I was fortunate as a young man and lived a pretty blessed life, however that was not the case after I got out on my own. At one time my first wife, our little daughter and I lived in East Lake and we had to really stretch our money. One of her favorite things to cook was macaroni with some salt, pepper and a can of tomatoes dumped in it. I still like that.

We would go for a week sometimes and have little more than butter beans, pinto beans, corn bread, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and stuff like that.

We learned a lot about using coupons, making a list of everything we would eat that week and really budgeting our money when we went to the grocery store.

We eat like kings now compared to those days... I still like a good ol' pot of butter beans, crispy buttermilk cornbread and a slice of sweet onion...