Eat in Boston on 2 Dollars a day??!

I generally graze throughout the day - snacking every 20-45 minutes, derive immense joy from sampling oozy, foul smelling cheese, could talk for hours about the braised eggplant with basil at Taiwan Cafe (easily the best eggplant dish in the greater Boston area with only the velvety eggplant appetizer at Lala Rokh coming close), would drive across town in rush hour traffic to get a pork floss bun and a bubble tea from my favorite Korean bakery in Brighton and am frequent reader and occasional poster on www.chowhound.com (the website of all websites for food dorks). Given all of this, sustaining myself on $2/day proved to be an enormous challenge.

I do have a confession to make though - rather than going to the market each day with my $2, I bought all of my food at the beginning of the week at Super 88 in Brighton. I also relied greatly on the kindness of my colleagues who would bring me gifts of supplemental fruits and cookies.

Day 1

Breakfast: Cinnamon raisin bagel (or at least some gnarly, freezer burned, lumpy bread trying to pass itself off as a bagel) with some butter I found in the fridge at work and black tea picked up at Super 88. 20 teabags for 59 cents. The tea was the best part of this meal - a bit too delicate but it had a nice smoky flavor.

Lunch: Pork flavored ramen noodles from Super 88. A bargain at 39 cents. 444 calories and 1206mg of sodium...50.3% of my recommended daily sodium intake. Yikes! (turns out I read the package wrong and 1 package was actually 2 servings - I consumed over 100% of my recommended daily soduim intake in 1 lunch!)

Snack: Black tea and a mooshed up banana with a teaspoon of sugar.

Dinner: Leftover rice (yes, technically I didn't purchase this but I just couldn't waste it), Goya black beans with minced garlic and two pieces of hard candy that I'd taken from the candy dish at a Vietnamese restaurant the week before.

Total spent: $3.81

Day 2

Breakfast: Cinnamon raisin bagel (I hate these things), a cup of black tea, and 1/2 a banana that Orson gave me.

Lunch: Leftover rice and beans.

Snack: 1/2 an orange (also donated by Orson) and 1 apple that tasted vaguely of mold.

Dinner: Jason brought home take out from Penang in Chinatown for Valentine's Day. Asam laksa and roti canai...so good.

Total spent: 50 cents

Day 3

Breakfast: A cup of black tea. I actually stopped in City Feed this morning to get a muffin...one can only eat so many "bagels". I first scanned to counter to see if there was any day-old stuff available...no luck. So I turned to the baked good case. The muffins looked great but at $1.89 each they were WAY above my budget. Even the bagels were 80 cents! I very quickly left City Feed and doubt I'll return until this is over. Turns out I didn't have time for anything other than tea anyway. Honestly, I think that this was the first time I'd ever really looked at the price of the muffins and other breakfast items available at City Feed. So expensive!

Lunch: Leftover rice and beans. On Day 1, I purchased the large can of Goya black beans at Super 88 for $1.49 which put me over budget on Day 1. The label on the can said the can was good for 7 servings. Yeah right. I got 3 out of it.

Snack: Banana and black tea and various orange segments graciously donated by Orson and Melony.

Dinner: Linguini with garlic and watercress. Tonight's dinner was definitely the tastiest meal I've had so far but still lacking in nutrition with no protein and only a small bunch of watercress.

Total Spent: $1.83

Day 4

Breakfast: Black tea and 2 chocolate chip cookies that Steph (bless her heart) brought in for me.

Lunch: Leftover linguini with garlic and watercress.

Snack: Banana and more cookies that Jake brought me!

Dinner: Fish sandwich at Doyle's.

Total Spent: $8.25 cents

I was doing so well until Thursday night. I had made plans to meet some friends at Doyle's and was so hungry that I gave in and ordered a sandwich.

Day 5

Breakfast: A bagel and a cup of black tea

Lunch: Linguini with a 35 cent can of Goya tomato sauce.

Total Spent: 35 cents

Dinner: I officially quit the $2/day challenge at dinner time on Day 5. I was heading to Provincetown for the long weekend and was quite sure that there was nothing to be had for under $2.00 there.

While it is not impossible to eat for $2/day, it is difficult...and unhealthy. I ate much less than normal but consumed far more carbohydrate-heavy food and probably doubled my weekly sodium intake. The only protein I could afford was black beans and the only fresh vegetable that I could afford after buying my staples (beans and pasta) was a pretty scraggly looking bunch of watercress. I had no calcium since my usual yogurt, cheese or milk was too expensive and probably came up short on a lot of other vitamins and minerals. Organic products were well out of my budget and I generally felt awful (particularly after the ramen noodle lunch).