Challenging the Bitches: Maria's Challange - Day 2

I still haven't spent a penny on food!

Yesterday I made coffee in my coffee maker, even thought it was my first day back from spring break, daylight savings, and pouring rain. All I wanted was a nice hot latte that I didn't have to make. But I filled up two travel mugs instead and went on my (not-so) merry way. I just got a new hand-me-down coffee maker that can be programmed to brew at a certain time. I can't figure out exactly how to set it, so I try a different button every night and then every morning when my alarm goes off I lay there trying to smell coffee to see if maybe this time I figured it out. Still no luck, but it usually gets me out of bed to check and see if it worked. It's like waiting for Christmas. Once I do figure it out hopefully I will get out of bed out of fear of my house burning down if I oversleep.

I am not much of a breakfast person; the thought of cereal and yogurt before I've been awake for at least two hours makes me feel like that girl in the exorcist. Any other breakfast foods cannot be made by zombies, thus I don't make breakfast before the zombie-ness wears off, which is usually much after I have left the house already. Yesterday I grabbed a granola bar for breakfast and ended up eating it during class.

For lunch I had leftover stir-fry and rice. As soon as I went into the lounge to grab it from the fridge, I noticed a giant spread of delicious-looking sandwiches and brownies that were leftover from some event that had just finished. I couldn't help but laugh about the irony of bringing my lunch, doing this challenge, and having to bypass this phenomenal spread of french bread, gourmet deli meats, oozing with mayonnaise, mustard, and topped with crispy iceburg lettuce*. So I put my pyrex in the microwave and ate my leftovers. It was really quite delicious, just as good as the night before, and I soon forgot about the heavenwiches.

When I got home, I knew I had a few hours before dinner because Dan doesn't get home until 8:45 or so on Mondays. We had company for dinner (one of the other bitches and her husband and daughter) so I wanted to make something tasty to snack on. I remembered the sage-fontina grilled cheese sandwich triangles that I had made for the super bowl, and I was thrilled that I had all of the ingredients. I made up the sandwiches, and when our company came they also brought some appetizers. Delicious way to pass the time.

When dinner rolled around, we had Cajun Chicken Gumbo that I made in the slow cooker. I got the recipe from this cookbook, which is a great resource for slow cooking. It has a TON of recipes, many of which I had no idea you could make in the slow cooker. I also made some brown rice over which I served the gumbo. Unfortunately my "garden fresh okra" was actually "gross moldy okra" so I couldn't put it in. While okra is key to gumbo, I don't particularly like it because if you overcook or undercook it it can be slimy and stringy and gross, so it wasn't devastating that I couldn't use it.

Dinner was delicious. I had prepared it the night before and Dan put it in the crock pot around 1, so it cooked for about eight hours. It took a little while to make because I had to make a roux, but it was worth it. Spicy and tasty. With plenty left over for lunch!

For dessert, my sister brought some fudge from the Chatham Candy Manor, which was scrumptious, as usual.

I found my challenge to be fairly easy on this second day. If I hadn't been doing the challenge I probably would have bought a coffee in the morning (and probably upgraded to a latte). If I didn't have lunch of leftovers from the night before I may have bought lunch. Additionally, we probably would have gone out to dinner instead of coming to my house. This challenge saved me a LOT of money today. Three meals' worth! And it was delicious and probably significantly more healthy. Hooray!


*some sandwiches may be changed to protect identity. and add allure.