Day 1: Unexpected Bounty

Well, I survived Day 1, and with a few surprises to say the least. Weights and measures in the US Customary System have never really come intuitively to me. The whole fluid ounces vs. non-fluid ounces has thrown me off. For example, a cup is 8 ounces, but only in fluid terms. But it makes sense now that I've had to deal with it in a real life scenario (I've already told you I'm a total novice cook). So my point is, I had been making some of my calculations based on how many cups X ounces would produce. Well, fortunately for me (and for those of you who might be inclined to take the challenge with me) this turns out to my advantage. For example, I was thinking I would only get a small amount of oatmeal each morning (2.8 oz - which I erroneously was thinking would be a little less than half a cup). It turns out I actually get an entire measuring cup of oats per day, which turns out to produce over two cups of oatmeal after cooking. This also has played out to a bountiful yield on my brown rice and pinto beans, of which I prepared bulk batches today. Here's what I ended up with today:

Breakfast:

• Two "servings" of oatmeal (1 cup produced about 2 cups cooked) with 1/8th cup of raisins, 1 teaspoon of sunflower seeds, and 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable oil spread. (To my joy, it turned out that my 1/3rd lb. of sunflower seeds measured out to exactly 30 teaspoons). I'm used to sweetening my oatmeal so it was a different experience but one I think I can grow to enjoy. Definitely filling.
  
• Over-easy fried egg on top of a toasted corn tortilla, topped with 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil spread, seasoned with a few dashes of Season All. Delicious!

Lunch:

• 1 generous bowl of Ramen Noodle Stew. I was pleased to discover that you can quite easily cut a Ramen noodle brick into thirds with a sharp knife. I'll post the exact recipe later, but suffice to say I used about 1/4th of a medium sized potato, chopped up along with 1/6th of a large carrot, one leaf of cabbage, the 1/3rd of the ramen noodles, the 1/3rd of the ramen seasoning, and a few dashes of, you guessed it, Season All. The real bonus hit me when I was looking over at my pinto beans in the crock pot to see how they were coming along for dinner. It hit me that there had to be some kind of nutritional value in the "stock" the simmering beans were producing. Sure enough, there was plenty there, and I added a couple of cups of this to the stew, making it much more stout than I had anticipated. This really turned out a lot tastier than I had expected. Left me feeling a little hungry but nonetheless satisfied with the quantity and the taste.
  
• Of course, I enjoyed one of my 3 daily corn tortillas with the meal.

Dinner:

• 1.5 cups cooked brown rice seasoned with Season All.
  
• 1 cup cooked pinto beans, seasoned with Season All.
  
• 1 cup cooked pasta shells with one teaspoon tomato sauce. 
  
• Made a delicious beans and rice taco with the corn tortilla, and had plenty of beans and rice left over to enjoy once that was consumed. 

Interesting yield notes:

• 2 cups of brown rice yielded 6 cups cooked (made enough for the next 4 days).
  
• 2.5 cups of pinto beans yielded 6 cups cooked (made enough for the next 6 days).

Prayer focus for day 1: Pray general blessings over our native teams in India, Myanmar and Nepal. Pray for provision for their work that they might be well equipped to reach and serve those in need both spiritually and physically. Pray for their protection from those who wish them harm. 

Estimated Savings for day 1: Today I probably would have eaten out at my favorite Indian Restaurant for lunch: Sri Balaji Bhavan, which would have cost me about $7.75. I might have purchased a tall hot tea at Starbucks at about $1.60. Note: Each day I will add what I'll call my estimated normal daily grocery cost, which I am estimating to be about $7/day. To be honest this is a guess, so please drop a comment if you think I'm too low or too high. So for today, after subtracting the $1 spent, it totals out to $15.35 saved for the orphanage.