Added Benefits.

Several months ago I got turned on to this financial monitoring service called mint.com by one of my coworkers. I've been using it for some time now to track where my spending goes. If you haven't checked it out before I highly recommend that you do (www.mint.com). Among other helpful things, it will automatically generate these nifty little graphs and charts of where your money goes, as it automatically categorizes all your purchases (though you can change them if it gets them wrong).

Anyway, my point is that I was poking around today and notice something entertaining about my food expenditures for the last month.

Well, first let me show you what my average food spending looked like pre PCP:

Nothing I would consider too unreasonable for someone living in more or less the bustling metropolis of their state. Though I should point out that the alcohol portion is grossly underrepresented as this did not account for anything paid for in cold hard cash, just credit/debit card purchases. Alcohol should have been probably atleast twice that. Still, about half my spending was on groceries, the other half eating out. Nothing too outrageous, I always thought.

Now look at my food spending so far this month, all post PCP:

Holy crap what a difference. Almost my entire food budget spent on groceries to do my own cooking. And in this case the alcohol is probably spot on, as I think I only went to the pub once during the first week. Also, it looks as though my overall food budget (counting booze) will be lower than average. This is not what I expected with the huge quantities of food I've been shoveling in my face hole, 'specially with buying some type of meat almost daily to keep up with the protein requirement. All one of the nice side effects of PCP I guess.

Also, this project has actually gotten me cooking reasonably often for the first time since Peace Corps really. My excuse was always that's it's hard to just cook for yourself, but when you're eating like a family of four, that just goes out the window. Tonight I had cajun catfish with steamed spinach and a baked potato. There's extra spinach and potato in the fridge for tomorrow's meals, so all I have to do is pick up another chunk of animal for dinner and I'm set. Did I mention that I am going through almost a dozen eggs every two days ( 4 whites and 1 whole egg). Crazy. I'm digging it though. All this food I'm eating sits really well, unlike when I used to eat like 2 slices of pizza and follow it up with a few beers and some fries at the pub only a couple hours later.

Also I bought dates at the local coop today. Dried dates were always one of my favorite snacks in Niger and I hadn't had them since I've been home. They are super expensive here in Ameriki, but man are they as good as ever. Those may have to become a weekly or biweekly treat.