I used to live in Santa Fe, but I no longer do. I still wonder if I should’ve eaten more ice cream for lunch, though.

We think so much about lunch that it can become a problem. Well, maybe the problem’s not so universal, but I think it is for a relatively-young person, making not-tons-of money, and living on his or her own. What do you eat? How much do you spend? How much time do you spend making it the night before or the morning of? Is the time spent making lunch more valuable than the money spent and time saved by getting take-out? Can you even compare money to time? Have you seen In Time? When you really get down to it, what even is currency?

If you think about lunch long enough, you will wander into the woods and never come back. You will eat tree bark and pine needles forever and everything will be great, and you will never think about lunch ever again because “meals” don’t exist in the wilderness.

But back to society. I used to work at Outside magazine. Our office was in this place called The Railyard. Lunch options were slim in the area, and sandwiches outside of New York are terrible. (You know this.) Plus, they’re overpriced. A sandwich and chips at my local bodega in Brooklyn—miss you, bodegas—was five dollars. A half-sandwich of non-Boar’s Head meat and no chips is more-than-five dollars in Santa Fe. A burrito isn’t too cheap, either (quick note: real burritos are smothered in red, green, or Christmas chiles). It is also a very questionable decision to eat burritos every day. All of which is to say: I considered eating ice cream for lunch.

Often.

I never did, but the thought of “ice cream for lunch” was always very real during my eight months in Santa Fe. To clarify: I am 25 years old.

The coffee shop by our office had Taos Cow Natural Ice Cream, AND YOU COULD GET A CONE FOR TWO DOLLARS. Like, the cone was big enough to fill you up—but I guess ice cream always does that because it’s basically frozen-and-sugared fat. But still. This stuff was “fresh, rBGH-free, all-natural super premium ice cream”—and IT WAS, to repeat, TWO DOLLARS. So, my thinking was: Lunch doesn’t really matter. It’s not like anyone ever says “Lunch is the most important meal of the day.” And you’ve never heard the phrase: “a well-balanced lunch,” have you? No one cares about lunch—it’s just a connector between breakfast and dinner. So, you do it cheaply and sufficiently enough to last you until dinner. And if you can do it by eating ice cream, you’re sort of awesome?

I never could do it, though. Living in a new state. On my own. With new people. Insurance that wasn’t my parents’. A car. “Eating ice cream for lunch” was a bridge too far that certainly led out of the land of “being an adult.” Plus, ice cream—even sans rBGH and all-natural ice cream—is generally not very good for you, and I pictured my bloodstream filling up with this flavored milky substance, and I like my blood the way it currently is. Any form of physical activity is rather difficult on a stomach full of Cookies and Crème, too. The offsetting money-saved would possibly/eventually be over-taken by medical bills later in life, I figured. As in: like a year later.

So, if Seriously Thinking About Lunch is a balancing act that’ll drive you crazy and drive you to consider ice cream for lunch, the Scales of Lunch crash, for me, right before handing over two dollars for a one-course lunch made of ice cream. But just barely.

Oh, and my solution: I bought soup from the same coffee shop. It was more expensive, but still not that much food. It never filled me up, but it let me stare at the ice-cream cooler while my navy-bean-and-ham soup was ladled and my focaccia bread—they were very generous with the bread—was being sliced. It made me feel like a grown-up, which is a bizarre kind of victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Ryan O’Hanlon is an editor at Pacific Standard. Photo: Joy

You’ll need about $550 on hand to get you all geared up to make a perfect cup of coffee at home, according to this Wired piece by Mat Honan on what what you need to make the perfect cup of coffee.

Photo: Davidd

Today was a gusty day in Beaverton. If I stood on my tiptoes and peered over my cubicle wall I could see tree branches whipping around beyond the tinted windows on the far side of Floor 4. I felt the gusts firsthand, too, at lunchtime, as I walked across the courtyard from Building 50 to the company cafeteria. It was a short walk, though, a couple hundred feet at most.

The company cafeteria smells like a typical Sysco-fueled operation. I can’t say much else about the cafeteria in general because I always keep my head down and walk straight to the salad bar. However, I can certainly say some things about the salad bar. I eat two or three salads per week, on the days that I don’t bring food from home. Except in rare circumstances, of which today was not one, I opt for the larger of the two container sizes offered there.

