to be different, one bologna, one salami. At Kroger I purchased the “Value” brand for $0.88 a package; each package consists of six slices of meat, and since I planned to use two slices of meat per sandwich my meat cost for both sandwiches was $0.60.

I found a community bottle of mustard in the office refrigerator. In the spirit of the competition I penalized myself $0.10 to compensate for the amount of mustard I applied to my sandwiches.

To keep costs down I drank water with my meal.

Total cost = $0.90

What can $30 worth of food look like?

This actually cost $28.79 (taxes included). It could provide me with a week’s worth of food, but also notice that the only thing I’d be drinking is water.

Dinner
If necessity is the mother of invention then surviving on $30 per week is the mother-in-law. Last night I decided to “whip up” something using the ingredients that I have purchased over the past few days. Last night’s dinner could best be described as smoked chicken/pork sausage with braised cabbage, onion, and jalapeño pepper. For the meal, of which I consumed half, I used two sausages from the $2 package that contained five (therefore the dish used $0.40 worth), one half of a head of cabbage which cost $1.37 (therefore the dish used $0.69 worth), one onion which cost $0.60, one jalapeño pepper which cost $0.10, some salt and some bacon fat (yes!) which I saved from making bacon this past weekend (both of which I claim for free). Adding up the meal the entire thing cost $1.79 and since I ate half my meal cost $0.90.

Total cost = $0.90

Tale Of The Tape
The day’s total cost = $2.10
The week’s total cost = $5.25

Make sure to check out the others who are taking the challenge

• Tami at Running With Tweezers [or Twitter @tamih]
• Molly at Disposable Income [or Twitter @GrabMoL]
• Mike at Eat On $30 [or Twitter @boutte]
• Tessa at Drive A Faster Car [or Twitter @tessa]
• Dave at Dave’s Extraface Blog [or Twitter @extraface]
• Alain, who I have no idea how to contact