Day 15: Vegetarian Fish Tacos

Today was a little more slow-paced so I actually had some time to experiment with some ideas on rearranging my ingredients. Andrea posted a comment about hard boiling eggs for variety. For those of you following this blog, you know I'm a total novice cook, so I had to google how to prepare a hard-boiled egg. Evidently there are a lot of opinions on the matter. I chose one that seemed most logical (#5 on this page), and wound up with great results. Oh, and it was my "bonus egg" day, so I got to enjoy a hard-boiled egg at lunch, and a fried egg at dinner! I skipped oatmeal yesterday, so this morning I was blessed with a double portion of raisins and sunflower seeds. It was approaching muesli status - mouth-watering! 

But my big breakthrough is a new creation I'm calling vegetarian fish tacos! I know, it's a long shot, but if you were in my world, you would completely relate. Here's the deal... I was trying to think of a way to freshen up the taco experience. So I laid out all of my ingredients, and it hit me that fish tacos, which I love, include corn tortillas and fresh cabbage as two of their stand-out ingredients. I thought, yesss! I can do that! I boiled chopped potatoes to add to my beans and brown rice, placed the chopped cabbage on top, touched it up with a healthy dose of Season-All, and wha-la, I had vegetarian fish tacos (budget style) on my hands! I just imagined the potatoes as being the fish, and I think I actually tricked my mouth! I had skipped my breakfast taco in light of my oatmeal bliss, so I had an extra corn tortilla available and just went ahead and made two of these new little delicacies. I added the hard-boiled egg with a touch of Season-All, threw in some chilled carrot slices and I had an amazing new experience on my menu. Best part, what you see here cost only 27 cents (and each taco cost only 8 cents)!

Prayer focus: Let's pray today for India's continuing struggle with leprosy. Over 1.5 million Indians suffer from the disease. This represents 63% of the world's total cases of leprosy. I have had the opportunity to meet some of these individuals. It's disheartening to learn that the social effects of the disease are oftentimes more difficult than the physical impact. Pray that they could receive medical treatment and that education on the matter would lead their loved ones to stop the practice of disowning them. 

Estimated Savings for Day 15: On Mondays I typically take my 4 year old son out to lunch since he's not in school yet. He likes to come along to get some Indian food with me. I would have probably ordered my usual Madras Thali plate with a cup of chai for about $7.75. I also would have likely been by Fioza for some late afternoon tea at about $2. Add that to my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's actual cost, and I'm looking at $15.75 saved for my orphanage donation today. My running total is now up to $236.62.