Day 11

Okay, it's Wednesday. What did I tell you about Wednesdays? Nothing has changed. Ryan works late again, so we girls devoured a $9.28 meal from Burger King. I cooked an entire homemade pizza with fresh ingredients for less than the two preservative filled cheeseburgers, fries and sodas now rumbling in our tummies.

I made bread from scratch this weekend. I ran out of all-purpose flour, so I had to make it out of mostly whole wheat flour. If you've ever made bread from scratch, you'll know what this means. Instead of a light and fluffy loaf, you end up with a fiber-filled small lump. I mixed some maple syrup in with it for a little bit of taste. Thankfully, Ryan and Kali both enjoy the taste and texture better than traditional loafs. I lucked out again! See sidebar for this Rowe-favorite recipe.

REALLY WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

Time spent cooking: 1/2 day project, but really only about 1 hour of "work"
Time spent cleaning up: 0.5 hour

Flour: $0.25-0.50
Yeast: $0.20
Brown sugar: $0.20
Butter: $0.25
TOTAL SCRATCH COST: $0.90-$1.15

Not bad, considering our favorite breads are usually $3-5 per loaf. As with the pizza crust, I will continue experimenting with different recipes to expand our variety. Again, this is a fun task that Kali likes to participate in. Overall, we decided that it is worthwhile to make bread from scratch for both the taste and cost. This isn't a tough item to make, and the majority of time is spent waiting for the bread to rise. Bread is quite simple to make and is usually always edible no matter how badly the recipe is screwed up or not followed. In fact, the only time I've had to throw any scratch attempts out was when I over-cooked it in the oven and it was burned. I must also add that we aren't legitimate sandwich eaters. We mostly use traditional bread for toast and buttered. We usually eat our lunch meat with crackers and cheese for a quick lunch. When we do make sandwiches, it's for road trips. I point this out because we may not be the best judge of how many loaves a traditional family may consume in a week. Normally, two loaves of homemade bread will last us 1-2 weeks.

I mentioned BK earlier. Last night my in-laws were over for dinner, and we ordered two large pizzas (canadian bacon & pineapple and deluxe-supreme) in from the local pizza shop (Howard's is superb by the way!)...but the two pizzas cost us $31, not including tip. WOW. Let's go one step further again. This is what an average breakdown of a daily menu for me and the cost:

Breakfast
Latte: $0.90
Kashi Cereal & Milk: $0.25
Lunch
Assortment of raw veggies (cauliflower, carrots, celery, green pepper, cucumber): $0.50-0.75
Bread & Butter: $0.10
Lunch meat: $0.30
Dinner
2 Pieces of Pizza (homemade): $2.60
2 Beers (Coors Light of course!): $2
Piece of Good Bread: $0.50
TOTAL AVERAGE DAILY COST FOR KARA TO EAT FROM SCRATCH: $7.15-$7.40

Now that $6.09 I spent on a Whopper and fries just seems silly!