Today’s salad started like every other, with a bed of spinach. I hear that eating lots of raw broccoli might help stave off death for some brief period of time, so I put broccoli in there next. After the broccoli, I piled on various other things including bits of raw bell pepper, both red and orange.

Lance Armstrong says that you should eat a raw bell pepper, but in light of all his doping and fibbing, I considered that it might be better to NOT eat ANY raw bell pepper. I don’t know who or what to believe anymore, but, for good or ill, I did put some raw bell pepper on my salad.

Then I topped it all off with blue cheese, croutons, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper.

The process of assembling my salad took longer than usual because the man ahead of me was talking on his cell phone and fumbling with every tong because, in addition to being distracted, he had only one hand available to manipulate both container and tong. An ideal salad bar would have a sign that says “No cell phones at salad bar,” and a mechanism that makes the greens, toppings, dressing, and definitely the croutons all retract behind an impenetrable lid until the rule is observed by all. A pipe dream, I know.

Three vessels of soup await customers at the tail end of the salad bar. Today, the right-hand vessel was full of chicken tortilla soup. A basket of accompanimental tortilla chips sat next to it. These tortilla chips had quite a shape to them: long and slender and gently curved, like the fried claws of a corn dragon. I wasn’t in the mood for soup, though.

I’ve purchased a great number of salads in my time here, and many of them have been quite large. In fact, I’ve put together enough impressively sized salads to catch the attention of Tom the cashier, who more than anyone has a very keen eye for this sort of thing, and data to back it up. A typical salad for me weighs in around the $7-$9 range, but once in a while one enters the rarified $11 – $13 stratum, and when that happens, Tom shoots me a knowing smile.

Today’s salad was modestly sized, which I sheepishly acknowledged to Tom right off the bat. He replied, “Did I tell you about the salad yesterday? This guy bought a huge one. It cost fifteen bucks and change. He didn’t bat an eye when I told him the price, either.”

“There should be a Wall of Fame here,” I said, gesturing to the nearest empty wall.

“Ha ha.”

“I gotta talk to that guy and find out his secret,” I said.

“Ha ha.”

This cafeteria, by the way, closes at 1:30 p.m. Do you think it would be a good idea for me to go in there at 1:29, buy up all the remaining greens, toppings, dressing, and definitely the croutons, and sell them at a markup out in the courtyard? I could make some extra scratch that way, flippin’ salad for a couple hours in the late afternoon when I’d probably just be jerkin’ around otherwise. Please advise in the comment section.

Like I said, it was a gusty day in Beaverton. It was sunny and mild, but blowy, blustery and breezy according to the thesaurus, and like I said, this was not a weighty salad. If you stop and think about those two facts for a second then you won’t be surprised to hear what happened next, which is that, as I was walking back across the courtyard to Building 50, a gust blew the whole damn thing into a ditch! I had to crawl in there on my hands and knees and eat the scattered salad components like a pig from a trough, which at first seemed like a rotten deal, but over the course of the three or four minutes that it took me to find and chew and swallow everything, I developed a fondness for the soft ground and the cool shade, and I ended up staying there until around sunset. Corporate security approached me at one point, understandably, but I flashed my employee badge and they were cool about it, they left me alone. I missed the 3:00 status meeting. I don’t know how that’s going to shake out with my boss, but I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Previously: I Hired an Esteemed Cat Photographer to Take Photos of My Cat

William Foster lives in Portland, Ore. Photos by Christopher Serra

One of the first things to go on the pie chart of curbing discretionary spending is restaurant expenses. For good reason: It’s expensive, it’s easy to over-order and you absolutely need to put away 15-20 percent for your waitstaff if you’re a halfway decent human being. Assuming this financial advice is not extolling the virtues of not eating at all (good for short-term finances, I suppose, but ultimately high-priced and unspeakably terrible for you), this leaves a new money pit of grocery shopping.

