The Spendthrift's Progress

Whining and errata. Errata and whining.

First, the correction: in our previous post, we erroneously assumed that the boy had neglected to bestow upon us the smelly green security blanket also known as the weekly cash.

The boy had merely neglected to inform us that the cash was on his desk.

Let that be a lesson to us in Our Issues, and how they shape our view of the world. Thankfully, I learned this before having A Discussion regarding the distribution of funds within the household.

We did have a discussion (lowercase) on earmarking a percentage of the weekly amount towards groceries and trying to stick to that percentage. I believe that would make the breakdown 20% fuel/transportation; 40% groceries; 20% cash for the boy; 20% cash for me.

Now, onto the whine.

Wasted food by way of failed cooking experiments makes me sad. Always has, always will. There's something so pathetic about the failed food, sitting there sadly, so close to and yet so far from its intended outcome. Food that fails by neglect--such as fuzzy fruit, green meat, and wilted lettuce--makes me mildly sad, but it's not the crushing blow to the spirit that is cooking gone wrong.

When you're living on a tight budget, cooking gone wrong is a gut punch.

My cookies went wrong. Horribly, disgustingly, throw them away wrong.

Mixing, cutting, timing--those all went well. It was our flour (the budget stuff we had left in the pantry from a big sale, not our usual name brand flour) that doomed these poor treats to failure. It's marked all purpose, but it's really not. It's closer to bread flour, and attempting to use it as all purpose flour leads to dried out baking in the best case, scorched in the worse, and all of the above in the worst.

The worst part isn't looking at them as they cool on the rack, knowing they'll probably never be eaten once you get over the waste. No, the worst part is keeping a running mental tally of how much each individual ingredient cost and wondering how you could have been so stupid as to waste X amount of money through the false economy of using the cheap flour.

Reader, I wept at them.

posted by mohmlet @ 12:02 AM