We made it! Complete!!!

After a long week, we made it! In fact, we were so tired and sick of food on Friday we forgot to blog. Saturday, we were so excited to eat that we forgot to blog. And then we had to work and you know the rest.

BUT after much deliberation, here it is, the grand finale.

Friday was just like all the other days, but a little more exhausting. We are used to wrapping up our Friday's downtown at a bar, maybe a little D'Andrea's pizza, but we were still slaves to our project. Jonathan provided some needed distraction by entertaining us with a game of monopoly (pirates of the Caribbean version, obviously). Even when the clock struck midnight we held strong to the decision to eat nothing until breakfast even though the night was technically over. And when breakfast came, how sweet it was. Literally.

We are lucky enough to have friends that understand our irrational ideas, like Tony. We were treated to a breakfast in our own home of homemade cinnamon swirl bread cut texas style and fried up into some of the best french toast ever. And nothing could have been better than soaking it in home made maple syrup. And then the bacon. And the coffee...everyone indulged, maybe over indulged, in all of it.

We would have never guessed how difficult this week could have been. Although we never felt exceptionally hungry, it was so tiring to eat the same stuff ALL THE TIME. For Eric, giving up coffee was the most trying part of the week. Monday and Tuesday were borderline dangerous because of the amount of driving he does. Not to mention the headaches and sleepiness! We also figured out how much we take snacking between meals for granted. We missed being able to pick up a handful of almonds or just an apple or banana. In addition, after dinner there was no cup of tea or ice cream.

We also figured out how much of our life is spent creating masterpieces of the palate. Making slop provided us with no such satisfaction. We had no spices to experiment with or new flavors to indulge. Okay...we also missed the Uncommon Grounds bagels!

Being a week while Eric and Amanda both had meeting that provided free GREAT food also made it difficult. It was such a tease to see our co-workers eating great food at the hospital or Longfellows! Just one bite please?

All in all, we are so happy to have experienced a life with no frills. Good planning and a positive attitude made it bearable. We have so much more appreciation for the flavors and lifestyle that we live and have so much more respect to those living a no frill lifestyle not by choice. Next time you drink your $4 cup of coffee from the bucks or just buy a piece of meat at the grocery, look at the price. Think about how that could fit into a dollar a day week and consider the fact that you don't have to choose enriched white rice over more nourishing brown rice because the price.

Thanks to everyone who has followed us during this project! It sure was interesting! Let us know what you think!

-Eric and Amanda

Thursday

The much anticipated "something other than slop day" has also come and gone. We expected spaghetti day to be a breath of fresh air, but as we slurped our pasta with plain tomato sauce we both grimaced and decided that our slop might be better. The sauce was horrible. We have been used to our home made sauce loaded with garlic, oregano and whatever else we could find in the cupboard. Today our appreciation for our normal food is growing less, and an irritation with ourselves for deciding to do this is what is overriding those feelings. Especially when Eric spent the day at Longfellow's restaurant for work practically drooling over the free food. But, we had decided that free food would not count because not everyone who is forced to eat for this little has that access (such as a job that would offer grilled chicken sandwiches). Friday brings another day of bread and slop, and we are counting down the minutes to Saturday morning!

Day three...hump day

Day three has come and gone. At this point, we are being forced into some creativity. After 3 days of the original slop, we decided to try some new things. Instead of cooking our rice right into the bean and pea mix, we cooked it on the side to keep it fresh and used the bean/pea mix as a topping. In addition, Amanda used a handful of the garbanzo beans to make a peanut butter hummus. Surprisingly good! In the future, with a few more ingredients, we will make it again.

Each day we realize more and more how much we love and appreciate our food and drinks. It has been an interesting study so far, and we have crossed the midline with few troubles. Today, Amanda believes she may have hallucinated when a strange man walking through the hospital hallway with a box of cookies stopped to offer her one. Why are there cookies everywhere? Just because we can't have them. Or just because we are paying so much attention to them now!

Tomorrow is spaghetti day, and we are looking forward to something new. We'll be dreaming tonight of Ben and Jerry's and the Oatmeal Stout resting in the fridge. Goodnight!

Day....two.

Well, we made it through day two! And not in too bad of shape. Eric had less of a headache today from the withdrawl, and Amanda's day wasn't too far out of the usual besides being forced to turn down free cookies at work and not eating a late night spoonful of ice cream. Having fewer food items at our fingertips, we have realized how much we rely on snacking. We have both noticed being hungry more frequently as well as having variations in mood. Food and everything that goes along with it is an enormous part of our lives, and giving up that portion, just for a week, makes us really appreciate that part of our culture. It has only been two days, but already we have found ourselves looking at recipes, eyeing restaurants, turning down invites for home made meals, and being forced to find recreational activities besides coffee shops and bars. Even the restriction of beverages to water has made us appreciate the daily glass of milk or oj, or the freedom to savor those tea leaves shipped to us from so far away. And yet it is still hard to appreciate having clean spring water that we collect weekly from the local spring, to think about how many people live without even that is astonishing.