Of the better habits I picked up from my mom, one was a passion for homecooking and a deep, almost zealous thrill of frugality. Since she dropped out of TV watching way before I was born, we gossip on the rotating prices and seasonability of produce. She is a dollar store devotee, a habit I have fallen out of in recent years. I had been defending this as a time-saving practice, but in going over my statements lately, I get the suspicion I might be putting a high sticker on my extra 15 minutes.

Over three weeks, I bought the ingredients for two weekly staples, the lunch turkey sandwich and the dinner ground beef farfalle pasta, at three different grocery stores: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and 99¢ Only. For science, I brought along my calculator app and bought whatever product was at the median pricepoint. (Fun fact: I thought standing alone in a grocery store clicking away on my iPhone wouldn’t get anyone’s attention, but Trader Joe’s is onto you if you start doing math in their store. I don’t know how they sniff it out, but they do.)

Experiment A: The Turkey Sandwich
Ingredients: Turkey, Cheese, Onions, Tomato, Bread
Disclaimer: I already had mayonnaise. I am not at a point in my life that I’m devouring through a jar of mayonnaise a week, so that did not factor into my purchasing.

Whole Foods:
Tomato: $1.99
Onion: $1.99
Bread: $4.74 (from 28 varieties)
Sliced Cheese: $6.74 (from 33 varieties)
Sliced Turkey: $6.86
_____________________________
TOTAL: $22.32

Trader Joe’s:
Tomato: $0.89
Onion: $1.49
Bread: $3.09 (from 26 varieties)
Sliced Cheese: $4.20 (from 12 varieties)
Sliced Turkey: $4.99
____________________________
TOTAL: $14.66

99¢ Only:
Tomato: $0.99
Onion: $0.99
Bread: $0.99 (from 10 varieties)
Sliced Cheese: $0.99
Sliced Turkey: $0.99
_____________________________
TOTAL: $5.00

The Verdict:
I got cold feet at Whole Foods. I couldn’t bring myself to slap down $22.32 for the benefit of cold turkey lunches. I’m sure they’re gorgeous and they look like stock photos. I just couldn’t do it.

There was a minor difference in the meat between TJ’s and the dollar store, but it wasn’t like Trader Joe’s turkey tasted like a bird alighted on my sandwich or anything. I’m calling this a victory for dollar store meat, even if the proportions are a little meager. The cheese was unfair—the dollar store’s selection consisted of processed shredded or processed sliced (kind of gross but generally edible and certainly childlike) whereas TJ’s selection meaned out at $4.20 among 12 varieties of sliced cheese and it was a beautiful and glorious thing.

Are tomatoes supposed to go rogue after three days? Because they did on both instances. The TJ tomatoes got that wrinkled Florida-retiree-forgoing-sunscreen look whereas the dollar store tomatoes developed sudden black spots like they’d lost fights in my fridge. I found instances of them unsettling and threw them out. Maybe the Whole Foods tomatoes get dignified and start giving conservative financial advice, I don’t know.

I could tell no difference between the Trader Joe’s and dollar store bread outside the price point. In the sprit of honesty, I didn’t make it a week before going back to Trader Joe’s for $2.99 organic rye bread habit.

Experiment B: Ground Beef Farfalle
Ingredients: Farfalle pasta, canned tomato sauce, bell pepper, onion, a pound of ground beef

Whole Foods:
Farfalle Pasta: $1.49
Onion: $1.99
Tomato Sauce: $1.49
Bell Pepper: $1.99
Ground Beef: $7.99
_____________________________
TOTAL: $14.95

Trader Joe’s:
Farfalle Pasta: $0.99
Onion: $1.49
Tomato Sauce: $1.49
Bell Pepper: $1.12
Ground Beef: $5.34
_____________________________
TOTAL: $10.43

99¢ Only:
Farfalle Pasta: $0.99
Onion: $0.99
Tomato Sauce: $0.99
Bell Pepper: $0.99
Ground Beef: $0.99
_____________________________
TOTAL: $5.00

The Verdict:
I think about all the times I made this without going to the dollar store and I feel like an asshole. I think my reasoning was always that I want fresh vegetables, fresh vegetables are at Trader Joe’s, ergo, I shop for this meal at Trader Joe’s. Or Whole Foods if I’m feeling fancy. Making a second trip costs an extra 15 minutes in time but could save up to half of my food bill. Plus, they never go bad! We Angelenos are supposed to always have non-perishables around in the event of an earthquake, so mine may as well be antipasto so long as I have an appropriate pairing wine.

