Food, Glorious Food

So willworks tells me about this guy's blog where this fellow is doing an experiment to eat on only $1 a day for a month. We thought we'd read it, and see if we could get any tips, since hey, we work in comics, and there's no such thing as money in independent comics. (Plenty of money in manga, though, which is why bigger companies than us control such things.)

Well, I read the whole blog and there's not a single tip to be gleaned from it. Seriously, we are already eating like that guy, subsisting on a diet of ramen noodles, instant mashed potatoes, beans, rice and cheap off-brand hot dogs. In fact, I think we might even have more variety than him, since we have learned how to maximize the flavor potential of incredibly cheap foods. We also eat a lot of potatoes (cheap) and cheese (not so cheap), as well as that college staple, mac & cheese from a box. So overall, the guy's blog was a disappointment to me, as there was no new advice to be picked up. I found myself thinking "dude, you can vary it up a little, we eat on less than $1 a day per person, and we mix it up more than that..."

That got me searching around for actual cheap eating solutions, and I found the Hillbilly Housewife site. Sure, she might be some kind of fundamentalist Christian (I don't know, really) and she seems to think instant powdered milk is a perfectly good substitute for the real thing (no, sorry, I had to drink it as a kid sometimes, and it is NOT), but she's got incredibly good advice on finding actual bargains, and lists for how to stock a week's worth of meals for four people on $45 a week. (That's like insanely cheap...) So hey, some good came out of it.

Also, advice to those who are serious foodies: don't go into comics. You'll never be able to afford gourmet food or classy restaurant visits. We're counting ourselves lucky when we can afford to "splurge" on 99-cent Jumbo Jacks at Jack-in-the-Box once in a while.

Food, Glorious Food

So willworks tells me about this guy's blog where this fellow is doing an experiment to eat on only $1 a day for a month. We thought we'd read it, and see if we could get any tips, since hey, we work in comics, and there's no such thing as money in independent comics. (Plenty of money in manga, though, which is why bigger companies than us control such things.)

Well, I read the whole blog and there's not a single tip to be gleaned from it. Seriously, we are already eating like that guy, subsisting on a diet of ramen noodles, instant mashed potatoes, beans, rice and cheap off-brand hot dogs. In fact, I think we might even have more variety than him, since we have learned how to maximize the flavor potential of incredibly cheap foods. We also eat a lot of potatoes (cheap) and cheese (not so cheap), as well as that college staple, mac & cheese from a box. So overall, the guy's blog was a disappointment to me, as there was no new advice to be picked up. I found myself thinking "dude, you can vary it up a little, we eat on less than $1 a day per person, and we mix it up more than that..."

That got me searching around for actual cheap eating solutions, and I found the Hillbilly Housewife site. Sure, she might be some kind of fundamentalist Christian (I don't know, really) and she seems to think instant powdered milk is a perfectly good substitute for the real thing (no, sorry, I had to drink it as a kid sometimes, and it is NOT), but she's got incredibly good advice on finding actual bargains, and lists for how to stock a week's worth of meals for four people on $45 a week. (That's like insanely cheap...) So hey, some good came out of it.

Also, advice to those who are serious foodies: don't go into comics. You'll never be able to afford gourmet food or classy restaurant visits. We're counting ourselves lucky when we can afford to "splurge" on 99-cent Jumbo Jacks at Jack-in-the-Box once in a while.