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feeling of food insecurity, even though I have absolutely no reason to feel that way. I think it was brought on by the fact that I don't grocery shop as much as I used to, and I'm not buying as much meat or frozen meals as I once did, thanks to my part-time job that doesn't allow for a lot of luxuries. It's weird to open the freezer in the garage and see all that shelf space where once every shelf was packed...

But that's not the part I'm feeling proud about.

Today was payday, and there was the tiniest bit more in my check than usual. I was out running errands and was passing a Crumbl Cookie store and for a few moments, I debated going in and getting myself a cookie. Cookies are my all-time favorite dessert and while I'm by no means a cookie snob--more than my fair share of Oreos or those cheap, generic sandwich cookies you can get at Walmart have passed through my lips--I do enjoy a freshly baked cookie from a good bakery...or Crumbl.

Instead, I pivoted. A single Crumbl cookie in my area was $4.25 the last time I purchased one (it's been easily a year since I've done so, so I'm sure they're more now). While at Aldi today, I picked up a can of cream cheese frosting for $2.69. Once home, I grabbed a box of Dolly Parton banana cake mix, which I only paid 40 cents for at the salvage grocery store I love so dearly, and whipped up almost 2 dozen cookies. I frosted half of them with the cream cheese frosting and used up the double handful of mini chocolate chips I found in the cupboard (think they've been in there about 6 months...maybe longer) as a topping for the remaining half. So instead of paying $4.25 for one cookie, I made 21 cookies that are only slightly smaller and paid probably roughly $4 for the entire batch (40 cent cake mix, $2.69 for the frosting, probably 75 cents for the two eggs that went in the frosting...don't know how much the double handful of chocolate chips and the 1/2 cup of oil were). Are they as good as Crumbl's cookies? No...but they're reasonably close and will satisfy my sweet tooth without breaking my budget 😄