i've decided to clean up the miele and try to reassemble it myself before i take it in. the 90s palomar will be ready tomorrow. the walmart bike (which is a very light (the lightest of the four) 700c hybrid) will be sometime next week. i'm going to wait until august before i bring the vintage mongoose switchback, which is a very light mountain bike or slightly thick hybrid, in. the miele is a more normal sized hybrid and the palomar is a low riding, heavy set mountain bike for cruising at moderate to low speeds through the rough backstreets of detroit.
all of the actual moving is done now, so i should get a good grocery run in tomorrow that will assemble a pantry of basic items, including things like spices and condiments, and also builds up cleaning and hygiene products. that is the basket of items that requires a bit of money upfront to build; the actual food is $5-10/day on top of that, and i can mostly get it at one of the stores in walking distance as i need it. the run tomorrow is going to take me out to get stuff at the wholesale store in bulk (it's cheaper in the long run), at the walmart, at the bulk barn, etc. once that is done, it's done, and it won't need to be done again until next month. it will slowly build on a monthly schedule, on a needs basis, as it comes up. as it is, i've had to improvise a little outside of my schedule. thursday was the cucumber soup and i stopped with that. friday morning, i had my chicken meal, which was the following, and was actually also quite filling:
these items were served together:
- one of those sidekick instant meal packages. it's labelled as a side dish and said to be chicken flavoured, and it had a chicken soup with bigger noodles feel, but was otherwise not particularly chickeny. i would never normally buy or eat something like this at all. i do appreciate the free food. i ate it plain because i was hungry, but if i made it again i would put some cheese and nutritional yeast on it, to give it some value as food.
- i made chicken salad melts with a can of flaked chicken (like a can of tuna) and the last two pieces of brown bread from last month. again, i'd never buy this. i made the chicken salad with caesar dressing instead of mayo, nutritional yeast, paprika, frank's, fresh dill and pepper. the brown bread had some olive oil margarine spread on it, then the chicken salad, and then some monterrey jack. that went in the microwave for 44 seconds.
i had a bowl of chicken soup, separate, with frank's, yeast and old cheddar, melted. they didn't have any medium and the old was on sale, so i got the old thinking it would be fine for this cycle. it was ok melted in the soup like this, but it just reminded me why i buy the medium. the old is way too powerful for me, personally; i much prefer the medium. i can't use this old cheese in salads. i'll have to put it aside for soups and other cooking. that's ok. there's some broccoli soup coming, and it should use most of it.
i also had a margarined dinner roll with the chicken soup, so this was actually a pretty big meal, and i more or less passed out for the night when it was done. all of these items - the sidekick pasta, the canned chicken, the brown bread, the chicken soup, the dinner roll and even the canola margarine were food bank items, and the only thing in that list that i'd ever buy in a store is the brown bread. the other items - the caesar, the yeast, the paprika, the frank's, the dill, the pepper, the cheese, the olive oil margarine - were items i bought myself in the store to supplement, and they added the nutrition and the flavour to the basic food items provided. so you see how i'm doing this. as mentioned, i'm hoping that my adventures in food bank food preparation isn't too prolonged, but i'll make that choice on a month to month basis.
i am actually a fan of dinner rolls, even if i never buy them, but they don't last long and i realized that these ones were already starting to crust up, so i ate the rest of them up quickly this afternoon. four of them were peanut butter and jam dinner rolls (i also don't expect the pb to last too long) and the fifth was another monterrey jack melt in the microwave, the pb, jam and rolls were all donated, whereas i bought the cheese on sale the other day. the monterrey jack was a good idea, jessica, with all this extra donated bread. i've got two more loafs in there - the onion rye and a loaf of white bread. i actually would buy rye from time to time (i tend to get pumpernickel when i get it), but i never buy white bread. i appreciate the free food and will happily consume it. really. i just need to make sense of how. the onion rye will be good for sides of garlic bread with the salads this week, and i'll figure out where to go with the white after that. there's still pb & jam left. and apples. that's probably the answer.
i'm currently not very hungry so that might do me until i get the salads tonight, but if i do get something later then it will be round one of the mashed red potato poutine.
what i'm doing tonight is getting a basic grocery list done and starting to clean a little. once i get the basic pile of pantry item groceries in tomorrow, i will need to shift to a day/night split schedule that requires tending to my email, finishing updating my address everywhere and then getting to work on getting some legal stuff done during the day, and then working on cleaning in here and setting the apartment up. it's currently a giant pile of stuff scattered everywhere. first, i have to thoroughly clean all of the floors, then i can start putting item in place.