Author: boomingbanter

The last sad banana was dispatched to school this morning as part of Aarons packed lunch. With it went the fear that is now lurking in the home that things may be transformed in radical ways!

After a very standard macaroni and cheese dinner the urge for ice cream was so great that a brainwave struck.

Oatmeal is creamy in a lumpy sort of way. Combined with chocolate milk could it possibly become an inspired gelato.

Alas friends after beating and freezing and beating some more it was clear it could not. Dad ate some, and being the maker I ate a lot but Aaron was not fooled. It was oatmeal and it looked like barf!

The food scientists theory still hold though that this may be possible so back to the drawing board for round two of “ was my grandpa an Irish or Italian?”

Blessing # 218 – Experimenting

As it was Sunday we decided to come as close as we could to a traditional roast dinner.

What is most obvious is that our portion sizes are radically reduced compared to what is normal for us.

Usually we’d throw an entire Chicken into the oven along with stuffing and a huge dish of roast potatoes. On the veggie front we’d nosh our way through a whole cauliflower cheese and countless carrots but yesterday was different.

We are counting carrots and potatoes now not calories so as oil is in good supply these were liberally doused in essential fatty acids!

Our chicken was limited to roughly one pound for the three of us. Ironically even more than what the FDA thinks of as a portion. We’d call it a snack!

What we ate was tasty but we could easily have eaten the double of what we did.

We hit the cookies and the chocolate milk as dessert and took diversion in watching TV. Football in the basement for Aaron and Pride and Prejudice for Dad and me.

Blessing #217. –  Balls!

 

The weekend threw a few challenges our way.

On Friday around six, just as the rice was boiling to serve with the “thank you husband for putting up with this chicken curry”, Aaron bounces in.

He announces casually, almost in passing, that his back tire is sort of  soft. Soft my foot. It’s almost flat!

A litany of  WHATs and WHYs then ensues and panic calls to Tire Discounters to see WHO is still open to repair this!

Seriously he was going to leave it till the next morning and then try to get it fixed before work!

Sometimes you despair of the minds of teenagers until you remember when you did the same sort of things! Or worse!

So we turn off the gas and off we go to get the tire fixed. No patching possible we are hit with a $115 bill which of course was paid immediately.

WHAT though if we were truly strapped for cash and living on a budget. This would have been a desperate situation. Almost certainly we would have had to put the tire replacement on credit and it is not hard to imagine the viscous circle that might follow.

Saturday brought snow and we felt fortunate that the tire went out on Friday and not in the snow storm.

Aaron got home from work safe and we hunkered in for the evening as the snow continued to fall. We decided something tasty was called for like a nice big minced beef pie.

Butter being in short supply we made a vegan shortcrust pastry for the first time ever. Let’s say it was very short, quite tasty and reminiscent of samosa pastry but like the tire a little flat!

Blessing #216 – Perfect Timing

We drank our last drop of OJ, some cans were emptied, a dozen eggs done and we closed out on cottage cheese.

Stocks of milk and bread were dwindling too and Aaron had made a serious dent in the Frosted Flakes.

To continue happily we need to replace the OJ, milk, bread and eggs and get some sort of breakfast cereal as the lad hates oatmeal.

Cottage cheese we can do without and even though we are down to our last full stick of butter thanks to all that baking we can’t afford to buy any more of that so spread it will be!

Off we went on a trip to Aldi to spend our last $10. Aaron was at school so he’d have to accept our choices and compromises.

As we enter we hit the produce section and staring us in the face were some sweet looking oranges. Tempting at $2.29 for a large bag. We go for it as we have a longing for them and we have quite

a few apples left along with potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, frozen peas and some tired bananas.

That leaves us $7.70. Our must haves are the bread and milk.

Bread was priced the same as last week at $0.89 but the price of a gallon of semi skimmed milk had almost doubled. Still well priced for what it offers from a nutritional perspective but how can this be? Why would there be such a difference?

We go to check on the price of a half gallons. Eureka! Full fat half gallons are heavily discounted to only $0.39!

We agree that a little more fat won’t hurt us and even though the use by date is January 15 we know it will keep longer unopened.

We bag two half gallons and then see on the bottom shelf that full fat chocolate milk is also at $0.39 per half gallon. Pays to look down!

