I wasn't done with that

Brunch: Ham, eggs, gouda and toast - I think I just have one more day with the ham - and some Ovaltine. ($0)
Dinner: I was really hungry by the end of my 4-6:30 class so I was thinking about the one more meal of lasagna I had left still from last Wednesday.  I got home, went to the fridge, and it was gone! The garbage comes on Wednesday mornings and my roommate decided to clean out the fridge, and evidently some people think after a week you should throw things away. Those people aren't Eklunds.  Instead I had a quesadilla with gallo pinto and some butternut squash (left from the potluck Saturday). ($0)

Another Monday

Breakfast: Eggs, ham, gouda and toast again.  I'm not ignoring oatmeal but I don't think the ham my mom sent home with me will last much longer. ($0)
Lunch: Last piece of pizza from dinner last night. ($0)
Dinner: Granola bar (my mom likes to pack these in my luggage), the fist ingredient was "chicory root fiber"- I don't know what that is.  And an orange. ($0)
Snack: April brought home chocolate cake! ($0)

Bountiful Sunday

Breakfast: Multi-grain Cheerios, probably oatmeal is starting to feel left out. ($0)
Lunch: Usually the first Sunday of the month is potluck day at church but they decided to have one this week too, so I got a lovely free lunch of random things. ($0)
Dinner: I went to pizza with my friend Heather the pizza was good and then they had this dessert thing that was amazing, something with puff pastry, apples, cinnamon ice cream, and caramel sauce.  She paid but I did pick up the tip ($4).

Since I went grocery shopping my week total isn't as impressive as last week but I have most of that food left.  Total $39.71which is still less than $2/meal.

Potluck Saturday

Breakfast: I had to leave room for a big lunch so had Mulitgrain Cheerios ($0)
Lunch: Potluck-I was a little skeptical but people kept coming and bringing delicious things, mostly of the Latino persuasion.  I provided gallo pinto.  My favorite dish my friend from the Midwest brought what she called "candied meat" which is little smokies wrapped in bacon with some sort of brown sugar glaze, I kept myself at 2 but could have eaten the whole plate.  I did get to snag some of the leftovers so they will appear in other meals this week I'm sure.  ($0)
Snack: I went to Starbucks and paid full price but on a gift card I got for Christmas with a note - use this so you don't have to get strangers to buy you food.  ($0)
Dinner: Potlucks are great because you can overeat and then skip some meals altogether. ($0)

Friday Again

Breakfast: Same as yesterday - egg, ham, gouda and toast ($0)
Lunch: Lasagna again ($0)
Dinner: Gallo Pinto - Nicaraguan style beans and rice. I figured out why Nicaraguans eat this so much it is cheap!  I bought a pound of dried beans for $1 and had rice for free from Morgan.  I only used like 1/3 of the beans to make a huge pot so really the meal was like $.10 but since I already counted the cost in my groceries ($0)
Dessert: I went grocery shopping again today because we're having people over tomorrow and I wanted to make cookies.  So I bought flour and sugar but then my recipe said "if you use self rising flour omit baking soda and salt." I took that as "recipe will be OK with self rising flour" and we have a bag of that that I never know what to do with.  So I decided to use that before my new flour, and was it a good idea? NO they are so salty and terrible and I'm mad because I used the rest of my butter so I can't make a second batch.  ($7.34)

Shopping Offers Variety

Breakfast: The morning after grocery shopping is quite exciting. I was lying in bed wondering which oatmeal I should have then it hit me that I now have eggs!  One egg, a little ham and gouda with a piece of toast on the side makes for an exciting change in my life. ($0)
Lunch: Leftover lasagna and my last zucchini, I sauteed it to make up for its lack of firmness.  ($0)
Dinner: Thursdays I have class in the evening so eat on campus.  I had 2 Ak-Mak crackers that I bought in August because the reminded me of my grandpa, an apple sauce (one day the McClures loaded me with extra food they had lying around their house and I came home with quite a few of applesauce cups) and a pear (the Mexican market had them yesterday 2lbs for $.99). I also went to Starbucks and finished off a gift card from a few months back, evidently there wasn't actually enough money on the gift card but the guy said not to worry about it keeping my daily spending at 0 (Thank you!).  ($0)

