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| John's in TimesSquare (not our picture) |
The
main difference we've seen so far with the Food Stamp Challenge is that
we can't eat out nearly as much as we did before! We did sneak out for a
dinner with Dave's brother and his wife earlier this week, though. We
went to John's Pizzeria near Times Square, and shared a Hawaiian pizza
with Dave's brother. It came to $15 for dinner for the two of us!
Normally, that would be a VERY inexpensive sit-down dinner in the city,
but that amount was almost the average allotment for 4 meals for each of
us! We found we've been under budget on average, so thankfully we had
some left-over for the splurge.
As
another interesting comparison, we'd actually eaten at the same
restaurant the day before starting the food stamp challenge when meeting
some international friends. As hospitable Americans, we'd treated them
and ordered appetizers and drinks, and the total for the bill came to
over $60! This time, we avoided the shared appetizer, salad, and drinks
and cut the bill (for 2 people) by 50%! Obviously, we knew that ordering
the "extra dishes" cost more, but seeing the impact when we were trying
to stick to a budget made it even more real.
Yeah, I imagine that eating out WOULD be difficult on the challenge! And how about going away for the weekend? That'd be even more difficult, no? Is that something you've had to deal with?...
ReplyDeleteAlso, I see you guys mentioned that Casey and Omar were doing the challenge too... But you've only blogged about Casey and yourselves. Did Omar quit? Is he going strong? Just curious.
I hear Omar has a degree in English, if he wrote up some thoughts and maybe included a picture...
DeleteWell, maybe he hasn't caved. Maybe he's the only one who hasn't cut himself any slack; the only one accounting for every crumb and drop that he ingests; and, if so, maybe he feels it would be unseemly to blog about himself.
ReplyDeleteHe's probably humble that way... not that I've met the guy.