Good news! I got a raise! In the spirit of consistency, however, I'm not going to change the blog title to "How to Survive on $9 an Hour." I'll tell you that while that little bit extra helps, it was not life changing or revolutionizing. I'd need to get a much bigger raise to change the way I'm currently living.
So lets talk about living for a minute, rather than subsisting. Subsisting is what I'm doing when I'm telling you about a great recipe that costs only pennies a serving and only requires one pot and an hour. Sometime you need to live a little. I made a promise to myself when I moved to Orlando . . . go find it on my Facebook page from June of 2012 . . . it's there I swear. I promised that my house would always have croissants, chocolate and ice cream. I've not kept that promise, but it made me think about the little things that can make your life so much more pleasant. I will scrimp and I will save and I will buy Suave shampoo and Hunts tomato sauce, but I will not give up my Bath and Body Works shower gel. Nope, not doing it.
So let's talk about those croissants.
Relatively speaking, they are a pretty big splurge. I can get a loaf of bread for $1. I buy bagel thins at Publix when they are B1G1 free for less than $1.50 a package. That box of croissants set me back $2.98. However, they make me happy. As one of my managers recently reminded me, happy is important and happy in contagious! So I'm making an effort to do things that make me happy more often--it's even better if they are cheap or free, but $2.98 is not a huge expenditure.
Besides there are a ton of things that you can do with a croissant. I prefer them as breakfast foods.
You can go classic:
You can go French and add a slice of ham to that butter . . . no ham at my house right now, so I'm using smoked turkey.
I recommend leaving the butter out on the counter the night before for easy spreading. (You do know that you don't have to chill your butter at all--it's counter top stable, just invest in a butter bell--about $10 on Amazon.com)
You can use it as a bagel substitute . . . yes indeed that is pumpkin spice cream cheese!
If you'd like something slightly more substantial I recommend good ol' PB&J. I just discovered, however, that my roommate consumed all of my jelly, so I'll be having cream cheese on my croissant for breakfast!
At any rate, the lesson is . . . do things that make you happy. Even if they are little tiny things like buying croissants. On that note, I'm going to go have a margarita. Margaritas also make me happy.
