Day 70 makes 10 weeks. We mark it with a flair, helped by the slush fund

Ten weeks seemed so long, so far into spring, but now it is here, the 70th day of my project.  I discussed with the children their ideas to celebrate reaching 10 weeks of staying within our goal.  Steak was mentioned by more than one person as a possible celebratory food, as was ice cream, cheese cake, and some other items I can't recall.  It was fun just thinking about it...

This rose on our dining table comes from Kate's invitation to prom, and arrived on our front doorstep early in the morning with a note. 

You can see Christiana in the background getting some catsup to come out the bottle.

We all had things to do today, so once again food had to fit the life.  I fixed pancakes for breakfast.  That marked the day as special from the start.  And everybody had real maple syrup, or as Noah calls it, "pure."

"We're having pure today, guys," he announced as they came to the table.  "Pure maple syrup," Christiana would add. 

During the morning, Kate took the children to the party palace and the dollar store to look for decorations for their bunks at the family reunion.  They are living in excited anticipation of the upcoming reunion, when they will see all their cousins for a special weekend at a camp.

Each year the different groups of cousins, older girls, younger girls, older boys, and little boys invent a theme for their abode.  This involves extra planning and packing, but provides a fun creative outlet, too.  Emails and phone calls abound during the planning stage, which is now.

While the kids were off dreaming and shopping, Rodger and I peeled and chopped potatoes and apples.  We boiled the spuds and added some soup flavoring, then added the remainder of last night's clam chowder to make a new and different batch of soup.  We ate the soup with crackers.

I peeled these potatoes somewhat thickly, because they had some green in the skin and I don't want to poison the family.

Rodger and I talked while we had some time to ourselves as we prepared lunch.

Five pounds of potatoes only costs me 50 cents!

We enjoyed fried apples for dessert.  I made a topping for the hot apples with the rest of my pint of sour cream.  To the sour cream I added vanilla and sugar.  Simple.  And tasty when spooned over steaming cinnamony apples!

I gave up on the steak idea and suggested we fry some hamburgers.  We haven't bitten into a hamburger for many days.  This idea met with the approval of the masses.  Sarah formed some of my whole wheat bread dough into hamburger bun shapes and baked them up.

We made a green salad and finished the menu with some sparkling cider and sliced strawberries to eat with ice cream for dessert.

That is a hefty hamburger.

Waiting to get dressed up with condiments...

Strawberries were only $1.25/lb again this week.

Toasts were made around in honor of the attaining of 10 weeks of keeping to our budget.  It was a fun dinner with lively conversation and great big bites of large hamburgers!

Trudy

Sarah gets caught fully enjoying her burger.

Once again, the time is late and I must sign off before finishing the details.  I have also interviewed the children and will post some of their comments about our eating experiment asap, but not before I get some shut-eye. 

  Alright, it's morning now and I'm back.  Shut-eye is a relative thing...last night most of us had some significant lack of shut-eye.  Here's the story:

The children discovered yesterday that there are feral kittens living in the corner of our property/the neighbor's property.  There has been a feral cat hanging around for some time, and now she has had her kittens here.  There must be some food source nearby, and the stacks of wood and lack of access in the back corner have provided her a good shelter for her kittens. 

The kittens are still pretty small, and Charity managed to catch one of them.  They're old enough to eat on their own, but not too old to tame down, I think.  The kitten is currently in Eppie's kennel, and it meowed pretty much all night long.  Yowled might be a better word.  The kitten is wild, so it is scratchy, but in the night this little wild kitty purred when I came out to hold it and give it some milk.  Right this minute Eppie is back in her own kennel with the kitten, and both are pretty uncomfortable, but Eppie is eating her breakfast there, cautiously.  The kitten is not yowling, so my ears have a reprieve.

     breakfast menu:  pancakes and syrup, milk to drink

Cost:  $3.65

1 1/2 batch pancakes:  1.65

pure syrup:  1.00 (approx)

milk, half a gallon:  1.00

lunch:  potato/clam chowder, crackers, fried apples

Cost:  $ 2.82

2 oz chicken soup flavor:  .43

5 lbs potatoes:  .50

leftover chowder:  gift

 3 lbs apples:  .72

2/3 pint sour cream:  .70

1/2 cup sugar:  .09

vanilla:  .05

shakes of cinnamon:  .05

afternoon snack:  half a bagel each, toasted with butter

Cost:  $1.12

one package onion bagels, 6: .99 (marked down)

1/2 cube butter:  .13

dinner menu:  hamburgers on whole wheat buns, condiments, green salad, ice cream with sliced strawberries, sparkling apple juice

Cost:  $12.27

2.2 lbs beef hamburger meat:  2.19

home made hamburger buns, whole wheat:  2.00

mayonaise:  .10 (I'm about the only one who likes it around here, one other person, too)

butter:  .10

catsup:  .20

mustard:  .10

3 heads romaine:  .79

2 lbs strawberries:  2.50

2 bottles sparkling cider:  2.50

 (yes, I really purchased them for 1.25 each, at new years' time, at Fred Meyers.  I bought more than a case of cider at the time...)

half gallon ice cream:  1.79

Today's total bill:  $19.76, so I'm over by $9.76. 

 I will borrow from my extra stash, the slush fund, which contains dibs of money we have saved every day that we have scrimped enough to eat for less than 10 dollars on that particular day.