Bean Finale

At the end of the 'bean experiment', no one mentioned all of the bean consumption that had been going on around the house.  That, in and of itself, is a successful experiment.

I mentioned to Seth that he might want to read my blog during some downtime this week.  I piqued his interest by saying, "I've been doing a little experiment."

That guy, I couldn't believe it, said, "Did it involve beans?"

I just fed a family of seven for almost a week for about $20!  That's $12 for bean dinners and lunches, and another $8 for breakfast (eggs and spinach smoothies).  Our pizzas on Friday night cost more than our entire week!  If I took this little unscientific experiment and applied it--really applied it--we could potentially cut our food budget by 75%.

I enjoy eating a lavish meal, but at what expense?  If our eating habits prevent us from doing more good for others, then we need to change.  Perhaps for your family that change may be dramatic, perhaps it will be something that they won't even notice.  My crazy bean-eating week proved that my family really doesn't notice what I'm feeding them!

The weighty conclusion of this silly experiment:  we are going to make some changes and use them to benefit others.  Money that we ate will now be money we can spend on more important things.

Black Bean Du Jour

Last night was a complete cheat.  We always have pizza on Fridays.  I thought I could serve beans, until I made a date to do some chemistry tutoring.  I didn't think serving a high school senior beans with a side of chemistry would be nice.  So, we had pizza.  My sincerest apologies to everyone for being a cheater pants!

Today, to make up for last night, I made black bean soup for lunch.  Pretty simple recipe without cheats: beans, peppers from the garden, and GARLIC.  I would give that another $2 price tag.

I threw the leftover soup into the food processor for dinner.  We had some cheese (counts if I already had it, right?) and chips, and I wowed everyone with black bean nachos.  I'm not going to say this meal was free, since I had to add to it--not enough leftover soup for a family of seven.  It was completely my fault, as I was hardly lucid as I prepared the soup and didn't quadruple everything.  Nevertheless, I would put our meal at about $5.

Still not bad.  For a loosely thrown together 'experiment', I'm learning something about our family menu. 

Mums the Word

Day four of serving beans.  Yesterday, Seth picked up his lunch and peeked into the bottom of the Rubbermaid.  Spying the pintos from the previous night's dinner, he groaned and said, "You cannot be serious."  So I swapped them out for the Indian chick peas and sent him on his way.

He must have known I would be serving pintos in some form or fashion for dinner, since he was "held up" on a boat for work.  He was forced to miss our dinner and choke down a full course meal prepared by the ship's chef.

Pressing on, the children and I enjoyed a third meal of pintos (ate a bowl of them for lunch).  This time I fooled their palates by adding copious amounts of garlic and some cilantro.  I mashed everything together and threw it on a tortilla.  There was some griping because I did go heavy on the garlic.  Personally, there is no such thing as too much garlic.  We finished off the large pot of beans.  Three meals for a family of seven (excluding that big guy who opted out) for under $5.  Pretty successful.

The side effects of beans for so many meals are starting to become evident.  Last night, Seth, holding his stomach, said, "I don't know what's going on, but...I've been real gassy."

I bit my lip, but didn't spill the beans.  

The Joy of Pintos

The Indian dish was not well received last night.  Too spicy.  Too hot.  Too many...chick peas.

A gargantuan pot of pintos simmered on the stove for most of the day.  All of the children were delighted, because they are some pinto-eating folks.  I threw together some kind of muffins for the big guy who despises pintos (I think they are beneath him).  Alas, I had no cornmeal in the cupboard.  How does that happen? It's been sitting in the nether reaches of the upper cupboard for three years.  I had to make up a concoction and thought baking it in a muffin pan would make it more appealing.  Viola, corn things shaped like a muffin.

I guess it worked.  No one suspects a thing.  Just wait until tomorrow, when the leftover pintos appear again as refried beans.

Dinner's total tonight:  $2 bag 'o beans and some change for some odds and ends to make 'muffins'

The Week I Experiment on My Family

Today I began an experiment on my loved ones.  I am only able to post this since none of them read my blog.  If they knew what I was doing, they would certainly revolt.  It's not terrible, really.

I am feeding them beans.  Every.  Single. Day.

A family of seven eats money.  We wear, wash, and toss clothes by the basketful.  We drive here and there constantly.  Music lessons for a few children, school books for five, sports activities...the list goes on and on.  The biggest expense remains our bellies.

We eat a lot.

I started thinking about bracelets and beads and yard sales.  I was thinking about the money that we eat every day.  What if we didn't spend so much on our plates?  What if we saved so much each week that we were able to send a nice chunk to HopeChest for the school?  Seems reasonable.  I'm already pretty frugal in the area of groceries, but I thought I might be able to do better.  I still splurge on occasion.  Our splurge isn't a night out for seven at the local Cheesecake Factory, more like a take out pizza (or three).  It still adds up.

This idea of eating up so much money got me to thinking.  I can't keep our children from eating so much...they are growing!  I can spend less on what I'm feeding them.  Bags of dried beans came to mind.

Healthy.  Easy.  Cheap.  The options are endless.

