We Did It!

Thank you Lord, we did it!

We survived a week without buying groceries.  I'm so proud of us!  The Professor ate some things he never would have eaten otherwise, and did it like a champ.  He definitely stepped up to the plate (Ha!).  I also ate some things i never would have eaten before, but on the other end of the spectrum.  I ate some really nasty processed foods. 

The funny thing is, at the end of the week i felt really good physically.  Like, eerily good.  So there is definitely something that i eat regularly that was affecting me more than i gave it credit.  My first hypothesis is milk.  I've been lactose intolerant for several years, and as a result i use Lactaid milk.  But Lactaid milk costs way more than either rice, flax, or coconut milk.  I decided to give it up and just drink the same milk as the BabyGirl.  After a week without milk, i feel awesome.  Apparently my dairy intolerance involves more than just the lactose.

I'm about to break my own rule and talk about recipes.  Usually, i firmly believe that i should leave the food blogging to the food-bloggers.  My true love is storytelling, so this is a storytelling blog.  And the two shouldn't mix.  But i'm quite proud of the meals that i was able to pull out of my hat this week, and i want to document it for posterity.  One day The Professor and i will be 80 years old and toothless, and we'll be sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of our assisted living facility, and he'll ask, "Remember that time when you wouldn't let us have any groceries?  What were the crazy things that we ate that week?"  Naturally i won't be able to remember, so we'll come here to find out.  So you can quit reading now if you want to, it gets pretty boring from here.  The rest of this post is purely a documentary.  I don't have pictures of any of my createions because i didn't know at the time that i would be blogging about it, so I have collected some visual aids from the internet.

Sunday Night: Grilling Night!  We grilled some hamburgers that we had in the freezer plus potatoes and a pineapple.  It was a big batch of potatoes, and provided some good leftovers.

Monday Night:  Hmm, now i can't quite remember.  The BabyGirl's gym class is on Monday nights, so our dinners are always kind of weird anyway.  I think The Professor had a frozen pizza, i had leftover soup, and the BabyGirl had something. 

Tuesday Night:  Sketti!  We eat sketti a lot, so this one wasn't that impressive.  I had sauteed spinach as a side.


Wednesday Night: By far the most impressive, and also the most disgusting.  I made a very ingenious Macaroni Hack.  We had a box of Kraft Cheddar Explosion Macaroni that had expired in 2010.  I kid you not, we ate that sucker!  I don't know if the reason that it was disgusting is because it's box macaroni, which is inherently icky, or if it was a year expired.  The noodles were the most pale noodles i've ever seen.  They looked like those creepy fish that live in the deep part of the ocean without any light.  They'd had every semblance of wheat processed out of them.  I added a ton of stuff to this Cheesy Noodle Dish: green peas, lentils, garlic, onions, paprika, and fish sticks.  We had exactly 5 fish sticks in the freezer, so i cut them up into little bites and mixed them in.  It was unfortunate that my dish was so gross, because i put so much effort into it.  My personal theory, and you can never tell The Professor that i admitted this, is that it had too much garlic.  On any other occasion, i will swear up and down that there is no such thing as "too much garlic".  I LOVE garlic, and put it in everything.  The Professor doesn't like it, and complains that i put it in everything.  Part of my strategy was to cover up the nasty taste of expired powder cheese substance by using lots of garlic.  Lesson learned: powder cheese substance does not pair well with garlic.

Thursday Night:  French Toast.  My defeat from the night before took the wind out of my sails, and i was hesitant to use so many ingredients on something that would be a total flop.  The BabyGirl and i also had leftover acorn squash as a side.

Friday Night:  Takeout!  For free!  It was beautiful.  We had a coupon for a free small pizza from Papa John's and a free small pizza from Casey's General Store.  The BabyGirl and i split a peach as a side.  You might remember that the BabyGirl is allergic to milk, and i am lactose intolerant, but times were desperate and free is free.  We ate that pizza happily.  Well, happily at first.  Fifteen minutes later, i felt TERRIBLE.  All of a sudden free pizza didn't sound like such a good idea anymore.  I felt sick and grouchy and I turned into Cruella DeVille.  We also had our Celebration Cake, pictured above.  It was compliments of a cake mix i found in the pantry that had expired in April.  It tasted so great, you'd never know.

Saturday Night:  A triumph!  My most successful meal of the week.  The Professor even said that he would eat it again (whoa).  I made Black Bean and Tuna B.F.G. (which stands for Big Fat Globs).  They were supposed to be Black Bean Burgers.  Or at the very least, Black Bean Cakes or Black Bean Patties or something of that nature.  But for some reason my meatless burgers always turn into big fat globs of mess.  Somehow it worked though, and was delicious!  I added some canned tuna to the black bean BFG's, which i thought would be a total mistake, but it tasted great.  I'd been hoarding that can of tuna all week long, waiting for the opportune moment.  Fortunately the BFG's were so satisfying from a texture standpoint that The Professor was willing to overlook some of the taste.


We are definitely looking forward to our next grocery shopping venture.  I'm desparate for some fresh veggies and The Professor is desparate for some meat.  I'm sure next week will hold its own challenges, but for now we are happy to have survived this week!