So, I put in my grocery order and while there’s some things I had to put back, I kept things within my $200 budget.

This is what I got for $200:

• Better Than Bouillon: base chicken, 8 ounce
• Litehouse Freeze Dried Chives, 0.25 ounce
• tortilla chips, 11 ounce
• complete buttermilk pancake, 32 ounce
• dehydrated potato slices, 17 ounces
• soft flour tortillas, 10 count
• deli seafood salad, 8 ounce
• deli Greek salad, 8 ounce
• diced boneless skinless chicken breast, 2 pounds
• ground beef: 80/20, 20 ounce
• chicken breast for stir-fry, 2 pounds
• lunch meat, 16 ounce
• frozen broccoli, 12 ounce
• frozen regular cut french fries, 32 ounce
• salad mix: garden, 12 ounce
• salad mix: lettuce shreds, 8 ounce
• finely shredded mozzarella, 8 ounce
• finely shredded fiesta blend cheese, 8 ounce
• low fat small curd cottage cheese, 24 ounce
• squeezable jelly, 20 ounce
• can sliced stewed tomatoes, 14.5 ounce
• 4 cans tuna fish in water
• shells pasta, 16 ounce
• rotini pasta, 16 ounce
• dry minced onion, 2.35 ounce
• dry basil leaves, 0.8 ounce
• dry parsley flakes, 0.4 ounce
• Mrs. Dash: salt free table blend, 2.5 ounce
• sandwich crackers, 8 packs
• can coffee, 33.7 ounces
• Sheba wet cat food pate variety pack, 12 sets
• Dr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile Liquid Soap: baby, 32 ounce
• Dawn Powerwash spray refill: apple scent, 16 ounce
• 12-quart bucket
• non-scratch scrub sponges, 4 pack
• 2 rolls of paper towels
• toilet paper: 12 mega rolls
• heat-resistant nylon slotted turner
• 5-quart covered saucepan
• commercial quality stainless-steel meat thermometer
• unbleached compostable parchment paper, 50 square feet
• drawstring trash bags: 13 gallons, 20 bags

All those "2 pounds" of whatever meat are due to BOGO specials. Plus there were a few free things that I didn’t include in the list of stuff. And of course, we don’t have a completely bare refrigerator/pantry situation happening, so don’t freak out about the lack of vegetables and fruits. It’s not that dire in the household.

I’ve got a carton of liquid eggs, so I’m planning on making some frittatas and to use for the eggs in my stir-fry.

I bought the new pan because I’ve been doing all my cooking in like a 2-quart saucepan. (I was super paranoid about some of my older pans due to scratches (added by other people!) so I gave them away to the junk man to recycle.)

I’m planning on making my dad his beloved meatloaf, as well as some meatballs for spaghetti. And I’ve got some dry black beans, so I’ll make some black bean burgers for myself (I’m not sure how the fam can handle non-meat foods) and there will be meat as a back-up in case of whiners.

I’ve got a bread machine, so I’m pretty sure I can make my own hamburger buns. Or if that’s too hard, I can use the tortillas and mix the black beans up as crumbles for tacos.

I was going to get a turkey loin, but I had to cut it from my order. My plan was to bake it up, cool it down, then slice it for sandwiches and dice it for omelet or fried rice. Next month maybe.

I got the pancake mix because I wanted it. My plans are for pancakes smeared with plant butter and topped with strawberry jelly. Plus I’ve seen that there’s recipes where people use pancake mix as the base for muffins and cookies and other things. So, hopefully I didn’t just waste $2.50 on pancake mix.

~Harper Kingsley

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I’ll try to share some of the recipes I find. But this was just me sharing a list of what $200 can get you. ($300 would have been a lot less stressful lol.)

Babble 1

I feel very lonely today.

Not in the sense that there are no people around, but I’m that way that feels like a mass extinction.

Like, “in a rescue ship looking around at the desolation but also kind of bored with it all” lonely.

There’s been so much desolation and destruction for so long that the very bleakness of it all has lost all meaning. A hopeless kind of lonely. One of those passing sadnesses that everyone has sometimes.

The world feels in turmoil. Everything seems scary af.

I’m scared of the diseases being allowed to run rampant through the world right now. “What the fuck is even going on???”-levels.

You people all said you’d know what to do in case of an emergency. You all said you had supplies for everyone. People gave you money to buy supplies.

All these food shortages are because people didn’t really purchase and correctly store the basic supplies for their people.

The pandemics are showing a history of gross negligence.

Where did the money go? Where did the supplies they’d already gathered go? What the fukk are rich people doing with their money???

Your company should be able to provide supplies to their own workers. Why else are you taking “insurance” money out every month?