I wondered if my family would even notice.  In sharing this idea with a friend, she suggested I blog about my 'experiment'.  I didn't make a lot of rules to follow.  Every night for dinner--beans of some kind.  If I have something in my cupboard, it's fair game to add.  Anything from my garden is fair game also.  We will have eggs or smoothies for breakfast and have leftovers for lunch. 

Tonight--one bag of chickpeas, tomatoes from the garden, rice, spices, and onions from the cupboard.
Total-- $3 to feed seven.  Off to a pretty good start.

Dying Cats and other Expensive Endeavors

Seth went out of town this weekend for work. We had planned to go with him, because-why not? Then I remembered that we couldn't go with him. Because of my cat. I have to force feed her every two hours. Because...well, I am not really sure. Either she wants to die by starvation or wants to live but doesn't feel like eating. Either way its a long story and I have some time on my hands (seeing as I'm not in the Big City visiting my husband) so I'll start with the most logical beginning--the day my microwave broke.


One morning my microwave started making a weird noise. When I opened the door it sort of growled at me. Strange as it was for the microwave to growl, I decided I'd put my cold coffee in anyway (maybe it growled because I was waking it up early, maybe I needed to drink some coffee so I wouldn't be imagining a growling microwave--either way it seemed a good idea to me). When I turned on the microwave it started buzzing and growling. Even in my early-morning-drinking-cold-coffee-state I recognized that this could be hazardous. So I unplugged the microwave. Then waited and when Seth came home I tried it out with him. He immediately clutched his chest and started wailing, jokester--he had me going for a millisecond. So we threw the microwave in the trashcan. We priced microwaves but thought that we should probably put the money into our adoption account. Then...

The next week we went on vacation (which explains how we got along without the microwave for so long). See previous posts on Moby and ditching our "old" van in Alabama to get the picture on that ridiculous story. We incurred a car loan and bills from nights in a hotel, eating out, and buying a new van but saved money by dumping the old van instead of fixing it. Then...


The week after we got home Seth had a dental appointment. He had to have some dental work done. This is never good news, especially to Seth because he's only ever had one cavity. They didn't have to use novicane on that one little cavity. They had to use novicane this time, and it didn't work. He was in pain and the bill was high. Then...


Ella has speech therapy twice a week. It's a good deal, but our insurance doesn't cover a tiddle of it. We get billed by semester and the next week I got the bill. Was expecting it sometime, but the timing....well, not so good. Now, I get to the cat...

The next week I noticed our cat was acting strange. She's a peppy 3-year-old, but was lethargic and seemed to be skinnier. So I called the vet and brought her in. Not good news, she had lost four pounds (she was quite a big cat, but not that big) and they would need to keep her overnight to figure out what was happening. Four days later, and by my estimates not any better, the vet told me the prognosis was not good. They were force feeding her, had run tests on her and couldn't figure it out. But basically, she was dying. So would I like to have an ultrasound done, because they may be able to see something wrong with her gall bladder and perhaps perform surgery to remedy this? I asked them what our expenses were this far. And you won't believe what they said. Make a guess...I'll give you a second, because this will really blow your socks off...$713 for four nights, an IV, and some bloodwork.

And my cat was still sick and they had no idea why. So I said I'd be there to pick her up. But in the 15 minutes that it took for me to get there; I somehow accrued another $80 of debt and the scorn of everyone working there--since I was essentially taking the cat to die. I tried to redeem myself by explaining that I worked at a vet's office for years in high school and college (when the prices were evidently MUCH lower and ethic standards higher). My cat looked horrible, and I had to sit in my kitchen floor and just cry. Partly because the cat was dying and partly because I just shelled out $800 for them to tell me that.

Then I dried my tears and asked myself what God was trying to teach us from this. Within a few weeks we had paid out over $1000 dollars in bizarro expenses. It clicked for me right then that we are now in a position to completely trust God for our money. We had been in a "trusting" place--trusting the excess of Seth's salary (along with being thrifty) and a few "gifts from God" to give us the $25,000+ that we would need. I finally saw that we weren't really trusting Him as much as we should have. We are better off financially now than we were 3 years ago when we adopted Ella. We had yard sales, got second jobs, and sold fundraiser cookbooks to scrape together the money. It would NOT have been possible to have made it without God's blessing. And the people we met, the story we told...it was amazing. One couple who heard our adoption story and the financial aspects of it, came to us after we spoke at church and said, "We've always wanted to adopt but thought we never could. We just don't make enough money." Now there is a baby in Alabama with a family because they saw our faith and decided that they could step out in faith too.

How much faith does it take to watch that paycheck roll in every month? And what kind of amazing story of provision will we tell? "God gave Seth a good job, we saved our money." I'm thankful for that, but what does that do for the people who have good jobs, but don't have that little bit extra to tuck away? It isn't very encouraging for them, but now we have joined their ranks. How excited I am to see God work this out and then to share the story. I'm not expecting our savings account to miraculously show deposits, but I am praying that God will bless our efforts. Does this mean pancake breakfasts and selling crafty things? I don't know, but I do expect that there will be a double blessing--we get to share the wonder of adoption with people as we work to build up our adoption fund.

And all of that because of a broken microwave and sick cat. Speaking of, I think it's about time to feed her--she's overcoming the odds and still alive, by the way.