You know when you go on a trip and you forget your toothpaste or something else and you get angry with yourself because you knew you were going to forget something and despite that, you still forgot it? Then you have to go to a local store and pay an outrageous price for whatever you forgot because you need it. It is even worse when you do it while trying to eat well on $1 a day.

I knew that I would forget something when heading out to the house sitting job and I was right. I left the 100% grape/peach fruit juice that I had been using for flavoring my morning oatmeal and the spicy V8 juice I had been using to flavor my rice in the refrigerator. The problem is that when eating on $1 a day, you can't just go to the store and replace what you forgot. I guess I'll just have to do without for the next 5 days.

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This is part of a month long challenge to eat well while spending an average of only $1 a day on food. You can find the beginning and the rules of this challenge here

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The good thing was that a good night's sleep and getting settled into the place curbed the munchies that I had yesterday. I really think the issue is the two morning meals. That really seems to help reduce my cravings in the late afternoon and I think that even after this challenge is over, that I am going to continue that eating pattern because I think it will greatly cut down on the junk snacking I did far too often before beginning this challenge.

Breakfast

Since my grape/peach juice wasn't available to flavor the early morning oatmeal, I decided to try the CaprSun to do the same thing. Big mistake. It ended up tasting worse than not having any flavoring at all — and that is a pretty difficult thing to accomplish. I'm not sure exactly why, but it just gave it a really strange taste. Suffice to say, I won't be trying that again.

For the larger breakfast, I ended up frying up a couple of eggs and placed them on toast (using the salt in the bottom of the tortilla chip bag that I polished off for flavoring) and then had a bowl of Corn Flakes with banana on top:

day 20 breakfast

Lunch

I decided to use my last can of tuna to make a tuna salad sandwich for lunch. I cut up half a tomato and a stalk of celery and added that to the tuna with a bit of Miracle Whip. The celery is on its last legs for freshness, so I also took another two stalks, cut them up and added cream cheese to them (there are two more left and I will have to use them right away before they go bad). I also had one of the Wheat Thin sample packages and a CapriSun juice:

day 20 lunch

Dinner

I am so far behind in my list of things I need to get done that i actually forgot about dinner until about 8:00 pm because I was concentrating so hard to catch up. At that point, I just wanted something easy and light to eat. I boiled up some spaghetti noodles and placed the leftover tuna salad i had for lunch on top to make a tuna pasta salad:

day 20 dinner

I have been disappointed with the deals available this week. I thought that I was going to be able to stock up on Pillsbury biscuits, but they excluded all the lower priced items from the sale putting them out of reach of my $1 a day challenge. I'm still hugely disappointed that the coupon for free lunch meat from Kraft doesn't yet exist in any of the stores I have visited. I will have to go through the sales circulars again and see if I can find a deal that I missed before because I am going to have to begin adding some more food soon.

This is the current list of what I have purchased:

Money Spent $16.57
Money left to spend: 14.43 ($2 must be spent at CVS)
Retail Value of everything bought: $500.63

3 sample packs of Maxwell House Vanilla Carmel Latte
4 sample packages of Wheat Thins Sundried Tomato & Basil
3 packages (small) Fig Newtons
1 jar Miracle Whip
1 potato
1 mystery purchase
1/3 lb ground beef
4 tomatoes on vine
2 broccoli crowns
1 loaf of bread
2 jars of Classico pasta sauce
2 Safeway brand pasta (spaghetti and rotini)
1 celery stalk
2 bags tortilla chips
3 cans tuna
1 bottle Welch's grape & peach 100% juice
1 bottle V8 Fusion fruit / vegetable drink
1 bottle V8 spicy vegetable drink
2 boxes of Caprisun fruit drinks (10 packs)
1 jar of salsa
1 bag of black beans
2 half gallons of milk
36 boxes of cereal
2 dozen eggs
2 avocados
14 bananas
2 boxes of Quaker Instant oatmeal
55 packs of Philadelphia Cream Cheese Minis
1 package of Knudsen Light sour cream
10 apples
2 lbs of carrots
8 boxes (small) of Wheat Thins
2 jars of Skippy All Natural peanut butter
2 cans of pork and beans
1 bag of long grain brown rice
2 packages of Mission 100% whole wheat tortillas (10 count each)

Donated Food / other items to Food Bank that was purchased with my $1 a day

3 sample packs of Maxwell House Vanilla Carmel Latte
1 Stayfree pantiliner package
1 Kotex U tampon package
5 Bayer children's aspirin
2 sticks of deodorant
4 bottles Windex multi-surface cleaner
1 can of Pork & Beans
32 boxes of cereal
50 packs of Philadelphia Cream Cheese Minis
4 boxes (small) of Wheat Thins
2 Scrubbing Bubbles Extend-A-Clean bathroom cleaner
2 Scrubbing Bubbles Extend-A-Clean bathroom cleaner refill

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The Beginning ::: Day 21: Peanut Butter Revelation

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