Day Fourteen
Monday, February 23, 2009
Nothing much to report for today—didn’t buy anything and ate the same thing as yesterday (steel-cut oats with toasted sunflower seeds for Meal One and fried rice with chicken, egg, carrot, onion, garlic for Meal Two).
Tomorrow I’ll be shopping with some new friends from the local NBC affiliate who called and want to do an online feature on my project.
I considered taking them to the carniceria since it is likely to be much more video-worthy than getting spinach at the Food Lion, but I have a multiple meals that depend on spinach so I’m a little torn. Not sure what I’m going do. Earlier I was sure I was going to do the carniceria, but right now I’m leaning toward the spinach.
So stay tuned for tomorrow’s exciting episode…
Less Is Enough 
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 10:08 am
go for the carniceria!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I decided to stay true to my plan and go to Food Lion. Otherwise it would have thrown everything off leaving me with weird amounts and combinations of leftovers that I wasn’t prepared for.
It totally would have been better at the carniceria, because they would have been able to film inside (Food Lion is not into camera crews in their stores) and I could have gotten a lot more and I would have exposed people to the beauty of the carniceria and the hot-off-the-press tortilleria.
But alas, it was not to be.
At the same time, I feel like this highlights my strategy better, showing how you can get one thing for a dollar and use it to make 3 or 4 things. So that’s what I did.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 6:26 pm
You seriously have a fresh tortilleria there? Nothing more tasty with a touch of salt. We must make a stop next time I’m in Durham, which won’t likely be too long because my kids are obsessed with Loco Pops. We bizarrely have a knockoff here in Cold Spring called GoGo Pops. I guess Loco was too loco for these parts. (By the way, it’s Molly here – strangely attached to my SuperGrover handle thanks to the evil FaceBook, and it comes up automatically here.)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Thanks for the ID — I can actually see your email with the comment so I knew it was you.
I discovered the tortilleria when I was doing research for the project. I haven’t actually had any yet, but it smells amazing. On Saturday I went, and got a dollar’s worth for my friend Ann so I could see how much you get for a dollar. (It’s a pretty good amount — they’re $1.29/lb). It’s also great because I can go and ask for a dollar’s worth and they’re totally fine with that. And they give you this beautiful little paper-wrapped package of warm tortillas. So that’s on the list for the end of next week, I’m really looking forward to it.
Monday, March 2, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Could you make tortillas or tortilla-like crepes out of your cornmeal or the jiffy corn mix for cheaper?
Sharon
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 12:02 am
I could probably do a bunch of things cheaper, but it would require a larger up-front investment. For instance, I can’t really bake because I can’t buy oil, butter, flour, sugar, baking powder with only a dollar a day.
I could have structured the project so that I bought those up front and charged myself the unit cost, but that would have involved math, which I was trying to avoid. Also that brings up a question of how much the unit cost really is, since it depends on the quantity you bought in the first place.
Also part of my point is to show that eating cheaply doesn’t require a huge amount of work (going to 3 stores to save $.20 notwithstanding) and you can eat regular food, so I’m trying to work within those parameters. And I’d just as soon buy muffin mix and eat muffins and buy tortillas when I want tortillas.