Day 2: Reality Settles In

Day 2 brings on the reality of the fact that I've got 28 days to go with day 2 being no cake-walk. I did not have much time to experiment with rearranging the $30 worth of ingredients, so it was the same menu, round 2. The morning was a frenzy trying to cook two meals and help get kids out the door. But I made it. Definitely starting to feel some of the physiological effects of making such a drastic diet change. The stomach is churning a bit, similar to the effect of traveling to a different culture and adjusting to new foods. Getting some headaches, probably from the caffeine withdrawal? I stopped drinking coffee about 6 months ago, but I still enjoy black and green teas 2 or 3 times a day, so there's some degree of caffeine I'm coming off of. Another challenge is that the stew is not really carrying me to dinner time. I'm considering some kind of shift in strategy involving taking half of the oatmeal & raisins serving from the morning and moving it to an afternoon snack time. I'm looking into baked oatmeal recipes, but I don't think I'll have enough of the ingredients. Breakfast is definitely leaving me feeling a little heavy or bloated, or something. It may be due to the fact that the Vegetable Oil Spread has a bit of trans fats, so I'm considering cutting the tablespoon into a half tablespoon. When I got home this afternoon I was exhausted and crashed for about an hour. Then my hunger motivated me to get up and get the beans, rice and pasta going. It never tasted better. 

I didn't have time to take a photo of breakfast yesterday, but managed to grab a shot today, so here's breakfast from this morning, it's the same as yesterday. Like I said, not bad but too much oatmeal for one sitting. The egg/tortilla/season-all is delicious. 

Cost analysis. I thought it might be interesting to look at what each meal is costing me. 

Breakfast:

Egg & Corn Tortilla with seasoning: 11.5 cents

Oatmeal with raisins and sunflower seeds: 25.2 cents

Lunch:

Stew: 1/3 Ramen, Potatoes, Carrots, Cabbage: 17.7 cents

Corn Tortilla: 2.2 cents

Dinner:

Rice & Beans with Corn Tortilla: 28 cents

1/3 cup Pasta with teaspoon of tomato sauce: 5.6 cents

The other 9.8 cents (+/-) goes to lemon for my water, seasoning, vegetable oil spread, etc.

Prayer Focus: Pray for Venkatesh, a young boy we brought into Peace Gospel's India orphanage. His parents were lost to AIDS and he was surviving day to day on the streets. There are many others like him. Pray that funding would become available to sponsor more of them.

Estimated Savings for day 2: I'm on staff at my local church, and on Tuesdays we typically eat out together in between our staff meetings. One of our usual destinations is Berryhill Tacos. I would probably get a tamale plate and a Dr. Pepper, for about $9.50. Add that to my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's cost, and I total out at $15.50 saved for the orphanage today. My running total is now $30.85, which, in just two days, is already over an average month's wages among the poor of South Asia.