Live Below the Line: Pre-gaming

Most of our meals are at home, so I already spend a decent amount of time every week with food-prep activities -- menu planning, grocery shopping, and all kinds of cooking and baking. I didn't expect the $1.50 challenge to be so much extra work, but it has been already.

We're starting the challenge tomorrow, but the prep work began last week. It took me 3+ hours of sitting down and literally pinching pennies to get our $22.50 balanced into enough semi-healthy meals for the next five days. I'm used to having to adjust some to make sure we have everything we need every week, but this week everything is calculated down to the last cent!

This afternoon I shopped for the items we didn't have already at home (potatoes, fake cheese, soy milk, bananas, onions, canned tomatoes) and I measured out all the other ingredients we'll use over the course of the next five days. I also baked a loaf of banana bread for tomorrow and Tuesday's breakfast, started a loaf of no-knead bread, and began soaking the red kidney beans that make up one of our lunches.

I can't say I'm excited to eat "imitation pasteurized process cheese food" (that's what the label says, no joke), but I think this is going to be a good opportunity to think past our own lives and realize how blessed we really are.