An apple a day keeps the teacher away!

Someone was hungry. Hmmm, but how to start the day.... Our old friend oatmeal arrived on the scene just in time to help wake up our groggy troops.

Shake the feathers from your hair my pretties. It's breakfast time. Good thing everyone likes this particular breakfast of champions.....( sorry Wheaties) we have at least 7 more pounds of this lovely grain to go. We can do it.

Super charged and ready to go, our little guy catches the true spirit of community by offering his good buddy a bit of sippy cup refreshment on a hot summer's day. Our experiment is paying off already!

In the last few days we heard tell of free kids lunches. In a few locations in our town there's suppose to be free lunch for kids 1-18 years throughout the summer. Kids eat free, adult admission is $2. We tracked down these whereabouts and Papa J headed out with the three older kids while Mom put the baby down for his nap. We had plans to feed the kids this way and Aleli and James would eat leftovers. On the way there the kids spotted an awesome new fresh juice and smoothie shop offering free samples and discounts as part of their opening. Today we could only participate in the sampling, but you can bet we'll be back in a few weeks to support this business and enjoy the fruits of their...... well, fruit!

Juice-O-Rama shares some healthy, SA-WEET flavorful tasters.

Inside JuiceOrama we love that you can also buy some locally grown, organic produce from Amy's Farm. http://www.amysfarm.com/ This farm gives educational tours to kids and grown ups and is a wonderful place to start venturing into food production and/or local food sourcing if you're from these parts. This shop is headed in a really good direction. Hope it does well!

Anyway, the kids got a lesson in punctuality this afternoon. You can miss a really good thing if you're not paying attention to the details. They arrived about an hour and a half too late! No free lunch today.

Click on the calander below to see what we missed:

Where's the beef?

This location just happened to be the kids old elementary school (we've recently moved a couple miles away in town and they'll have a new school this fall). It just so happens as well that they have their own veggie garden that was planted by the students last school year. The third graders have planted dozens of fruit trees all over campus. Again. ABUNDANCE! Last year the principal gave repeat invitations to school families and community members to come and pick food from the garden...... otherwise it will just rot. It was time for more picking.

We bump into our old neighbor and friend in the garden and he asked," where did that fruit come from?". He was pointed in the direction of the ripe fruit and we took this picture of him leaving with these juicy riches. Good finds.

Found an old discarded box and started loading it up with anything that tasted good. These funky beetles inside the grapes above, didn't make the cut.

Our girl went looking for her old teacher. It was a summer day and her teacher was away. She missed her "sssoooo much"! No teacher. Just mint , grapes and perfect granny smith apples. Maybe next time.

James found this apple in the cuff of his jeans on the way out of the garden. The grounds looked somewhat like the apple orchard on our cover page above. Fruit dropping everywhere! This little treat just jumped right out at him!

With no free lunch after all, there was a call home to boil some water.

So it was mac-n-cheese with unbelievably fresh apple slices back at home for the fam. We'll try again another day for the free lunch. Mark that calender.

Grocery Shopping 101:

Excursions to the supermarket these days have been few and far between. Prior to this experiment we would sometimes go to the store 1 or 2 times a day and it wasn't odd to visit a Vons, Trader Joes, and Sprouts Market all in one day. We typically spend between $200 and $325 a week as well. When we shop now we make the most of it. Using club card discounts and coupons is the way to go. Also, look closely at what you are getting for your buck. The price tags below show the cost of an item in ounces. To make the dollar stretch it makes cents to get more ounces per penny. For example, there were some convenient individual packs of Kraft Microwavable Mac & Cheese. The cost per ounce was around 40 cents. We compared that to a 5 pack of regular Kraft Mac & Cheese that weighed in at around 11 cents an ounce. But wait there's less or more depending on your perspective. A generic pack of mac & cheese was closer to 10 cents an ounce (wow, we're actually comparing ounces now!) Would the kids know the difference between the Kraft brand or the Springfield variety. James was standing in front of the pasta isle contemplating a 7 cents savings ( remember to check the serving sizes too) and wanting to make a kid friendly decision. Is this one really the cheesiest?.......... wait what's this? On the flip side of the Kraft 5 pack was a coupon for $2.50 off a 10 pack of Capri Sun 100% juices. All I had to do was purchase the 5 pack of Kraft to be able to use that coupon. The Capri Sun was $2.99 and the store will double up to $1. Decision made!

5 pack Mac & Cheese = $3.99

Capri Sun 100% juice = $4.79

Club card price and doubled coupon that make the juice FREE = PRICELESS!

