Day 3: Spreading Out the Calories

Day 3... 10% of the challenge completed! Today I tried borrowing from my "rich" meals to give to my "poor" meal and to create a snack time; a redistribution of wealth, of sorts. I took half a cup of cooked brown rice from my dinner and added it to my lunchtime stew. I took half of the oatmeal & raisins amount away from breakfast and prepared that as a snack at 3 pm. Although I'm still hungry at times during the day, I thought this worked out really well to sort of spread the calories more evenly throughout the day. My headaches were diminished, and my intestinal turbulence seemed to be on the mend. However the vegetable oil spread I'm using to fatten up breakfast is still a problem, I think. I tried reducing it from a tablespoon to half a tablespoon, but it still left that sticky oily flavor in my mouth. It's the kind of oily feeling you get when you eat too much movie popcorn (does anyone else have a clue what I'm talking about?) I think it's the trans fats in the spread. Mind you this is not margarine, but like a cooking spread. I got it because it was less than half the cost of the margarine sticks, and real butter was way out of my budget. I think I might try cooking a smaller sliver of it into the fried egg tomorrow morning, and not using it in the oatmeal (I've been doing both). At this point though, I have to say I might have been better served in using that $0.59 for two more tomato sauce cans at Fiesta. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. 

I had said I would post my receipts when I could find some time. However I lost my receipt from Dynasty, where I purchased the carrots and cabbage, so you'll just have to trust me on that one. Also to note here, when I got to the register, I realized I had gone slightly over on the sunflower seeds (by $0.02) and also a tad bit over on the pinto beans (by $0.05). It was hard to read fractions of ounces on the analog scale! Here you go:

Parenthetical... Rewind back to the eve of Day 1... Sunday night I went to one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants (Mai's on Milam) for my last meal before the challenge. My fortune cookie had the message "Your contribution is significant." What a great message! For all of us!

Prayer focus: Pray for the government leaders of India, that they might have a stronger desire to enforce their constitution by maintaining religious freedoms and protecting religious and ethnic minorities. Some state governments within India have demonstrated a pretty bad record on abuse of human rights and flagrant discrimination against Christians and Dalits ("Untouchables").

Estimated Savings for Day 3: With 6 kids, sometimes it's hard to prepare breakfast for yourself, let alone your kids. Sometimes I crater to the temptation of convenience by grabbing breakfast on the go. I might have stopped at Chick-fil-a today to indulge on a chicken biscuit with hash browns, at a price of about $2.50. I would likely have been back to Sri Balaji Bhavan, the best restaurant in the city, for my usual $7.75 purchase. Add in my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's actual cost, and I end up with $16.25 saved to donate to the orphanage. My running total is now at $47.10.