Wednesday: Getting Over The Hump Under Budget

Breakfast
I finally experienced my first failure of the week. In recent months I’ve become a fan of quick grits, which I’ve learned to cook rather easily at home on the stove top. Because of this I thought that it would be possible for me to use the boiling water from the electric water kettle I have at the office to prepare a morning’s worth of grits. I was so wrong. I may have been able to save the grits by microwaving them, but decided to suck it up and eat them as is. The canister of grits I purchased from Kroger the other night cost $1.19. I’m guessing that the one cup of uncooked grits I used constituted approximately one-eighth of that canister, therefore costing me about $0.15.

In order to “improve” my outlook on the morning’s breakfast I ate a slice of bread ($0.05) in addition to the grits.

With the food I drank coffee which is provided free of charge at my office.

Total cost = $0.20

Lunch
I liked yesterday’s lunch so much I decided to do it again — two sandwiches instead of one!

The loaf of bread I purchased from Kroger was $1.00 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

Hey Man, what’s for dinner?

Dinner
Dictionary.com defines “luxury” in the following way:

luxâ‹…uâ‹…ry
Spelled Pronunciation [luhk-shuh-ree, luhg-zhuh-]
-noun, plural -ries, adjective

1. a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity: Gold cufflinks were a luxury not allowed for in his budget.

When living on $30 per week “luxury” takes on a new meaning — like using an egg to create a coating instead of to eat it, or to have alcohol with dinner instead of water. Tonight I did both.

I started out steaming frozen green beans until they were cooked, and at the same time baking a frozen biscuit in a toaster oven which had been preheated to 400ËšF.

As those two items cooked I prepared and cooked the chicken breast…

I decided I was going to make my version of a chicken cutlet with one of the chicken breasts that I had purchased the other night at Kroger. I butterflied the breast so that it was thin, made an egg wash with an egg and some water, and made up a mixture of flour, paprika and salt. I dipped the chicken breast into the flour mixture, shook off the excess, dredged it into the egg wash, and then back into the flour mixture. Once again shaking off the excess flour I placed the chicken breast into a preheated cast iron skillet and cooked until the chicken breast was cooked throughout.

Chicken – one breast from the package containing three which cost $3, therefore $1.00
Egg – one egg from the dozen which cost $1.40, therefore around $0.12
Flour, Paprika, Salt – pantry items used in such minor proportion that I am counting them as free
Biscuit – one biscuit from the package of twelve which cost $$3.19, therefore $0.27
Green Beans – half of a package which cost $1.00, therefore $0.50
Beer – one beer from a six pack of Miller High Life which I will venture to guess costs $6.00, therefore $1.00

Total cost = $2.89

Tale Of The Tape
The day’s total cost = $3.98
The week’s total cost = $9.23

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