THE BEGINNING: Valentine's Day is our First 10 Dollar Day!

     An important aspect of the 10for10for10 project at Boothieville, (boothyville) is not making it so complicated that it isn't do-able. I want to do this thing!

     First step:  getting myself a little journal for notes and prices and calculations.  Rodger gave me a little orange 4x6 notebook which is just perfect, and it's orangeness has improved its value, already making it recognizable and "findable."

     Sarah and I did a few precalculations, not to be confused with pre-calculus. Using my store receipts, we calculated individual and useful prices.  For instance: I've just bought a 50# bag of flour for $13.67.  But since I'll be using this over many days, I will only charge the family as it is used rather than when it is purchased. 

     Per pound, the flour is about 28 cents, but that is a useless number to me.  I don't think about flour by the pound, so we had to come up with a better system, or we'll be killing ourselves trying to weigh everything out.  We measured and weighed a cup of flour, because that is how we'll use the flour---by the cup.  It costs about 9.5 cents, but we decided to always round up, so, flour: $.10/cup.

     Rounding up just felt more honest.  Rounding down might be fudging just a little bit, so if I round up instead, in all my little calculations, I might not be spending quite a dollar when my figures say I am, but it will be close, and I won't feel like a cheater.

     One more thing about the costs of food items...if it is at the grocery store and I can purchase it, just like any other customer in town, then it is a valid price.  We won't use any freebies or gifts to bolster our food without cost.  If we use gifted stuff then we will calculate using the normal market pricing.  Food we canned ourselves will be calculated according to the price of all ingredients from the orchard or fruitstand, plus sugar or pectin, etc.

       expenditures today (so far) follow:

Cold cereal Breakfast TOTAL: $2.00
one box Life cereal, 15 oz:  $1.00 (that's right folks, love Albertsons sales)

half gallon milk:  $1.00

Chef Salad Lunch TOTAL: $5.58
1 head romaine:  $.42

1 head iceberg lettuce:  $.84

1/2 lb ham:  $.75

1 dozen eggs:  $.99

8 oz shredded cheese, $1.10

1/2 gallon tropicana orange juice:  $.99

3.5 oz salad dressing: $.22

2 carrots:  $.22

Its 8pm, and we're back from our church homegroup now, so here is what we did for the potluck.  I decided to keep within the budget anyway and just not mention it, and take enough to feed our family, plus extra mouths. 

     Here is what I came up with and it worked!  Stew!  And guess what---everybody liked it, and the adults all had at least 2 bowls of the stew.  Simplicity isn't always bad.  It was a huge stew, far more than enough for one meal, and after serving up over 25 full bowls, we still brought home enough for anybody who gets hungry at bedtime.

Beef Stew Supper total: $2.42
8 lbs (before peeling) of potatoes @ .10/lb:  $.80

2 large onions:  $.20

2 large carrots:  $.22

a bit of round roast, cut up into small cubes:  $1.22

(ok, I didn't charge for the salt, but at .17/lb, the cost of a teaspoon of salt was so negligible that I couldn't bear to round it up to a penny)

Grand totals for today, breakfast 2.00, lunch 5.58, supper, 2.42

Daily total=$10.00 exactly,

and I didn't even have to doctor the numbers. Awesome.