Living Below the Line

Here's a shot of my food loot snapped on Sunday in preparation for the extreme poverty awareness campaign {+}.  If I'm successful, what you see here will last me five days.  One and a half days in, I can confirm that, yes, this is an extremely ambitious undertaking for me.

I've seen other bloggers' snapshots of their groceries for this project and am astounded to see just how much more their dollar stretches.  Entire counters overflowing with food.  Bags of frozen vegetables they no doubt purchased for fifty cents a pop at their local Meijer's or Target.  Neat bundles of ramen probably at ten cents a piece.  Do you hear that?  That's the cost of living in the midwest laughing wildly at me.  Frugal food deals are scarce and hard to find in New York.  Luckily, Trader Joe's offers some exceptional price points, far more affordable than local markets, so that's where I went.

Some may wonder why I bought organic items or spent forty cents more on whole wheat pasta.  If I have any chance in hell of getting through these five days without significant discomfort from hypoglycemia, white starches were out of the question.  Eggs that are not cage-free and not from organic chickens taste like water to me - this is one of the few privileged food choices I make on a regular basis.  Do you know that a 1-pound bag of dry pasta is considered 8 servings?  One cooked serving doesn't look like much.  Maybe 1.5 servings, but not 1.  Not really.  But beef it up with some beans and carrots and things begin to look a little more filling.

It's only day two and dialogues have formed around this wacky choice of mine.  Everyone is curious to learn more about why and how I'm [trying to] do this.  You can see their wheels turning.  It's rather cool, to quietly initiate conversations about communities that certainly exist, but don't intersect with our own.