This would be a nice treat but also has a use by of January 15. Do we need so much milk especially chocolate milk? We decide to take two, freeze one and freeze one of the regular milks as well. Luxury of a freezer strikes again!

Over to the OJ with just $5 left! Our favorite fancy bottle “not from concentrate with pulp” is $1.97 for a half gallon whereas the tetra “no pulp from concentrate is $1.69. We check the vitamin C content. No difference and to boot the concentrate version is forties with Vitamin D and Calcium so we take two.

Eggs are down in price from last week so we take a dozen that should see us through but now we are scraping the barrel.

This means Frosted Flakes are out and regular Corn Flakes at $0.99 for an even bigger box are in! This shouldn’t be a problem since we have sugar left and now a rather large reserve of a delicious dark creamy liquid to pour on top!

Blessing # 215 – Chocolate in any form tastes sweet!

 

 

Aaron got good news at school. He has been accepted into French 3 which will make his Godmother Patricia as happy as it made us!

This called for a little celebration so I decided to make cupcakes and cookies as a surprise for him.

In our budget box we’d only bought baking soda as a leavening agent but when needs must you find recipes to get the job done.

The cupcakes turned out well but here comes a confession. I had them baked before it hit me that I « stole » the papercases from our usual stock. They weren’t in our budget. I didn’t even think about them just grabbed them and stuck them in.

The cookies were less than stellar. They look and taste a bit like a dried out pancake.

From there on the day of adventurous cooking went downhill rapidly.

The cream cheese frosting for the cupcakes had to be made with sour cream and granulated sugar that was run through a coffee grinder. It has the consistency of bird poop but it tasted real good.

Next up the minestrone soup our first meat free dinner since we started. This was going nicely looking balanced and tasting quite good till I decided to give it a little boost with  a squirt of mustard.

This mustard has been bugging me as it cost 55 cents and we still had found no use for it. Why did we buy it when we only ever use it on hotdogs and ham? Well it is a complete waste of space and it absolutely doesn’t mix well with minestrone! Maybe it’s worth a try as a  face pack to see if it will shift any wrinkles.

Finally to go with the soup some home made soda bread was meant to be the highlight of the meal. Instead of baking it on a griddle as you should I stuck it in the oven since it was already on.

Disaster! I forgot about it and it became more like a baguette than a soda. We ate it anyway and talk of France and French 3!

Dibley is suffering in this whole business because he is missing all those little crunchie things he gets as we nibble at night while watching TV.

Poor soul is desperate for a peanut or nachos or even a piece of popcorn! So he was delighted to share a cookie even if it wasn’t the best!

Blessing # 214– Les Petits Biscuits

Yesterday Aaron and I went to the eye doctor for our annual check up    We both had a change in our prescription.

It is funny how eyesight changes with time. Until I turned forty I had great vision but it went down hill fast. The rate of change has slowed but had not stopped and now I’d need arms as long as a giraffes neck to see clearly.

Aaron on the other hand is really short sighted so his vision improved slightly. The doc suggested Aaron get glasses as well as contacts to give his eyes a rest each day given his amount of “screen” time.

So all in all we ordered glasses for me, glasses for Aaron and contacts for Aaron for the whole year. This, even after good insurance deductions, set us back a four figure sum.

On a daily basis this spend would work out to be about two dollars a day but it is definitely a luxury. We did not need a designer to make our glasses and contacts are not essential but we choose to spend. Why? Is it vanity? Is it to impress others? Is it because we just don’t need to think about it.

Think we did though and the thing that is so blatantly obvious is how many meals we could have bought or sponsored for those who need them so much more than we needed this.

The funny part of  the event is that the eye doc had to put contacts in my eyes so I could choose my new glasses with precise vision! I saw the glasses very well and choose a pair of Jimmy Choo’s but I also clearly saw myself without glasses for the first time in a decade. Man do I need a miracle face cream!

So scary the sorrow had to be drowned somehow and with no wine available  it had to be in spaghetti bolonaise!

Blessing # 213 – Seeing The Wrinkles

Yesterday we had an event that caused a bit of turmoil. Our smoke detector in the basement went off just as we were about to tuck into our dinner.

It was only the battery that needed replacement but as it is linked to the main alarm system this too started screeching.

