$5 and no groceries

At first I was embarrassed to post this, but I think that it may serve as an encouragement to others at some point. We are not, in my humble opinion, truly suffering from the recession but we are feeling it.

Here's the story. I was ordering my veggies weekly from the organic delivery service. Well, that ran me about $50 a week. Sounds like a lot, but we were mainly only eating what came in the box which meant that my grocery bill was vegan, organic, and regulated for the most part. My husband suggested that we change to receiving orders every other week to save money. Even though I didn't like it I did it, recognizing that I can be a little spoiled at times. I am the only one that shops for grocery or cooks, thus, I am the only one that knows what it costs to feed the family. He, however, is the one that pays all the bills. This was a lesson for me in balance and learning to figure things out together. Last week was the off week. If not for Thanksgiving leftovers we wouldn't have had any food. So today I kept looking in my cabinets feeling discouraged and stressed because feeding my family falls to me. As I looked in my cabinet I saw pintos and boxes of cornbread. In the fridge I found 1/2 of a very large purple onion. I decided that I was going to make pintos, purple slaw, and cornbread. I didn't have eggs, cabbage, or mayo. Remember I had $5.

I went to the store and bought a small head of cabbage for $1.29 and then there was a problem. The smallest jar of mayo was $3. As I stood there trying to figure out what to do, I saw that there was a large jar of mayo that was 2 for $6 WITH A $.35 coupon!!! I took my two items to the front and with the coupon my total was $4.94.  As I drove home disappointed about not having eggs for cornbread I remembered something wonderful!!! I have egg replacer!!! Basically it is a vegan way to replace eggs! It's a flour and basically you just use 1.5 Tbsp replacer + 2 Tbsp water to equal 1 egg.

Long story short, too late I know, the meal was delicious AND healthy. Unfortunately my husband, the one that I was most excited to impress, got sick to his stomach and didn't eat any of it. I was so disappointed. I still popped my collar a bit at my ingenuity.