Hey, I'm still eating!

Challenge-wise it's been an interesting few days. I broke the breakfast mold and had Shreddies one day and waffles another. Cool, eh? I had dinner at my brother's again on Thursday, which made one day really cheap, but cooked dinner for myself and a friend on Sunday, which made that day more expensive and also served to even out the spending. There was also a delicious homemade apple-berry crumble which she generously brought for dessert. Friday's dinner was a lamb chop with roasted potatoes. Neither was seasoned, though I wished I had put some of my garlic on the chop. Carrying that lesson forward to Saturday, I wrapped a couple of margarined cloves of garlic in foil and threw them in the oven with a pork chop, giving me delicious roasted garlic to spread on my pork.

Weekend lunches are generally small or non-existent for me. I have breakfast later than usual in the morning and often begin running errands in the late morning or early afternoon, which means I will often skip lunch on those days or suffice by carrying something small in my pocket (like trail mix) to munch on while on the go to make it through 'til dinnertime. Anyhow, check out my spreadsheet (Click Here).

Now check out Sunday's meals:

Two over-easy eggs, a heap of hashbrowns with onions, banana, grapefruit half, and a half-cup or so of low-fat strawberry yogurt. $1.32


Spaghetti squash with pasta sauce (includes ground beef, onions, mushrooms, red pepper) and asparagus. About $3.42 per plate. Were I making it for myself, one plate would have brought my daily total to only $5.66.


$7.50 - Enough for Whom?

Blogger Andrew considers the difference between himself, a lean-built guy of average height and relatively low activity level, and a linebacker. Where Andrew might be fine on $7.50 considering who he is, would everyone be able to make it on that budget? Probably not. Maybe the government should be covering its bases and funding everyone for the 12,000-calorie Michael Phelps diet... If I were to hazard a guess, a formula might use numbers from a normalized distribution (often graphically represented as a bell curve) of diet costs where, let's say, 70% or so of the students would fall within the range of diet requirements that I am working to prove can be met for $7.50 or less. Delivering all OSAP students food funding for a caloric intake of the minority of highly active athletes is crazy and would push OSAP students' food budgets WAY over their fellow non-OSAP students' ability to meet the same dietary level. OSAP students, flush with cash, would likely eat out (and unhealthily) much more or would find many other non-food related things to do with the money. I have to stop arguing this particular matter now. It's just too silly.


"Mommy, I want it!"

Blogger Nick's thoughts on spending money eating out: "The student should not be dining out at restaurants several times per week unless they can afford it, but they should have the ability to treat themselves once in a while." My response: If you go ahead and treat yourself when you can't afford it, YOU are responsible for that. OSAP isn't responsible for your treats any more than OHIP is responsible for pec implants, no matter how badly I might need them. YOU are on the hook for it if you walk out of Baskin Robbins with a double scoop, instead of the No Frills with four litres of milk. (That said, if all goes well my budget will soon have enough left over to allow me to treat myself...imagine that!)

The story of how I learned at school to spend my money on food is also the story of how I lost my sweet tooth. It was about making choices and trying to make them good ones.