Today's meals consisted of the same as yesterday's. For breakfast, Amanda had a few pieces of home made bread with a generous amount of peanut butter. Eric had the same, but a bowl full of "slop" (our split pea, garbanzo and rice creation). Lunch was a larger portion of slop with a slice of bread, and dinner was straight up slop. We are already looking forward to Thursday's dinner plans of spaghetti with canned sauce.

Another lovely day of slop tomorrow, and certainly more lifestyle changes to be commented upon tomorrow night.

Day One...Monday, March 8th. Dollar a day? Does that mean no coffee for Eric??

Oh boy...what a day. Although Amanda is used to a carb rich diet, the complete lack of protein during the day caused a significant crash at around 4. For breakfast today, we had some homemade bread with peanut butter. As it turns out, the type of flour used (we used the ghetto Hannaford brand) makes a huge different. The "bread" turned out tough, crusty and tasteless. We bet you can guess what we had for lunch, too!

For Eric, Monday was more of a test of whether he could go on without coffee. Being the first day in probably 5 years made it extremely difficult. He never knew how hard it would be to completely get rid of the drug. The entire day was filled with severe headaches and feeling completely drained. For those who thought coffee and caffeine was something that didn't really affect their daily lives, try giving it up!

For dinner, we had split pea and garbanzo bean soup. We boiled them both with a half a bouillon cube and added some corn and rice. Although it was not very flavorful, Eric felt like he had done a 180 from the way he felt before. The "slop" should last us a few days. Amanda hit the wall and never turned around! Side note....Amanda was only awake for half this post...she is now asleep on Eric's arm. She did try!

Here we come day two!

The preparation!

It's dinner time...t minus 10 hours until the starvation starts. We couldn't do the challenge unless we eat all of the perishables in the fridge. It would be somewhat ironic to say we eat for a dollar a day...but we have to waste all this food in the fridge because it went bad....Here is everything we ate (we ate most of it...we ended up getting too full!!).

Amanda ended up having an egg and ham breakfast burrito with cheese....although it tasted like something that would come from McDonalds...She thoroughly enjoyed it!

Ever wonder what a week of food looks like with $10? Here it is!

The receipts should tell it all! Well go into that tomorrow!

So tonight we go to bed with full, normal stomachs...ready to go!

Wish us luck!

Eat for a dollar a day...can we do it??

Well here it is...what you have all been waiting for! Actually, we're sure that most of you haven't even heard of what we are doing and really don't care, but if you're reading this, you have some time to waste anyway! We'll give you the 411 while Eric is drinking his last cup of coffee for a week. This will be the first time he will go without the liquid gold for something like 5 years!

We have decided to eat for a dollar a day for one business week! Here are the rules:

• We have $1 per day each to spend. This means that between the both of us, we have $10 to spend on food and drinks for 5 days.
• We will not except any free food and will not be allowed to eat anything in the cabinets and/or fridge (that means a leftover binge for yesterday and today).
• For those who weighed in on the Uncommon Ground 2 day old free bagels, we will not be allowed to consume their awesome staleness.
• Everything consumed must go into our budget...that means no coffee for Eric or milk for Amanda (too damn expensive).
• Because they are commodities and fairly inexpensive (we couldn't figure out how to figure in the cost), we will be allowed to consume/cook with salt and pepper and enough oil to grease our pans (not to be used as a topping).
• The starvation will start Monday, March 8th and drag on through Friday, March 12th.
• We will stop the pain if we feel it is dangerous for us to continue or if it is seriously affecting our lives in a detrimental way.
• The party will end when we wake up on Saturday. Yummm, real food again!

We have been asked for the last month, "Why the hell would you do this??" Although neither of us have been able to come up with a convincing answer, here are some of our ideas:

• Why the hell not...what a neat challenge! Sacrafising the good things in life helps you enjoy what you have a lot more if you know what you're missing!
• So many people in this world work for a dollar a day...some even less! If they can survive, why can't we? More than one billion people live (not just eat) on this miniscule amount.
• You've heard of these detox diets...screw that! Lets just eat the simplest things in the world...that should get all the alcohol, caffeine, processed food...(and so on) out of us!
• Let's add another spice to our lives...make this interesting!

Keep tabs on us...we'll be posting every night for a quick update! Let us know what you think!