In a time of crisis, people should be able to receive basic supplies from the company. It would be more beneficial for worker happiness if they received monthly “gifts” from the company (loaves of bread, blocks of cheese, fresh produce, watermelons, turkeys, single-serving and family-sized ready meals, gift cards). It shows an acknowledgment of all that metadata they’ve gathered.

For reals: If you don’t know whether someone has food allergies, ask.

And for goodness’ sake, tell people what ingredients are in your products. They don’t even force you to be all that precise! (Though you should be, come on.)

I believe in the USDA. I want competent and hard-working health inspectors on the job. People that are REALLY making sure the people that make and package our food are cleaning their equipment and using licensed food-safe kitchens.

There are some things we might wish less oversight for, but not food safety.

For reals yo: The food you eat should be your last concern.

You should be able to open a food package and know that it is safe for ingestion or use in recipes.

Like, I don’t want to grow botfly larvae in my body. I don’t want to see any wriggly worms or about a million other things. No thank you. Hard pass.

I want experts to make sure I’m not going to poison my family using questionable ingredients. There needs to be some form of oversight

I would like simple explanations for simple things.

The world is on fire. How do we stop the burning?

And people are given clear answers about what THEY can do.

• recycle
• try to compost
• provide cheap or free home testing kits so the public can test water and soil at home
• tell people what kind of habitats animals and beneficial insects need to survive * how to deal with everyday life conundrums

For reals: If evolving insects can’t become beneficial to humanity, they at least need to evolve an instinct to evolve somewhere else.

I feel like these predatory insects are popping up because they’re the result of the ones who can’t change breeding together and producing hyper-aggressive offspring.

We the public would like to know what we should do if we come across various nests of things.

When the summer is hot and dry, we get a ton of wasps and flies. They burrow in the hot sand of a nearby lot. And then their babies grow up and go in search of food and mates.

There’s nothing like clipping an overgrown yard and having a dozen buzzing aggressive things rushing at your face.

So even suggestions of what to grow to attract bees but deter wasps would be wonderful.

I wish there was a Horrible Histories-type show that explained everyday things. Because I am finding that there are a lot of people that don’t know nothing out there and it’s causing me to question my own handle on things.

I miss Mister Rogers. He could have explained the world today to the kids and we’d have more people living longer healthier lives.

As it is, we are all scrabbling in the dark with only grifters and zealots to “guide” the way.

Tell me how to lift this stain! And explain why the regular household ingredients are performing their magic!

TEACH ME SOMETHING.

That’s my approach to movies and TV.

I’m getting angry at all the misinformation.

Yes, Helen Keller was blind and deaf. Yes, she learned to sign by touch. Yes, she went to school. Yes, she had a full life.

And yes, her life was used as proof that deaf and blind people have a right to exist. That they have lives to live.

The atrocious treatment of people with disabilities was used as an excuse for the development of eugenicist ideals.

“Well, if that was me…” mentality is the modern eugenics. But back in the day, they REALLY believed that there was nothing to be done for children with disabilities. And as a result, a lot of corporal punishments and caging tactics were used.

Children were treated like violent animals and kept caged by their parents. They were handed off to questionable facilities for examination and housing (in a time when there were no time limits on straight jacket use or really any oversight).

There needed to be some governance on the situation.

There needs to be governance on the situation.

There should not be so many documentaries about real life “camps”/training centers/academies where children are sent to be abused.

Parents are trusting their children to the kinds of camps that believe in “tough love.” Run by the kinds of people that believe violence against a child is okay as long as it’s in the pursuit of changing a basic facet of their identity.

I don’t want to get deep…

But yeah, there needs to be some oversight over the various shady programs out there. Because I’m tired of listening to the accounts of traumatized people.

Is there no licensing requirement to run a children’s camp?

I remember as a kid, they’d take the whole school out into the field and there’d be all kinds of educational or exercise-related games. Some games were by grades, but there were ones where you’d play side-by-side with an older kid. And everyone was just able to have fun.

There would be lessons for the whole grade. We’d all gather somewhere and learn about fish and sharks and leaves and we’d do various projects.

I don’t know when children stopped getting that fun kind of education. The plays willing to visit a school gymnasium. The snake handler willing to volunteer his time. The people teaching historical songs and giving accurate history lessons.

Because they missed out they deserve a fun show aimed at teens and adults that explains things in a clear and concise yet entertaining manner.

And maybe some of us out there need a recap or a reset if they were fed false information.

A fun edutainment show to watch would be helpful to a lot of people.

• bleach and ammonia = no mix
• too much spinach is unhealthy, so substitute something like kale, which takes longer to cook

• don’t eat lizards

• basic law
• copyright law
• privacy laws
• “This kind of behavior results in public censure” lessons

I’m a simple person. I want simply to be provided with useful information. Thank you very much.

Pax