We tried to go back one more time a few days later for the same deal and the club price for the 5 pack mac & cheese had already gone up to $4.99. That's $1 that could have gone towards..........beans. While at the store we did find a good price on a 14 pack of extra large tortilla's. ( see tag above ) These tortillas were 8.5 cents per ounce and stretched over two meals and were even used to make homemade cinnamon crisps.

And now a word on beans. See this photo below, that's a thrift store find on a kitchen utility that should make it's way into a few meals down the road, or later in the day! These things take cooking to a whole new level by slow cooking, retaining vitamins, and making a house smell delicious all day.

All of this fruit harvesting for survival business has made us way more conscious of the earth. So recycling down at the market suddenly seemed like the best of all possible post lunch activities. It's just left us with more to ponder about waste and necessity and what not. And it also gave us almost 15 bucks! We of course would not add that to our food budget, but it was a moment of connecting the issues of food, waste and the environment.

While at the market there was the opportunity to get a treat for the family using some coupon skills. These Tofutti Cuties were purchased using a coupon printed on-line. This was the only purchase for the day. = $2.39. Lots of places are doubling their coupons again. Check around to see what might have changed at your local supermarkets.

Dinner had been slowly simmering in the Crock Pot most of the afternoon. The smells were positively distracting, so we headed out to the patio for an activity. The kids wanted to plant those Food Not Lawn carrot seeds Mary Beth had gifted them and we also found some good basil seeds that were ready from our own garden. There were some spaces left open in the garden from things we have recently eaten. So we just added seeds, soil, water and a little trust. We'll see what sprouts in the next week or two....

We wasted no time in figuring out what to do with those apples. Some sugar, cinnamon, a little butter and heat would be the beginning of a love affair.

Simmering ever so slowly............. mmmmmmmmmmmm

Wish you could smell this fresh out of the oven!

DINNER

2nd Day Rice & Slow Cooked Pinto Beans

The basics are oh so good slow cooked and properly seasoned!

Baked Apples with Cinnamon & Sugar

EVERY ONE'S favorite! Even a neighbor had to try it and gave it high marks! You'll all be seeing variations of this dish again! The perfect end to a busy day.

Daily Check Out:

$2.39 in Purchase

$3.60 in consumption

TOTAL = $ 5.99 ( a penny in the +)

Be well!

{{{The Jolicoeurs}}}

Extra, extra! Read all about it! 'Matos, Zooks and Eggplants. Oh my!

Millions of American kids can't be wrong. PB&J........good.

Today was to be a day of extras.

Aleli's friend, Laura, stops by with a basket full of fresh picked extras from her garden. We also had a few EXTRA courious people stop by today to see what this experiment was all about. We hope to report more on that later.

We get filtered water from a Glacier water machine. The price of water went up an EXTRA 5 cents this week. Tap Water anyone?

Getting ready to pre soak pinto beans. We need to start measuring to make sure that everything evens out, no room for EXTRA ounces these days. Or is there?

And the sun poured in like butterscotch......

The sun DID pour in like butterscotch and stuck to all our senses. Or is it stuckdeded? Whatever. It was a beautiful morning and breakfast was leftover butternut squash (still fantastic a day later) and rice with some brown sugar, a dash of cinnamon and a modest splash of milk. Although we ate every meal, we had some technical difficulties in photographing each. With all the money we're saving on food, you'd think we could splurge on some back up batteries. Even the rechargeables are exhausted!

An audible "eeuw" from James at the idea of this meal.... a total mmmmmm from Baby upon actually chowin' it down. Can't please all the people all the time.

Lunch was nothing but leftovers, leftovers, leftovers. It was time to catch up an all the gosh forsaken leftovers! They were actually edible though and we looked forward to a freshly made pasta dinner with extra basil for our basil lovin' kids. Kettle corn is the new black. We popped up another batch for the whole family this time. Definitely a new favorite. Meals today cost in total about $2.15. Maybe we can catch up sooner than later, budget wise.

The real shocker in all of this is that WE have waste. We are actually generating waste. There is food left over....... enough to spoil. There is weird science in the back of our fridge. In these "recessionary" times with all this talk of world food shortages and us playing with this dollar a day set up...... there is waste. Somewhere someone in this world is watching their child go very hungry...... and here we are throwing out what could have gone into a human belly. Somehow, we've got to find solutions for all this. Businesses must thrive AND individuals must eat. How do we get there.... as a world family? How can everyone make a buck AND cover the basics? Many questions occurred to us on leftovers day. We already knew there is abundance. But this is ridiculous. This experiment/ experience gets more textured by the day.

Here's what's poppin'

We started the day with some free day old muffins and a little cold cereal with milk. The kids had plans with some friends in town for a pizza lunch and a game of Risk at their house. James ate lunch for free at work. So lunch at home was a simple and free leftover bowl of soup, potato wedges and apple juice. These were all end of the day cast offs from a restaurant ( good enough to eat, not fit to sell) and so lunch cost us nothing. Even the apple juice was at expiration date and therefor free....................and it was organic........bonus!