Binge Eating & Grocery Shopping

Breakfast: Confession,  I totally binged this morning.  I knew I wanted to make dinner for my roommates and that they probably wouldn't appreciated ham zucchini surprise so going to the grocery store was imminent.  I splurged and had cold cereal - a big bowl of multi-grain Cheerios.  I was impressed that they weren't stale, I guess living in a super dry climate has its advantages. I've been avoiding cold cereal because it requires more milk than the dash that goes into oatmeal.  So alas there went the remainder of Raquel's milk donation.  ($0).
Lunch: I didn't have my cereal til noon so I got to skip this one. (0 calories and $0)
Snack: I went to the Mexican grocery store and saw that those liquid yogurt drinks were on sale so I had one ($.69)
On the note of grocery shopping I couldn't figure out how to put in the cost because most things aren't consumed in one meal. So I'll just put the total spent in here and we'll see how long it lasts.  I have high hopes, this is the first time I've been shopping since November 17th. ($27.68)
Dinner: I made lasagna to share with my roommate.  To make it balanced we also shared an orange.  My body doesn't quite know what to do with a normal meal.  ($0)

Mac and Cheesy

Breakfast: Oatmeal with raisins and pecans. Surprise! ($0)
Lunch: It was a dreary day. I made Whole Food's mac and cheese (free from Morgan) and the remainder of my snap peas ($0)
Dinner: The rest of the mac and cheese, the rest of an avocado, and an orange ($0)

Week 2

Breakfast: Oatmeal with pecans and raisins. ($0)
Snack:  I met my friend Lani at the park and she brought me a chai and a cookie ($0)
Linner: I had to leave for class at 4:15 so at a bigger meal before I left.  Rice (Morgan gave me a huge bag of cooked frozen rice), ham and zucchini once again in the skillet.  The rice really added something. ($0)
Snack: Class got out at 8 and is 40 minutes away so on my drive home I had a granola bar. ($0)
Snack 2:  When I got home I had Ovaltine. ($0)

Hello Freezer

Breakfast: I was running late for church so didn't have time to make oatmeal but I did remember some frozen pancakes I had in the freezer.  The beginning of November I had half a can of pumpkin to use so I made a batch of pumpkin pancakes, it was a really big batch and I got bored of eating them so the remainder were frozen.  I stuck some in the toaster to eat plain on the way to church. ($0)
Snack: There's always all sorts of stuff at church for snacks, I had a cookie and a hard boiled egg. ($0)
Lunch: I slept through normal lunch time so ate some more pancakes on the way to evening service ($0)
Dinner: After church #2 I was hungry so went to Frontier - the cheapest restaurant I could think of - with my roommate.  I paid for us both ($7) but while there this guy gave us 2 $75 tickets to see the South Pacific so really the $7 had a $157 value.

Week 1 total cost: $14 (and $13 of that was me + 1 so really only $7.50 was spent on myself)

Why don't coupons work in New Mexico? Was the lady at Starbucks confirming my belief that it really isn't part of America?

Breakfast: I made real oatmeal again but something went wrong - I still ate it. ($0)
Lunch: Raquel made some interesting tortillas, I made a quesadilla with them and she gave me an avocado on the side.  I had an orange too ($0)
Snack: I met with a friend at Starbucks to do homework, I had a voucher to get a free drink from filling out a survey.  For some reason they said I couldn't use the voucher (I think because I earned it in CA and NM is an international location).  They still gave me my drink for free and let me keep the voucher ($0)
Dinner:  One of my first shopping trips I bought a 4 pack of garden burgers that I hadn't eaten yet.  I had one of them with some gouda and avocado on top.  I also cooked up the expiring snap peas and had them on the side ($0)
Snack: I went to this show thing Saturday night and was super thirsty so bought a Sprite ($1)

