Dinner tonight was collards with the remaining bacon and rice flavored with a bouillon cube (the cheap ones from Dos Hermanos). It was good.

But…now things are going awry. We have used up the ground meat we bought on yesterday’s spaghetti (and took some down as burgers to a Labor Day cookout). The upside is, it’s gone–so it’s either meatless chili tomorrow, or I switch over to the later’s day menu of baked chicken legs and rice.

We’re also out of spaghetti noodles, since we bought only 1 lb., which was enough for the usual dinner and next-day lunches, but which now won’t make the 2nd spaghetti dinner we planned.

I’m not sure what the last 2 or 3 days’ dinners will be at this point. Pretty bland and boring–if I can contrive anything at all with what we bought.

I also find myself forswearing second helpings. I looked in the pot after getting one serving of rice, and there was just enough for 2 lunches, so, though I would have liked more, I stopped.

Thank goodness for the garden collards today. Perhaps I can scavenge some late-season produce from the garden for those last couple of now-question-marked dinners.

At any rate, it was an eye-opener to see how close to the line of not eating at all, or not eating well, we are at $42 if anything unexpected happens.