White bean soup. Even better the next day!

A couple days ago we brought our neighbors some free leftover baked goods . And today they brought us this homemade chocolate zucchini bread. It was divine! We saw the baby drop a crumb, a teeny, tiny crumb, while he was eating it. He bent down and, using his best fine motor skills, retrieved the crumb and gobbled it up before we could intercept this rather unhygienic practice. Anyway, it was THAT good. We'll post the recipe once we get it from the neighbors.

Cooing bite by bite.

Everyone gets lost in the zucchini laden moment. Such a treat.

Dinner time was fast approaching and the fridge held all the promise of a Tex Mex meal. We put on a pot of brown Jasmine rice, browned some ground turkey, added corn, black beans,tomatillo, tomato, onion, garlic and other seasonings. We smothered another butternut squash with a little oil, butter and brown sugar and placed it in the oven. These summer days are perfect for dining outside. So we enjoyed our southwestern grub out on the patio with some more nearly expired apple juice. Our 12 year old in particular was a big fan of this could-be-burrito-filling meal. Dinner cost about $3.25 with plenty of rice, etc leftover for tomorrow. We had a little monetary jiggle room since most of the days eats were free again.

I heart butternut squash!

The 12 year old goes back for seconds.

The perfect food.....now if only we had a solar oven to bake it all in. Too hot to cook!!!!

After an evening swim, we tucked the fantastic four into bed and settled in for a monday munchies and movie night ("Triple M")...... just us big kids. James shook up some sweet and salty kettle corn. The kernels and recipe were a gift from one of Aleli's five brothers. The sugar, oil, and salt came from our pantry. The shaking was provided by James. The movie, Juno, was a loan from our friends. Man, who doesn't love popcorn and a good movie with the one you love!

James shakes it like a Polaroid picture.

Next time we make this maybe we'll watch King Corn. teehee! ;) http://kingcorn.net/

Kettle Corn

1 cup popping corn

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup sugar

* In a pot with lid, get the oil super hot. Add the sugar. Shake a bit to blend. The second the sugar and oil start to caramelize, add the kernels of popping corn. Cover and shake over the burner until last kernel pops. Promptly remove from heat and salt to taste. Let cool and then break it up. Enjoy. For best results use a nice jumbo variety of popcorn.

Check in tomorrow to see what's poppin' ...........

The best things in life are free

Today we got our feet back on the ground financially with very simple meals. It was cheap cereal for breakfast, egg and bean burrito for lunch with leftover grapefruit slices and birthday cake, it was to be chili mac for dinner with some sliced veggies. Simple. Affordable.

But the best parts of the day came to us absolutely gratis. We all needed to let our hair down after yesterdays busy, hot rush. In the late morning as we were doing some organizing in the house, the doorbell rang. It was our neighbors with a huge juicy plate of sliced watermelon. They bought it very afford ably, but it was a 14 pound monster. The three of them couldn't eat it alone. So we had a short but juicy sweet visit with them, all the while enjoying the quintessential taste of summer. The plate was empty by the time we thought to take a picture.

The next simple pleasure was a sliced cucumber (free from our Food Not Lawns friends) at dinner time. It was crisp and sweet and perfect all on its own. It was the first thing to disappear that night. There was a race to the last slice.

Chili mac, sliced cucumber, zucchini spears and a cool evening.

And finally, we enjoyed the group effort of removing the sunflower seeds from that big sunflower head we brought home days ago. It had been propped up on an old wood slat of our fence, drying in the sun since Friday. We were all eager to see what sunflower seeds were like straight from the source.

Before washing and roasting we had some fun with the non industrial reality of these home grown sunflowers. It's so hard not to play with your food!

Birthday on a budget, eat your heart out!

Homemade heart cake with spice cabinet sprinkles and edible garden flowers

much, much, more to come........

a close up on the organic edible flowers a la escargot!

Ok, ok, ok..... so it wasn't exactly a buck for this birthday. But we did pretty dang good. Aleli whipped up a .97 cent cake mix and baked half of it into a heart shaped cake and the other half became cupcakes. She decorated the baked goodies with only half a tub of $1.27 frosting and used some leftover sprinkles and garden flowers to decorate it. We are still snacking on leftover cake today. We drank about three quarts of Kool aid (.70 cents worth) from a canister that cost $2.79 for 12 quarts. (Aleli would later learn that the more economical way to buy Kool aid is in the little packets. Who knew. The beverages in her childhood had flavors with fruit names....... "red flavor" isn't something she had much experience with.) There were free grapefruit wedges sprinkled with sugar. And we finally cracked out some of that frozen cookie dough we made for fresh baked choco oatmeal cookies. Our big splurge came with make your own ice cream ingredients. We used $2.89 of half and half plus about 1/2 cup sugar and some vanilla extract in an activity/ treat for the kids. All in all, let's call it a nice even $8. Good thing we ate a lot of freebies the rest of the day.