But hot damn, Whole Foods produce, you are looking goo-ood! Their fresh produce tasted like it was from another planet than the Dollar Store and even Trader Joe brands. I just can’t hate on Whole Foods. I can’t really justify it for post-gym pasta on a Tuesday, but for a dinner party, I’d make a little extra effort. Honestly, it all depends on who I’m trying to impress.

Cooking Stuff I Always Buy At The Dollar Store

Water: If you live in a place where you need to buy water, this is the place. New York’s water always tasted straight out of a Dasani bottle. L.A.’s tastes like it came in from a factory drainpipe, which, I suppose, is why nobody makes a gimmick out of making bagels with L.A. water.

Spices: I bought Dollar Store stock of cinnamon, basil, oregano, curry, paprika, dill, cumin and garlic powder, which takes care of hundreds of meals for $1 each. Two years later, I have yet to replace a single one.

Basic Baking Supplies: If you can seriously taste the quality difference of cornstarch or granulated sugar, I want to know, who are you? Are your hyper-developed tastebuds a superpower or a curse?

Kitchen Utensils Impossible To Fuck Up: I have made the dumb purchase of a paring knife at a dollar store and nearly lobbed off all my fingers for the error. Now I pop a little extra for knives; they make cooking more enjoyable and keep my DIY amputations to a minimum. But everytime I see someone buying a $5 wooden spoon or a $10 ladle, I want to do an intervention.

What about you? Do you approach grocery shopping tactically or do the timesaver one-stop shop? Is it worth the time and the mental energy to divide-and-conquer?

Stacey Garratt lives in L.A.

Photo Credit: Social Woodland, Kari Sullivan, Payton Chung

Amazon is considering going wide with its grocery delivery business, which it has been testing in its hometown of Seattle for last couple of years. It will expand into the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets as early as sometime this week.

Grocery delivery has been available for quite some time in New York through Fresh Direct, but I’ve always gone into actual stores because the prices are much higher online (on AmazonFresh, the price of one lime is $0.99). Also, I never really know what I’m in the mood for until I’m in the store, and it’s pretty clear that each of us have very specific grocery shopping habits.

Would AmazonFresh be something you’d use?

My grocery shopping style is to be starving, and then go to the grocery store.

Walk in get a basket. I go to the produce section first and wander around a little bit and look at all the pretty produce and think about buying it all and being the kind of person who buys produce and then does something with it. Don’t buy any of it.

Go over to salads in bags for lazy people and get a bag of arugula.

Walk over to the apples and and get a few apples, Granny Smith usually. Walk over to bananas and grab a bunch of almost ripe ones even though I’ll end up eating 2 and then keeping 1 in my purse until it’s mushed up and black and throwing the rest away. Go stare at cut up fruit and want to get all of it but don’t get any of it.

Trail mix. The ones that look like they have the most chocolate. Look at dried fruit, consider dried fruit, walk past dried fruit.

Cheese section. Look at all the cheese but always buy the little slices of cheddar, intended for a cheese plate, more expensive than a block of cheddar. Portion control. Also, easy access. No knife needed. If feeling flush will also buy some other kind of cheeses because cheese is great. Can never have too much cheese. Eat it with apples. Health.

Will stare at the yogurt for awhile and pretend I’m going to buy some because yogurt is so great and healthy. Don’t buy yogurt.

Stare at the juice. Really want to buy juice. Love juice. So heavy though. And expensive. $5 for juice. Leave juice. (Later will pay $5 for one cup of juice.)

Skip the bread section. Seen too much moldy bread in my day to buy bread anymore. Get pack of flour tortillas. Water crackers.

Peanut butter. Should I get Nutella? (I always get Nutella.)

Canned things and condiments. Give it all to me. I want to eat it right now. Black beans. Chick peas. Stewed tomatoes. Salsas. Olives. Cornichons. Pickles. Mustards. Salad dressings. This basket is getting heavy. And probably also expensive. Reconsider everything in basket. Put back one thing.

