TapTheForwardAssist posted:

Working for a consulting startup in West Africa, and an NGO we did a gig for is weeks late paying the $37,000 they owe us, so our "Week of Hunger" is entering week 3. We have several neighborhoods we can't go to because we have angry creditors we owe, so we're really glad out house is an an out-of-the-way neighborhood with a wall and big dog. On hand cash is scraping the bottom of the barrel, so we stopped using our truck and only run the generator an hour a day to charge phones and laptops. We'll be sitting pretty once the check drops, but real hard up until then.

In the midst of this, I'm the cook for the crew, and tasked to keep daily meals for a household of four down to under $10 while still being tasty and nutritious. Two nights ago I made fusilli with tomato sauce and meatballs, and we had extra meat alls and pasta so yesterday I popped the meatballs and noodles into chicken bouillon with garlic and spices to make albondigas, so that went over well.

Last night I'm trying to puzzle out a hefty meal that doesn't taste like privation, and we had broth left, so I went to the market and got green plantains (buying green ones is half the cost of ripe ones), salt pork, and garlic. Browned crisp the salt pork with some Madras curry (we're out of chili powder) and some fish sauce, then let the raw garlic marinate in that. Fried chunks of plantain in oil, mashed them up with some adobo seasoning and the pork-garlic, rolled into balls and then drizzled over with the spiced broth, avocado on the side. Nice fat dinner of a Puerto Rican mofongo, so totally stuffed four people for about $4, and we had 50c worth of generic African kool-aid (mango and berry) spiked with some bottom-shelf Liberian whiskey.

Hopefully tomorrow they'll finally pay out and we can start operating with a reasonable budget, and we're about to launch a $300,000 project that'll really get us on our feet, but in the meantime it's been a fun challenge working on a shoestring.