DAY 26:

Breakfast: Poptarts (easter egg hunt booty) and the last of the coffee.

Lunch: Leftover Hummus and baba ganoush from saturday

Snacks: Candy and junk from Easter.

I really thought we would drag out the food challenge a few more weeks.  I was hoping for six weeks, but instead we stopped at four.   Mr. A was willing to go a little longer, but the girls were increasingly growing picky about their dinners and the lack of fruit for snacks, despite the tasty snack items provided by some generous friends.   The food we were eating was gradually getting less and less nutritious, so I can’t say I really blame them.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to the grocery store and stocked up on new food.  I expected us to be a little more excited and greedy, but the whole thing was pretty low key.  We bought mountains of fruit and veggies which the girls demanded I feed them as soon as we got home.  I didn’t buy any meat (except for a couple logs of trail balogna that were marked down to $1 for Mr. A to take to work to eat  on nights when he has to work late) because we still have some stockpiled in the fridge.  Our first dinner was also unimpressive.  It took so long at the store fondling produce, I just threw together some spaghetti and a side of spinach & tomatoes.

I don’t know if we really learned any big lessons.  I learned that we don’t really depend very much on convenience food right now, I usually make our dinners from scratch.  I only got irritated when I had to figure out what to cook on the weekends (when Inormally don’t cook elaborate meals) and when I was in the middle of big involved house repair / preparation projects.  Then, the time it would take to cobble together something decent was extremely irritating.  Woe is me.

Maybe we would have learned more if we had been more strict about not eating out.  Restaurants were our biggest cheat, but we spent about half of what we normally spend for the family and we enjoyed the experiences a lot more.  I think there was actually only one weekend where we didn’t eat out at all, so the level of hardship is questionable.  I did discover that most of our weekend self-entertainment involves going out to eat, so without that crutch, Mr. A and I spent more time than usual staring at each other in boredom.

All in all, we saved about $300.  A respectable donation to the food bank, I think.  I am sorry we couldn’t offer more writhing and agony, but what can I say?  We got bored and moved on to another bigger project (the house).    I will try to write a little about that tomorrow.

Thanks for all the support and advice along the way.  Even though it is going out with a fizzle, we enjoyed the food challenge.