When we were living really, really, really close to the edge (and sometimes dangling over it), food came first. Before utilities, before house payments, before creditors. It would take a bank much longer to foreclose and kick us out than it would take PG&E to cut off our electricity and gas; and it would take them longer to shut us off than it would take us to get really, really hungry. So if we were down to scrounging through coat pockets and the bottoms of purses looking for change, we bought groceries, with as much nutrition and bulk as we could get per dollar. Or dime.
I promised myself I would never forget what that was like, and decades later, I still haven’t.