Day 1: I miss Starbucks.

So, this is officially day 1 for me, which means that so far I don't have a lot of profound insights into hunger or living on an absurdly limited food budget, but I think I may have gleaned a few pearls of wisdom to share.

First, a little bit of background information on me. I'm the website administrator & volunteer coordinator here at the Food Bank. Owing to a combination of living alone and not knowing how to cook, I rarely make grocery lists and never plan my meals out for the week. So, unlike Karolyn who presumably planned and color-coordinated all her meals (my mockery is fueled purely by jeaousy, I assure you), having to think about what I'm going to eat for an entire week in advance was pretty difficult for me. I think I've got it pretty well planned out so far, but foresight isn't exactly my forte so we'll see how that goes.

I still hadn't made a list when I finally went grocery shopping last night because, frankly, I had no idea what $21 would buy me. And even once I got there I still wasn't sure what to buy because, like I said earlier, I can't exactly cook (okay, maybe not "can't", more like "won't", but still). I ended up buying kind of a random amalgamation of ingredients that I figured I could somehow parlay into a week-long stock of delectable meals. Eggs, pasta, tuna, canned corn, cheese...as I shopped, my standards quickly slipped from "delectable" to "edible." I've since settled on somewhere around "digestible."

So far the hardest thing for me hasn't been hunger; I have yet to really experience that (keep in mind I'm up to lunch on my first day though, so we'll see how that pans out). The hardest thing has been having to THINK so much about food. Picking out what I'm going to eat has gone from being at best a pleasure, at worse a minor inconvinience, to being a total chore. There's a very small margin of error in this game and if I had to live like this I would get really discouraged, really fast. The planning takes a lot of thought and energy, and I'm picky about where I expend such energy and my weekly meal plan is not where I want to use it all up. I can really see how it would be easier to just forget trying to eat healthy on a budget and instead just settle on whatever's cheapest at Taco Bell.