The kids shake it pool side.

Single-serve Ziploc Ice cream

1 cup half and half (or cream)

2 TBSP sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

* Fill a gallon size Ziploc bag about half full of ice. Add a dash of salt. In a separate sandwich size Ziploc bag, add the half and half, sugar and vanilla. Seal the sandwich Ziploc bag thoroughly and place it inside the large ice filled bag. Seal the large bag and shake it vigorously for about five minutes or until ingredients have thickened to their ice creamiest state. MMmmmm! Enjoy right out of the bag. You can include add ins like crushed peanut butter cups, chocolate syrup or fresh berries once the ice cream is fully churned. Or enjoy it as our kids did, milkshake style, if you want to churn it a little less. Either way, it's delicious and fun! A great cool down on a hot summer day!

Kids decorate their own loot bags before an afternoon dunk in the pool.

Fun on the cheap is WORK!

Time to CHECK IN:

What we've spent so far : $99.35

So we sat down at the table after a hectic day of party planning, sun, baking, hosting and what not to see how we were doing money wise. Soooo glad we were sitting because after realizing we were missing a receipt or two and that cards, not cash were used for those purchases....... adjustments had to be made to the money bag. We were at first stunned to discover that in this, the first third of our experiment, we had used up $99.35!!! What?!! How on earth did this happen? We still have like 20 days to go and only $80.65 to go on. That's more like $4 a day. And we have eaten sooo much free food too. Then we realized that expenditure did not equal consumption. Aaaah..... exhale. That's right. We still have 8 pounds of pasta, 9 pounds of pinto beans, 7 pounds of brown rice, 3.5 pounds of tofu, 8 pounds of oatmeal, almost 2 gallons of milk, a fridge drawer full of produce, enough ramen to sicken a small army of kids, etc, etc, etc. We purchased a lot of items up front so that we would have plenty of offerings on hand. oh yeah. We had almost forgotten our own strategy. Money can do that some times. Now it's time to dig deep and just eat what we've got..... not a popular modern habit in any sense, but it's go time now!

What we've learned:

Wow. Going into this we brought our theories of food culture and what might happen. We thought this would have alot to do with economics and recipes, easy tips, and extra family time spent slow cooking together. The whole topic of food is a lasagna of meaning, custom, significance, ritual. There are many, many layers. As each day has come and gone it has brought its' lessons though. This has really put us in touch with a visceral sense of poverty. But even with what we've experienced, we've had it so easy. The world's poor don't necessarily have a stockpile of food staples, cash and a variety of food and vendor options. They don't necessarily have neighbors dropping in with treats and resources. They don't necessarily have the luxury of creativity at the end of their hard days work....... enough creative thinking to put it all together. There is survival. The only stress we've felt is the stress of change...... not of deep hunger, need or even starvation. We actually see resources and abundance all around. That's a very different experience. We still can only imagine.

We've learned we are gonna need to menu plan. Actually do the sitting down and figuring out in advance part. We've gotta make these next 20 or so days squeeze a bit tighter if we are going to make it. We can't shop so loosely...... have to communicate EVERY purchase. It's kind of annoying actually. We're use to pretty much buying what we feel like, when we feel like it. A soy chai latte here a frappacino there..... you know the drill....... price has been the second consideration. We've gotta use everything we have on hand. Period. No more buying until absolutely needed. We've learned that if you're going to be cooking a lot more, you'd better be prepared to buy a lot more dish soap. We've learned ramen costs the same per serving as regular pasta, dang it! Next time we get a great idea to do something like this.... NO RAMEN. Not necessary. Ramen as cheap.... a myth. Painful learning curves.

We learned not to overcook the poor man's crab cake, that a microscopic snail can find its' way onto the violet on a birthday cake, that a vibrant child can virtually blow our budget on the first day out by over "cinnamoning" free toast and that meals are best spent among friends and family. We've learned that the Beatles got it right....... you do get by with a little help from your friends! We've learned we live in an amazing community and that peoples minds and imaginations are thriving, active.

We've learned that Mama Nature still works. The earth is still fertile, alive and sharing her gifts. The sun still ripens a tomato better than any gas in a factory could ever hope to, and even in wild places there are edibles to be savored (like lamb's quarters and young dandelion greens and nettles smoothies!). We've learned that we have a lot more to learn.