It makes a noise that could be heard a mile off and if you can’t get it stopped then your in trouble as the fire department might show up. So we all start running left and right to get this stopped and of course the alarm company calls to see if we are OK.

Dibley was so petrified he peed all over the living room carpet.

We of course discovered that while we have 101 batteries we have no replacement battery for the alarm.

So after dinner Aaron and I were dispatched to buy the battery and a few spares as well as some pet pee cleaner upper for the carpet.

Those items set us back $30.

Now normally we would haven’t given this a second thought but that is a third of what we spent on all our food last weekend!

Certainly the pet pee cleaner is not an essential but a smoke alarm battery prices at $7.99 for one or $9.99 for two surely is important.

Wonder how many people who are crunched for cash might choose not to buy the battery if food was the alternative.

While at the store we ran into some very heavily discounted Halloween and Christmas candy and we are craving sweets. We resisted as it would still have made a big dent in our remaining $10 budget.

Our tummies were full of fried rice so it made that decision easier but if we had been hungry that choice may have been much harder.

Blessing # 212 – Wok Works Wonders

During the summer Aaron and I did our tour of the south and since then we have been making some tasty dishes we ate while there.

Some of our favorites can be found at the back of the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Yesterday we worked to our plan and achieved a good variety and balance. Our dinner of fried chicken with corn salad and freshly made biscuits was another good belly buster!

We weren’t at all hungry yet somethings were missing. When Antiques Roadshow came on I really wanted my glass of wine and Aaron was craving “meat”.

We both had to dig into the cookies but can’t say they satisfied what we were looking for. Dad didn’t complain at all!

Blessing # 211 – Southern Style

Aaron is back to school today but we are not back to porridge as he cannot stand it!

He tucked into « burgers » last night though that were loaded with oatmeal. They filled us up but we’re more like a pastie than a burger and looked like concrete.

We spent considerable more time than usual talking together. The focus was on meal planning for the days ahead trying to bring variety and balance.

We are already seeing a dent in our stock of Orange Juice that is our primary source of Vitamin C and wondering what we bought that we won’t use.

First day without wine and soda was not bad at all but the ice tea made as a substitute was horrendous. Can’t sacrifice on strength.

The hero dish of the day was the potato wedges but only because there was ketchup, mayo and sriracha to smother them.

Blessing # 210 – Seasoning

 

Aaron has been studying sociology and economics this term and has been talking a lot about both subjects.

He shows a lot of interest in human rights and now that he is working for $10 per hour has some sense of what managing on a minimum wage might mean.

We encourage his empathy and desire to learn more and so we read with interest about the challenge the Rev Carlton Baxter and his wife had undertaken recently back in our home diocese of Down and Dromore in Northern Ireland.

https://www.downanddromore.org/news/2018/11/A-Week-Without-gives-a-glimpse-of-some-tough-realities-#.XDH4LqROnYU

We talked a lot about this and decided after the holidays were over we too would set ourselves a challenge. We are going to see how long we can get by on $100. Our target is four weeks but after doing our first shopping we are already having doubts about that.

In our budget we have included all the food and beverages items we will eat including  essentials such as salt. We are giving Dad a break as this is therapeutic and allowing him to have his usual one whiskey a night. Apart from this we will have only water, orange juice, coffee and tea. Adios to soda, beer, wine and fizz!

I’ll continue to take my multivitamin each day and Aaron will take one too. Dad has decided he won’t. We have not counted the cost of the multivitamin in our budget.

We decided there were some items we were not going to give up. On Krishna’s list and mine coffee was number one. Instead of flavored coffee creamer Krishna is going to use milk and sugar. Mine is a nonissue as it is always black. Aaron needed meat so we decided to buy the cheapest on offer even if it meant in a bulk pack

We have discussed all our shopping needs at length and did all our shopping at Aldi. We spent $90 so we have $10 left for fresh items next week. The most expensive items was ground beef at $12 for 5.98 lbs, followed by chicken breast at $9.80 for 6.58 lbs and then ground coffee at $4.89 for 30.5 oz. We portioned and froze the meats which we recognize is a luxury not everyone may have so we have the advantage of bulk pricing.

Our pantry is a mine field of excess so we have segregated our budgeted foods into just three bins and started today.

We will share our ups and downs, what we learn, our mistakes and our discoveries.

 

Blessing # 209 – Working as a Family