The All-New Bunrab

Cindy came over for supper this evening - I managed to find enough counter space and dishes to cook some chicken, chop it up and put it on a salad, and then serve it at a table that had room for us both to sit at and eat. This is an intermittent thing - I get the table cleared off of stuff, and then as I unpack the next box, the table gets loaded up again with "stuff I need to sort through." And indeed, after dinner, we unpacked a few more boxes, and the table is once again buried, though not as badly. Two loaded boxes of stuff I don't need went off with Cindy for various charities - her UU church supports a homeless shelter and a transition program that puts homeless people into apartments, so they always need contributions of food and of household basics - tableware, basic cooking implements, towels, etc.

One thing that has become increasingly obvious: I have too much tea. Every single bit of it seems interesting, and I hate to "get rid of" tea. But honestly, I have five shelves of my pantry cupboards filled to the brim with tea - there are hundreds of teas there. Most of it is well-stored in airproof, lightproof containers - tins or glass - and has not been exposed to heat, so it should still be drinkable. So, if you would like a fat Tyvek envelope full of various tea, email me your address (and full name; I don't always remember everyone's), and you will get a random sampling of stuff. If there's some kind you honestly know you can't stand, let me know that too, because otherwise the sampling will include a bit of everything - black, green, oolong, puerh, flavored, scented, aged, bags, loose, possibly even partial slightly flattened small boxes of something stuffed in there.

While I'm not as bad as some people I know, I do seem to overbuy on food. It's partly the low-sodium thing - when I order by mail, I order quantities that make it economical, and when I find something in a local market, I grab as much as I can because I'm sure they'll stop carrying it. As a result, I have way more canned goods and dried soups and slow cooker mixes than would normally appear on a single person's shelves. And I still don't eat at home quite as much as I should - although my impending budget crunch will help cure that, I suppose.

Steve and I used to joke about using up a lot of our vacation time and vacation money just 2 hours at a time, by eating out most nights. It was a habit we got into early in our marriage, and it stuck. We didn't eat expensive stuff out - just sandwiches, or cafeteria, or Tex-Mex. After I got sick, we still kept eating out, even though our income was less, because, well, we were still better off than average, and could afford it, and enjoyed it. Finding the lowest-sodium thing to eat at a given restaurant became a game. And when we moved up here, from cafeteria country to diner country, Steve absolutely /loved/ diners, and we would eat quite regularly at one particular diner on the way home from Monday rehearsal every week, another particular diner on the way home from Tuesday rehearsal every week, another particular diner on the way home from Wednesday rehearsal every week... usually splitting an entree, so not as expensive as it sounds, or sometimes getting breakfast for supper, which is also less expensive than regular entrees. Well, when Steve died, it was still quite a habit - particularly since I felt so absolutely awful eating alone, and eating at a diner where the wait people knew me gave the illusion of not being alone for a little bit. And in that manner, I ran up credit card bills of several thousand, because my tiny monthly pension doesn't cover that. Well, when I sold the house, I paid that off - but I can't do it again!! And I can't keep dipping into savings for regular monthly expenses - using principle for living expenses is a horrible idea. That stuff is ALL THE MONEY I HAVE IN THE WORLD and I can't eat it up. So this is the point where I have to really, really stop the eating-out habit. I think I can do it over the next few months, if I promise myself one lunch out a week and one dinner out a week for a period; that's an extravagance but if I try to quit cold turkey, as it were, I will feel so lonely and be sitting at home alone all day so much of the time that I don't think I can stand it. So the other thing I've got to do is find volunteer work that gets me out of the house a day or two a week for a couple hours, isn't too much physical labor, and preferably offers lunch or snacks as part of the deal. I suspect that soup kitchens or homeless shelters are too much physical labor (and probably too little air conditioning - I'm far more heat-intolerant than I used to be) so this is going to take some research and calibrating. There are a couple of places I that are of particular interest to me to volunteer; now to find out if they happen to keep iced tea and snack bars on hand for the volunteers!