i am lukewarm on eggs. I like them enough to eat a few of them, and you can stir certain vegetables into them and add cheese if you have some and salt and pepper and they can taste nice, maybe every few days but then I have to get creative to use the last few eggs in the carton before they go off. if i make a concerted effort, I can eat a carton of 10 eggs in 3 batches spread over 9 days, and they do last longer than that. maybe I could make every day divisible by 3 egg day. Today's the 179th day of the year (well, now that it's 2am, it is), so if I went out tomorrow (which will still be the 179th, but it's tomorrow because i'll have slept between now and then) to pick some eggs up, I could start tomorrow. If not, I could start on the 182nd.

there's a store that's only 1km walk and a bus ride away where I can buy many things very cheaply and the quality is better than anything else in the town. Cans of soup for €1 a piece instead of €4 (hmm, i wonder what their canned beans are priced like. If it were €1 it might be worth it, though when you can get an entire kilogram of dried beans for less, it feels like a waste to spend €1 on one meal). sometimes when I go there I buy sausages. These are more expensive, about €3, but cheaper than I can find elsewhere and the quantity will last me about a week, since I use them sparingly to make them last longer. I shop there when I can, but most days I don't have the energy to spend a couple hours taking busses and walking with a heavy load (the savings in buying their products vastly outweigh the cost of the bus tickets), so I also shop at places that are nearer to me, where the selection is poorer and the prices are higher. at these stores, i'm careful what I buy and tend to buy things where the price difference is smaller

The cheapest source of vegetables isn't these foreign stores. It's the market across the street where the farmers from neighbouring villages come in the morning with carrots that look like they've just been pulled out of the ground. You have to get up early if you want to buy anything, and the prices change every day -- and if you don't know the seasons as well as everyone else seems to, they will stop going down and start going up just when you were thinking you'd buy at the next price drop. I don't know the seasons well, but I could probably find something with googling -- except I get a feeling that questions like "when is strawberry season here?" is considered common knowledge. Once, I was playing "guess the fruit" with a six year old, and he was giving me hints for the fruit he'd thought of. The first clue he thought of was not "it is yellow" or "monkeys eat it" but "it's ripe in winter". (Bananas, grown in the southern hemisphere, are ripe in our winter. it made sense once I thought about it, but I'd never thought about it.) but maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don't yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.

about number 4. i do need to find a way to do some self modification for that. it's kind of ridiculous. the goal of frugality is living within my means and someday, trying to get to the point where i have 1 months expenses saved up in my bank account so that i have a small cushion if my money's late or i don't get paid or an emergency comes up. buying food, eating nothing, letting it go bad, and throwing it away isn't frugal. Actually, it reminds me of something the Cullens would do (I'm a big fan of Luminosity and Radiance. Never read Twilight, but mom sent me to the DVD since she <s>knows nothing about my tastes</s> heard it was popular, so I downloaded subtitles for it in one of my target languages (Macedonian) so i could watch the gift and call it language practice.)

heartburn can be medicated. i've looked up some medications that i can get without a prescription at the local pharmacy. (All medications here have to be bought from a pharmacist, even aspirin, but some don't need a prescription) I am painfully shy, and having to ask for something by name is a trial for me, but I have been meaning to get down and buy some antacids. it's probably stress related heart burn anyway. I can afford to spend a few euros on antacids. I am poor, but I actually live more frugally than strictly necessary, because I want to improve my situation and frugality can help with that (though neglecting my health is not frugal in the long run or even in the short run, I know. I need to cut that out.)

6) i've done a lot of thinking recently because knowing why is the first step. After my parents divorced, when I was about ten, I was terrified we'd have to go back to living with my father if we failed to make it on our own financially and knew that we were poor, so I tried to do all that I could to prevent that from happening. I knew I was too young to get a job, too young to legally babysit, and I knew I wouldnt have earned much anyway. So, I stopped wanting things. I stopped whining about the toys I saw on tv, I stopped eating breakfast, knowing that my overworked mother would see the opened and partially empty box of cereal and not replace it until it was nearly empty because she would see that I had something to make myself when I got up before going to school. I stopped eating lunch, because the agreement was that I would ask for more money to buy school lunch when I needed it, and I knew she wouldnt remember how recently she'd given me the money. So I kept the money and spent it as infrequently as I could, knowing that the longer i stretched it, the longer my mother would have to go without giving me more. I probably did save her some amount of money this way, but i didnt really have all the facts, and the teacher's reports that i'd stopped responding to my name and mostly stared off into space all the time led to doctors appointments which definitely costed more than school lunch. Dinner was eaten together when she came home from work. Sometimes I cooked, sometimes she did, and I ate dinner every night. I don't remember much about that year, but I spent most of it dizzy and spaced out. after a while, my body got used to it and i didnt have much appetite anymore. It was logical in its own way, but i didnt have all the facts, and i was very young. and then as a young adult, i was again scared that if i couldnt make it on my own financially i'd have to go back to living with my mother, so i went back to skimping on food. it's like an eating disorder, but i don't obsess about calories and couldn't care less what I weigh.

freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.

i already use a piece of paper on a tray to catch crumbs if i'm just eating bread or something. pasta i eat out of the pan (i am cooking for one, after all, why dirty a plate?) my cup is rinsed well the first time i'm going to use it that day. who knows how many flies visited it over night (no fly screens either, and it's summer), but after that i dont wash it between uses. i've used disposable plates and forks in the past, and though i feel guilty about environmental concerns, if i can't eat any other way, then i can't. i'd really like to find some paper plates instead of plastic, because the only plastic ones i can find melt in the microwave, which renders them useless to me. when i cook in the oven, i use aluminium foil instead of a pan, if i can get away with it.

dishes: i do rinse them, and then i come back to them a week later and they are slimy. (solution: come back the very next day. i try, and i can succeed for days at a time sometimes, but then something comes up and i'm back to having a sink full of petri dishes.

vegetables you mentioned that I know what they are called here and remember seeing in a store, even if rarely, and think i like or have questions about whether i would like it or not:

spinach - <3 but hard to find out of season

kale - it's called "kale cabbage" here, which has scared me off it, since i dont like cabbage. does it taste like cabbage? my real problem with cabbage is that it is huge and i cant eat an entire cabbage before it goes bad, and i dont like it pickled. i can tolerate the taste here and there, but ill never be enthusiastic about eating a lot of it at once.

peppers = capsicum. - will eat them, and wil sometimes like them, but am not crazy about them. they do go nice in pasta sometimes.

we don't have celery here, but we do have celeriac. it is large and hard to use all of it in time, but i do like it. the problem is you only need a tiny bit to get the right flavour.

turnips - are called "white carrots" here and are good in soups, but it is impossible to cook soup for one person and i dont know any other ways of preparing them. can they be eaten raw?

squash - like, but they are usually large, and i dont know whether they can be eaten raw or how to turn them into the tasty mashed stuff (i dont have a masher), or if they can be prepared non-mashed.

leek - is a readily available, mostly green, gigantic, cylindrical onion. i like onions, but do not know if i could consume an entire leek. i imagine that slices of it would be good on just about anything though.

broccoli - is only sold in 500g batches, is hard to find, and somewhat expensive. i love it, but have trouble using up so much of it.

cauliflower -is cheap, white coloured broccoli that is sold by the head. impossible to use an entire head without it going bad if you are only one person.

Do most vegetables go well with each other? (in a stir fry, on top of pasta, etc.)

I like reading recipes online, but sometimes get frustrated when they list ingredients that are unavailable to me (happens more often than not.) but i'll look around some more.