Food and money

I wrote this as a team message board post yesterday and decided to also put it in my blog. I have been in OA for more than ten years and I have never heard anyone share about the costs of the disease of compulsive overeating:

This month is hard - I had an electrical bill, I had a mortgage on my house and a parking ticket... there is really too much month left at the end of the money. I have about 1000 sw. cr.(147 USD, 112 Euro) left until payday 25 of april and most of it will be needed for gas.

Inventing fridge, freezer and cupboard tells me that I should manage food. Frozen chicken for about 14-16 meals, frozen fish for four meals, ground meat for four meals... and frozen vegetables like broccoli, spinach and green peas.
In the cupboard is lentils, chickpeas and different kind of beans, also canned mushrooms and corn. Also stock things like flour, and pasta, rice and quinoa
In the fridge butter, eggs,cheese potatoes, carrots, onions, milk, yogurt, stock cubes and some other stuff to be used to flavour and season and outside spring is coming on, there might be nettles to pick already.

So I should manage well, daughter comes one weekend that means that I will have to buy yogurt and one soda - otherwise she loves mac&cheese and that I can do...

But - if I binge it won´t work. Bingeing means for example that I stop at the food market and buy pork that I cook with a lot of cheese on. Or that I eat two or three serving of chicken at one meal, or get crazy and fast-thaw the ground meat and make a big omelet with cheese...

I always have two sandwiches and coffee for breakfast - I think I will have tea for a while - need the coffee in store to be able to treat possible visitors (in Sweden the polite thing is to offer a cu of coffee) and coffee is expensive and wont last until payday if I have it.
My bread is almost finish, if I am to bake I have to be creative because I do not have any sour milk - but I do have yogurt that would be as good if it wasn´t flavoured with cinnamon, apple and vanilla...and I am low on wheat flour so it will have to more rye and maybe oats in it too...

Although I am nervous over my economic vulnerability right now I also think it is a little bit exciting to meet this challenge. And I would probably do very well if it was not for this disease of COE.

I can feel that it helped me to write this post, I became aware that I really have a lot of nice options here and that it should not be a problem at all to manage these twelve days without having to buy any food.... mission accepted!

That I wrote yesterday - yesterday evening I had a lot of cravings and wanted to eat - three things stopped me:
1. There is very few things to snack on in the house and if I took the last bread I knew I would have nothing for breakfast as I have not baked yet.
2. My inventory of kitchen made me aware that I do have a lot of food around although it is not what my brain screams for.
3. We had that health group yesterday and was given a food diary to register and discuss next time. I don´t want to expose a binge in that diary – I have told them that II binge eat and that I usually overeat every three days or so but still - having to write it down for discussion I don´t want and that saved me yesterday.

Yesterdays blog was about letting go and that I need to trust life to be bearable without having to control everything – and then I write a blog that is all about having control over my kitchen. Somebody commented on it that I seemed to be very organized...interesting, I live in chaos but I have a very clear view of that situation.

I woke up this morning and looking for tea that I would want I found coffee beans. So I took out my coffee grinder and have had coffee (with cardamom added, mmmm!) as usual. I might even finish of the coffee, if there are guests they will be offered tea...

Today I will bake, the butter wont last so I will have to eat my morning sandwich without butter, could be worse.

I will make a sacrifice today and spend gas on going 60 km north to visit an exhibition of painting that one of my AA friends is showing. Two unexpected reminders of bills I have forgotten was in the mail yesterday, I chose to pay them which means that there is only 600 Sw.cr. left... have to save a hundred for my daughters bus ticket, I don´t think this will work but we will see....