Paleo on 100 dollars a month 2014 - Day 1

I am ringing in the New Year either rising to new heights or sinking to new lows.  Yay!  Gotta love the outliers!

We celebrated New Year's Eve with good friends, with good wine and two very meaty pork ribs from the grill.  After gnawing on all the bones, holding them with our greasy fingers and feeling quite primal about it, I proposed we save all the bones "for my garden".

And I am looking at the bag of bones on day 1 of this challenge, thinking, thinking.....  Naw, I couldn't EAT them, the scrapings off people's plates?  Then I remembered that I would be simmering them for hours, killing off any evil microbes that any of my friends harbor.  Then I remembered that we were eating off the bones of dead animals, and somehow, after the harrowing night at the grill, we came out better than OK.  And I also remembered that I and my friends had sips of wine out of each others glasses, either because of a mistake, or just to taste the latest offering.  And I woke up ready for the Rose parade NOT DEAD, so maybe it wasn't so bad.

By noon, I was hungry, so the bones ended up in the soup pot with a few veggies from my garden.  I tasted it.  Other than a lack of seasoning, the broth did not kill me.

While waiting for the bone broth to finish, I went to the grocery store and found pork chops on sale for $2.66, and an avocado for 34 cents.  The purchases totalled 3 dollars, leaving me with 22 cents extra.  Yay!  Splurge time.  Maybe I can afford a brazil nut tomorrow.  The grocery store free coffee was nice.

This year I am not keeping track of trading partners, but after only the first day, I had food from about a dozen partners.  I still have the staples from last year, including salt, pepper, hot sauce and a number of different kinds of vinegar.  I cooked the pork chops in salt, pepper and vinegar, and made soup with the pan drippings, including leeks, celery, mustard greens and squash.

Today's menu:

Breakfast:  Coffee with cream, pan drippings, arugala, all from my traders
Lunch:  arugala, strawberry, mandarin orange, sapote, chicken soup with spinach, coffee, lemon balm tea, hemp protein powder
Dinner:  broth, pork chop, hot sauce, salt and pepper, avocado, couple of bites of pastry, trail mix, a kiwi
snack:  apple