Live Cheap Challenge

Today marks Day One of my Eastertide "Live Cheap Challenge" wherein I spend as little money as humanly possible in a noble attempt to not run out of dough on my top-secret pilgrimage to Canterbury at the end of the month.

That means tightening ye olde purse strings and actually eating at home once in a while which is just a big ole draggity drag. On the other hand, it affords me the chance to get my food shopping at my favorite Secret Shameful Shopping Spot: Big Lots.

Go ahead you judgey judgers. I have one word for you:

Sprats.

They're tiny little smoked fish, somewhere between herring and heaven, they're delicious and notoriously hard to find on a regular basis. In fact, they inspire such a cultish devotion that there is a real-life, no-foolin' Sprats Index online where sprat-lovers everywhere can report where they most recently found the sprats, when they bought them and how much they paid. There's the brilliance, too. They're only a dollar a tin and a tin --when paired with a few nice fat slices of black bread and maybe a beer, makes the finest stick-to-your-ribs, reasonably heart-healthy meal I can conjure in my sticky little brain.