Friday Funday

Breakfast: My roommate Raquel said I could have her milk so I made real oatmeal with raisins. ($0)
Lunch: My friend Heather had a coupon so we went to the Olive Garden for unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks. ($0)
Dinner: Evidently lunch filled me up, I had Ovaltine for dinner while watching Wheel of Fortune.  ($0)

A tribute to father John

In my dream I had purchased eggs, milk and tortillas, in reality I purchased nothing.
Breakfast: Instant oatmeal with pecans and a cup of green tea. ($0)
Lunch: Ham, zucchini (from Morgan), and gouda cooked in a skillet with some oregano.  This meal was lame and reminded me of how similar I am to my father.  He's all about finding random "balanced" things in the fridge and cooking them together in a skillet. ($0)
Dinner: I used to get free dinners on Thursdays but now I have classes from 4-9:30 so have to pack a meal.  I made PB&J with old bread (from Morgan at least 2 months ago) and the remainder of my peanut butter and jelly from my first shopping trip back in August.  I don't think the jam was good anymore.  I also had some snap peas (from Morgan) which was quite exciting because they are usually one of my favorite raw vegetables, these ones may have been on their way out. ($0)
Snack: Dinner was pretty depressing so when I got home I decided to make cinnamon toast! something taught by my Nica roommates.  You take toast, put on a little butter and sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar and it's like a churro...NOT.  This was totally dissatisfying and looking at the butter in the fridge made me appreciate my dad's obsession with using a butter knife. ($0)

Happy Birthday Mom

Breakfast: Along with oranges my mom sent me back with a chunk of ham so for breakfast I had that with some expired gouda (from Morgan) and an egg (borrowed from Raquel) ($0)
Lunch: Cinnamon bagel and orange. ($0)
Dinner: Morgan's church has dinners on Wednesday night, this week was chilli, bread, oranges and apples, and pecan pie.  ($0 - evidently you can give a donation but I didn't bring any money)

Do things really expire?

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal with some almonds. I'm a fan of instant oatmeal it only requires water.  ($0)
Lunch: Cinnamon bagel thing and orange.  ($0)  This really is a true cost of 0.  My friend Morgan works with a food co-op and sometimes I, through her, get donations of expired foods.  I think she gave me these cinnamon things the week of Thanksgiving, which goes to show that expiration dates mean nothing.
Dinner:  This one's a winner.  Morgan found some Nica cheeses in her freezer from approximately 2 years ago and invited me over to enjoy them.  We attempted, and failed, at frying cheese which wasn't super surprising because we failed last time we tried to fry cheese too. 

Fried cheese doesn't normally look like this.

Besides frying cheese she also had quesillo cheese. For non-Nicaraguans you might not know about quesillo and this description probably won't make you want to try it.  You take quesillo cheese (kinda like string cheese) place it in a corn tortilla, add some pickled onions, and pour on some crema (like sour cream but more liquid), all of this goes into a plastic bag that you eat out of. 

 This is Morgan and her roommate Shirley eating quesillo.

Since cheese alone doesn't make a meal, Morgan also discovered that you can now buy canned red refried beans in America so we had some of those too.  ($0)

 Lovely red beans from a can!

Dessert: By dessert Morgan's roommate Megan came home she likes whipped cream so made a bowl of bananas with whipped cream and powdered chocolate for the three of us to share. It was pretty good considering the amount of work that went into it. ($0)

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to Albuquerque - the first day dreading coming up with meals.

Breakfast: I ate before my flight, I'm sure it was something exciting like cereal. ($0)
Lunch: Back at my apartment after a 5 week break.  Raquel (my roommate) offered me some beans she had made, I found some corn tortillas and shredded cheddar cheese in the fridge and had myself a little quesadilla.  My mom packed my luggage with oranges so I had one of those too. ($0)
Dinner:  My friend Heather took me to dinner at a real restaurant.  We got amazing duck egg rolls, I also got duck ravioli's - I guess duck is in season ($0)
Dessert - We went to to fro yo.  I paid.  ($6)