Day 26: Soup & Stir Fry Improvisations

It was a long day so I don't have much energy left to blog. But I will talk about a couple of good meals I had today. I created a new soup for lunch which I thought was tasty and filling. For lack of a better title, I'll call it Spicy Corn Chowder Egg Drop Potato & Noodle Soup. I don't have any true corn, but I used a corn tortilla chopped into little squares to mimmic the flavor. I used 2.5 oz. mashed potatoes to give it the chowdery texture. And of course the spicy seasoning from half of a pack of the Hot Chili Ramen flavoring. Man that stuff goes a long way. I would recommend buying that pack of Ramen at $0.15 just for the little flavoring packet. I used my rules from previous Egg Drop recipe to add the eggs, and wha-la, it was pretty simple. My wife has some friends in town so she had the camera on an outing, so I had to use my camera phone to capture the moment. Not that great, but at least for documentary purposes... Cost: 27 cents. 

For dinner, I lacked the creativity of the last few days, but I was hungry and tired-- I just needed to make some survival food. So I threw together about 3/4 cup refried beans. I chopped some carrots and cabbage and "fried" that with about 1.5 cups of brown rice. I made my bean broth reduction sauce again and added that for additional flavor/texture. Seasoned both with Season-All and added a corn tortilla. Made a little refried bean taco from that. For as fast as it was, and as inexpensive as it cost, this was a very satisfying meal. Cost: 30 cents.

Prayer focus: Pray for Peace Gospel's work in the slums. Especially for further development of our clean water delivery projects. Over 22% of India's urban population consists of slum dwellers— those who live in make-shift homes and get by on less than $1 per day. This makes India home to the largest slum population on the planet, with over 60 million slum residents. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1,600 children die every day in India due to diseases caused by contaminated water. Peace Gospel is laboring to deliver clean water to those living in the slums, where water contamination problems are rampant. Providing clean water for the poor creates economic opportunity because they can focus on getting back to work rather than spending so much time looking for water.

Estimated Savings for Day 26: I would not be surprised if today I would have been found at Sri Balaji Bhavan were I not on the challenge. I've already blogged about it a few times, but if you're newer to the blog, I'll bring you up to speed: if you live in Houston, you should hereby be informed that there is no better Indian restaurant in town in terms of authenticity to true South Indian vegetarian cuisine. Not to mention value. I usually spend about $8 there and have enough leftovers for dinner. Add this to my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's actual cost, and I've saved $14 for my orphanage donation today. My running total has now broken the $400 mark at $400.41.