Added Perspective - Karla

It is Tuesday and I am doing quite well. I still have $5 to get me through the next two days, as well as plenty of food back home. Of course, I will confess to having helped myself to bread scraps at Così today (hardly classy, I know … but it made for free lunch), which will allow me some extra flexibility for dinner tonight. I very nearly gave in to the temptation to buy a fruit ‘n yogurt parfait off the McDonalds Dollar Menu instead, but again, I wanted to save for dinner.

I have found that living off of $4 a day is not an impossible feat, but it is psychologically destabilizing. On my pre-fast shopping trip, I spent just over $16, which bought me a box of Pop-Tarts ($2.99), a large container of plain yogurt ($3.99), a box of Lipton Cup-o’-Soup packets ($1.99), a bag of linguine (on sale for $0.67), a jar of tomato sauce (on sale for $2.99), and a bottle of cranberry juice cocktail (kind of gross, but I need my vitamin C, and it was on sale for $3.49). In reality, this does not differ much from what I would normally consume during the week (my weekend diet is a different matter…). But I have noticed a real tendency to binge whenever I come across *real* food, both because it is exciting to encounter any variety, and because my reflex is to eat for future days. This occurred at last week’s Friday Night Dinner Program, and again last night when Kate and Ian had us over for a group St. Patrick’s Day feast of pork shoulder, cabbage, and potatoes—they spent hardly anything, and it was delicious! But my behavior at the Dinner Program did surprise me, because last Friday was the very first day of the fast.

Usually, I do not eat much of anything when I help out at the Dinner Program, but last week I ate with gusto. I had not yet had time to get hungry, and the previous night’s shopping trip had left me feeling optimistic and confident about the project. Still, I knew how unexciting my week’s foodstuffs were, and was looking up against a weekend with no brunches, lunches, or dinners to divert/console me after a particularly difficult week. So imagine my excitement (and relief) at the opportunity to eat bread AND salad AND meat AND rice AND vegetables AND DESSERT—CHOCOLATE DESSERT!—in one go. What a treat! I was so excited by what we were preparing and serving—all the while knowing that I could devour what was left over—that it made for a particularly fun Friday night. This I could never have predicted; happy though I always am to volunteer my time, it was certainly not the first Friday I found myself in St. James’ kitchen. I will probably never experience the Dinner Program in quite this way again, but I feel so lucky to have gained a new understanding and appreciation—and pride!—for what we do.

So back to today (Tuesday). Again, it is amazing how quickly one’s perspective changes. Jonathan and I are going to the theater tonight, and I just sent him an email to touch base since we never discussed how we were going to negotiate feeding ourselves beforehand. Well, as it turns out, he still has $4.50, which means that between us, we have $9.50. He suggests that this would be enough for edamame and a bowl of ramen to share in the East Village. How exciting! A week ago spending $5 on a meal at a restaurant would have been remarkable for being cheap. Today, spending the same amount on a single meal not only feels like a tremendous splurge, the very thought of being able to eat it in a restaurant leaves me feeling somewhat giddy!