Frozen aisle. Look at everything and judge everyone, which is funny because: basket full of condiments and pre-sliced cheese. Get frozen blueberries.

Go back to cereal aisle how could I have forgotten cereal aisle. Fake cheerios. Two cartons of vanilla almond milk.

What am I forgetting?

What am I forgetting?

It doesn’t matter this stupid basket is too heavy and now I have to carry all of this home and I really just should have gone to Chipotle probably ha hmm.

Stand in line for 20 minutes and think about nothing.

Pay.

Leave.

Carry groceries home. Most exercise of week.

Stuff refrigerator stuff in refrigerator. Leave everything else in bag on chair for at least two days and maybe three.

I used to work for a company that did brand strategy and market research. Part of that job was talking to people about very specific memories and feelings they had about products—”Tell me about your first sip of soda, what does the can feel like in your hand, tell me how it feels when it touches your lips”—and finding Deep Insights that the brand management and advertising teams could use to sell people more soda.

Matt Powers was at my house recently, and I played market researcher and asked him about dessert.

LS: When is the last time you had ice cream?

MP: Ten seconds ago.

LS: Tell me about that.

MP: I was laying down on a rug, and I was moved to open the carton of ice cream—

LS: What kind of ice cream?

MP: Vanilla chocolate chip. An old standby, it just felt right. And I put it into a mug and then I poured some brandy over it. And then I ate it.

LS: Tell me about the brandy. Have you done that before?

MP: No, I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, it was more intuitive. Brandy has a sweet aspect to it, that dessert flavor already. I figured to mix it with ice cream would be a good mix, and sure enough it was.

LS: What did it taste like?

MP: I think it was sort of almond-y, it had some sort of almond kick to it. But I think that it was sort of almond color. So maybe that’s where I got that from.

LS: How did it make you feel?

MP: A little sleepy. But I also felt vindicated that it worked. It wasn’t a sure thing that it would work. Because in the liquor store you wanted to get wine, and I said brandy, and then you said Jim Beam, and I suggested this cheap alternative. So there was a lot of risk involved. High risk. High reward.

I have this problem that, whenever I have a meal, I have to have a dessert afterwards. It was classical conditioning, from growing up. We would always have three kinds of desserts. My mom loved sweets. So the emotion I felt, at eating this ice cream, was almost like relief. It was like an addict getting drugs. It was something that had to happen. That’s almost too negative. But it feels good.

LS: Every night you had dessert? Tell me about that.

MP: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We would kind of all finish dinner at the same time, eating around the table. And then our dessert, we would eat in front of the TV. The ultimate in bad, everything that is bad for your body at the same time, television and sweets. It was very much a family bonding experience. And to this day we all love dessert. My mom recently texted me a picture of the cookies she made me.

LS: Were the desserts always homemade?

MP: No. Only sometimes. She makes really good chocolate chip cookies. But there was usually a bag of candy, Snickers or Hershey’s Kisses. And then ice cream, or a cookie. Oreos are always handy. Chips Ahoy.

LS: Would you eat everything?

MP: Sometimes someone would take a brownie and put some ice cream on it or maybe you’d eat a couple cookies and have a Reese’s peanut butter cup afterwards. There was no set regimen. It was depending on how you felt that night, depending on how your day went.

LS: What was your favorite combination?

MP: My mom makes these cookies called peanut butter blossoms, peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss on it, so I don’t know if that counts as a candy and a cookie, it depends on how you demarcate. I don’t know, I’d probably just call it a cookie. So that, with ice cream. Or her mocha cake, with ice cream.

LS: When did this start?

MP: Birth.

LS: Were there rules when you were younger, about how much you could have?

MP: Were there limits when we were kids? Well, there were, but because my parents were so fallible, they weren’t great at limiting themselves, and it was hard to enforce a rule. They would step in if we were going nuts, but we learned how much was okay. And then once we got older, we could have whatever we wanted.

LS: Did your friends flip that you had dessert every night?

MP: Yeah. People freak out when I tell them about it. Let me tell you something. We’re good friends with this family and my friend Jeremy would come over, and they’d say wow, good desserts, great desserts. But if I slept over at his house, he was allowed to have Froot Loops or Lucky Charms. And I would kill for some sugary cereal. Because at my house, it was all healthy, until you got dessert.

