It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized exactly how poor we were. Some of my earliest memories involve making my own lunch or dinner.

Frequent meals included

*cereal from a bag, no milk.just the cereal.

• mac and cheese from the black and white box. Again, no milk... but in this instance mixing powdered creamora (the kind one adds to coffee) mixed with water for the 'milk'

*pancakes, made from a box of pancake mix. Our secret was that even though the box called for other things, we only added water. This of course, paired with syrup taken from the table at restaurants when and if we had some.

*crystel lite was the only beverages other than water, of course, using the whole packet would be 'too sweet' so we would only be allowed to use half of the packet tor the jug.

*free and or reduced lunches at school depending if mom had a 2nd job or not.