LS: Did you keep up with daily dessert once you moved out on your own?

MP: Dessert wise? It’s funny, you think it’d be, no holds barred. I think I still had above average dessert intake, but I kept it in line. I went more overboard with sugary cereal. I would have a whole bowl of Lucky Charms with every meal. That is not an exaggeration. But I think since I had access to ice cream and cookies and candy at home, it wasn’t a huge new thrill to have that freedom. And I didn’t abuse it at home either. We needed that release, that sweetness after the salty.

LS: So what would happen if you had dinner without dessert?

MP: Oof. I can do it. For the hour after I eat lunch or dinner, I get figgety, and it’s not confusing at all what’s happening. I need the sugar and my mouth starts sort of salivating and my brain is conjuring images of candy and it knows exactly what it wants. But once I get through that hour, I’m okay.

As I’m getting older, I’m getting better at not responding to it. My Snickers bar is my go to. I used to work at a place that had free Snickers bars, that was a problem. But now I’d say I buy three a week. That’s not very scandalous.

LS: Tell me about Snickers. Why Snickers.

MP: Snickers is the perfect candy bar. It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s super satisfying. I think I trained myself to crave only them. Because, you know, mountain climbers eat Snickers bars, because they’re substantial.

LS: Wait for real? Or was that a commercial?

MP: Logan I think I know the difference between a commercial and real life. Milky Way is disgusting. Three Muskateers is like nothing. Get out of here with that. Baby Ruth is okay. Baby Ruth I can do.

LS: Have you ever tried to stop eating sweets?

MP: There was a time when I thought I was diabetic. I was peeing like eight times a day, and I was about to go live abroad. I’d just finished that internship where the Snickers bars were free. Was there a correlation? Maybe. Maybe I was drinking too much coffee. The doctor said I was fine. No diabetes.

I’ve always been pretty healthy. But those sweets. If my mom sends me back with a thing of cookies, they’ll be gone in two days. Because I have them so rarely, I’ll just put those away.

LS: Do you make cookies?

MP: No. I have, but I haven’t done it in a long time. My oven is pretty bad, it takes a long time to heat up. And they have to be gluten-free, so that’s a mess, and you have to worry about cross contamination. I just stick with the Snickers, and hold out for my mom’s cookies.

LS: So what do you do if you’re at a dinner party, and there’s no dessert?

MP: I’ve definitely hit up a bodega for a Snickers bar. That’s happened a lot.

LS: Do you remember the first time you had a Snickers bar?

MP: Let me try to think. I don’t. That’s a question I never thought would be asked. It was probably a fun size one on Halloween. But they’ve gotten much smaller, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. I wish I had one from 1997 and could put it next to one from 2013. You’d be shocked. It’s the kind of story no one is talking about. They did it so slowly, so no one notices. So the American people haven’t recognized. I don’t want to be the whistleblower, bite the hand that feeds me, but it’s true.

My brother used to like Reese’s, so we used to trade Snickers for Reese’s at Halloween. I remember that. It wasn’t until I was older that they became something I really liked. In high school I just think I had normal Snickers consumption. College, too, I think. No, I’m remembering now, it definitely happened in college. I lived in Denmark, and they sold these Snicker bars in four packs, and one night I ate all four of them. That was one of the best nights. So much pleasure.

LS: This is a serious interview.

MP: I ate four candy bars. It was a good day. I ate the first one. And then the second one. And then the third, and then the fourth, I didn’t want to leave it alone, it felt wrong. So I ate that one, too.

To bring it back, I think I have an extreme tolerance for sweets. There are certain things I can eat a lot of. Tacos and sweets. I can literally put down like 15 of those peanut butter blossoms in one sitting. And my body won’t give me the biological feedback that I’m full or sick because I like them so much. But then if I ate that many carrots, no way. Tacos I don’t know. I can eat those all night.

I once did a half gallon challenge, and ate a half gallon of ice cream. I think I got halfway and wanted to die. And then I realized that he bought the light ice cream, which I think was cheating. I had like 200% of my daily saturated fat, and he had like 40%.

LS: What kind of ice cream were you eating?

MP: I picked something really fucking ambitious. With the little peanut butter cups, Moose Tracks. That was hubris. I was planning to humiliate him. And I ate more than him, but stopped like 2/3rds of the way through.

LS: Have you always been a quitter?

MP: Objection, leading. But the answer is of course, yes.

LS: Did you get sick from the ice cream?

MP: No I was fine after like, 20 minutes. I think I deal with sweets good though. But sometimes if I bend over too fast, it will feel like my ribs are stabbing my heart. But that only happens very rarely. I won’t be able to move for like 40 minutes.

LS: What does that have to do with sweets?

MP: Oh nothing. Completely unrelated. I don’t know what that is. My ribs trying to hug my heart.

LS: Do you keep sweets in your house?

MP: I buy a bag of Baby Ruth’s every week. I would get Snickers but they just have the really small ones at the store, so Baby Ruth’s.

LS: Um that’s big. Why didn’t you mention that before?

MP: You didn’t ask.

LS: How do you ration the Baby Ruth’s?

MP: No real set method, to be honest with you. Usually I’ll have dinner and then I’ll eat one, knowing I’ll eat two. The first one is kind of a primer for the second one. And then depending on how my day went, three. But that three could turn into four. But the good thing about getting Baby Ruth’s every week is that the novelty has worn off. I’m not sick of them, but bored. Like I could eat another one, but why? But sometimes I’ll buy a caramel filled Cadbury bar, and I’ll buy three intending to eat just half after every dinner, because they’re so rich and sugary and sweet. But of course that always fails and I eat the whole thing.

LS: Do you get mad at yourself?

MP: No not really. It’s really without reflection. It’s not like I eat half and I’m like, oh, don’t eat the second half. The only time I’m mad is the next day when I don’t have any dessert, and I have to go down to the bodega. It’s a real drag.

Matt Powers lives in Brooklyn.

We already have a solid history of groundbreaking cereal coverage here at the Billfold, and today I’d like to continue that legacy with my recipe for summer cereal, or: the only food I will be preparing at my house until it’s not hot anymore.

YOU WILL NEED:

Trader Joe’s O’s or other Cheerios-inspired cheap cereal, $1.99
Frozen blueberries (I GUESS YOU COULD USE FRESH, BUT $$$$$), $2.99
Some trail mix or whatever you’ve got in the nut department (I USE Trader Joe’s Trek Mix which has almonds, cashews, and a very generous amount of chocolate pieces <3 <3, $4.99)
Almond milk or other milk product, $2.99

~~~----~~~~ALL PRICES APPROXIMATE AND BASED ON MY NOT ALWAYS RELIABLE MEMORY~~~~~---~~~~~~

DIRECTIONS:

Put all the stuff in a bowl. Top with almond milk. The blueberries will make the almond milk freeze kind of and you'll have this slushie cereal mixture. The nuts don't necessarily add anything in the taste department but the texture is "fun" and nutrients exist. Is this cheaper than buying, like, KASHI? Maybe not. Is it cooler and better and DIY? Yes.

^{photo by becky brewer}

We asked, and you responded (and boy, did you respond!). I made two separate charts based on what you said you spend on groceries every week. One for those who responded accounting for their single selves:

And another chart for those reported spending as a couple (or with a child):

Hey, look at that! The most popular response for a single person buying groceries was $50 a week, and the most popular response for a couple just so happened to be exactly double that at $100 a week.

Of course, a lot of responses also came with an explanation telling us why their numbers were higher or lower than the other responses in the thread. Some people said they spent less on groceries because they ate out during the week, or had the benefit of having free food at work, or were simply frugal. Some people explained that their grocery bills were higher because they included alcohol, or supplies for their pets, or because they bought mostly organic food. We are different people who make different spending choices! It’s nice to see what the range looks like and where you might fall on it.

Previously: The percentage of your take-home pay you spend on housing.

Bloomberg opened me up to the world of farmer Twitter and now I can’t stop reading farm tweets. It’s planting season and so farmers are planting and driving around on tractors and tweeting. It is so excellent. AMERICA. #plant13 #farmkidproblems