Food Stamps Challenge Day 7 (FINAL DAY)

This is a series for the Food Stamps Challenge. 

You can read Day 1 here and Days 2, 3, and 4 here and Days 5 and 6 here.

Our remaining food Stamps balance from day 6 was $8.18.

Breakfast for Day 7

As usual, I had coffee, this time with no coconut milk because we ran out. Miles had tea. Both were free since we have had these since day 1.

One frequently asked question has been: Why do you drink coffee? Why not just skip it and use that money for food?

I drink coffee because it keeps me from feeling hungry all the time. And, seriously? What the hell am I going to buy for $2.50 that would make this weeks menu any better? Do enlighten me! No, really! I am listening!

Lunch for Day 7

I decided to make a pot of soup again because it stretches quite well. Okay, so it's quite "brothy" but it kind of feels like you actually ate something and the all the liquid helps to fill the belly.

SO, chicken was $4.99, broth was $2.39 and a carrot for .50 makes for a total of $7.88. I already had rice from yesterday which I added to the soup. I honestly cannot wait until this challenge is over. This has been the longest day EVER! I want to actually eat something!

Today's Lunch total is $7.88
Remaining Food Stamps: .30

Dinner for Day 7

Soup. We're still having soup. And if we are really hungry, I can make some wraps from day 1 garbanzo bean flour, drain the liquid from some of the soup, cook down the stuff and have a chicken soup tortilla. You have to get creative sometimes. 

Dinner total: My Sanity
Food Stamps left: .30

My honest overview of this whole experience:

Throughout this week, I have noticed a few things. Here they are, not in order of priority, just jotted down as they come to me and created a whole new post about it. I'll be linking it here when it goes live. And breaking my "I only post once a day" rule, I am posting right after this one because I am venting in it.

Food Stamps Challenge Day 5 and 6

This is a series for the Food Stamps Challenge. 

You can read Day 1 here and Days 2, 3, and 4 here.

Our remaining Food Stamps balance from day 4 was $22.34.

Day 5 and 6 Breakfasts

We had coffee and tea, as usual for both days. I had one fruit leather strip for .50 We really aren't huge eaters in the morning.

Total for breakfast: .50 
Remaining Food Stamps: $21.84

Day 5 and 6 Lunches

On day 5 for lunch we had leftover cabbage soup (FREE).

On day 6 we had leftover cucumber salad (FREE).

I am seeing how great leftovers can be and soups really seem to stretch the best. I like this idea!

Day 5 and 6 Dinners

Dinner for day 5 was cucumber salad. We bought enough cucumber salad to feed eight people. The cucumbers were $2 (.50 each x4). The rest of the ingredients were condiments which don't count toward our total. We also had rice (one bag for $1.49) and still have rice leftover for tomorrow.

Dinner on day 6, we splurged. We feel a little guilty but we needed something junk food like. So we had gluten-free cheese pizza. The dough mix was $3.79, the sauce was $2.39 and the cheese was $3.99 for a total of $10.17, which isn't as bad as expected since the cheese was on sale. I felt like I ate a horse! It was very good!

My friend made chicken Parmesan and I have to tell you, that was hard! I stared at it longingly and wandered back up to my apartment knowing I couldn't eat it. I love her chicken Parmesan! *sniffle*

Total for dinners: $13.66
Remaining food stamps: $8.18 (OUCH!)

Overview of the Food Stamps Challenge so far

I am really noticing that, compared to other people, we don't eat a lot of food. I think if we ate like most of our friends, this would be a lot harder. The hardest part so far is not buying ice cream, hummus and chips, chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, soda, canned tea and other foods that are our junk foods. 

I will have to retry this without the kids too because I think it would definitely be more of a challenge on one person because of the way foods are priced. I did see broccoli on sale today and I am definitely going to buy some for tomorrow.

I noticed I am looking at foods for the lower prices and paying attention to sales more. With our limited diet though, this has been interesting because, in a few cases, I have had to step outside my comfort zone (like cucumber salad for dinner).

I am also rationing my coffee much more carefully and I am hoping it makes it to Sunday without having to buy more or skipping coffee. I would die without my coffee!

Food Stamps Challenge Day 2, 3, and 4

I didn't realize the posts weren't posting to the blog, they were saving to draft. Sorry about that guys! 

Okay, here are the meals for days 2, 3, and 4 of the Food Stamp Challenge, with totals, arranged by meals.

Our remaining total from Food Stamps Challenge Day 1 was $34.64 and so far we aren't doing too bad. 

Breakfast Menus

Day 2 and 3 we had coffee and tea. Since we still had that from day 1, breakfast was FREE!

Day 4 we had coffee and tea. I also had a piece of fruit leather for .50 because I was actually hungry when I woke up.

Total for breakfasts: .50
Remaining Food Stamps: $34.14

Lunch Menus

Day 2 we had leftover tortillas and chicken so that meal was free.

Day 3 we split a bag of veggies from the store for $1.49 and added seasoning to it (which is free for the challenge)

Day 4 (Today), I made a pot of cabbage soup. The head of lettuce (.89/lb), 2 carrots (1 pound at .69/lb), spaghetti sauce ($2.39) totalled to $5.75. Wow, cheap deal! Adding that to my list of cheap meals! 

I added 1/2 a packet of Uncle Dans Ranch Mix for flavor and then I was torn. Is that considered seasoning/ spice or a condiment? Or do I add it into the total? I decided that it was seasoning/spice and not to add it in. 

If I was adding it to the total, my soup would cost $7.25 which is still cheap, even for the Food Stamp Challenge.

Total for Lunches: $7.24
Remaining Food Stamps: $26.90

Dinner Menus

Day 2 for dinner, we had a slice of cheese each for .79 a piece. We weren't really hungry.

Day 3 for dinner, we each had a bag of mixed veggies for $1.49 each.

Day 4 (today), we are still eating cabbage soup. We had a fairly big pot. It might be lunch tomorrow too LOL.

Total for Dinners: $4.56
Remaining Food Stamps: $22.34

Food Stamps Challenge Overview

So far, we are doing good. We haven't had much of an appetite this week though. If this was a hungry week, we would have to eat a lot of soups or something. I can see I will have to get creative towards the end. I plan on buying rice and eggs too. And if I have enough, some rice flour for pancakes. 

I'm also getting ideas from my readers! Thanks so much you guys! I am going to do a series after this for Food Stamps friendly recipes with all the tips. 

Until tomorrow!

Food Stamps Challenge Day 1

This post is a series for The Food Stamps Challenge. You can read about what that is here and also follow along as my oldest son and I try to eat for a week on $56, or $28 a person for a week... or $4 a day per person. Will we starve? Maybe...

The first issue I ran into with the Food Stamps Challenge is that I already bought our food and spending more money just for a challenge isn’t realistic when your income is $744 a month. Instead, we are tallying up our food cost by what we are eating, keeping a careful inventory and pretending we had to buy each package or thing we’ve used.

The second problem with the Food Stamps Challenge… oh yea! I remember why I don’t shop solely here. They don’t carry the foods we can eat. While the stores in our small town tout the “Shop Local” plea to the locals, I have had too many problems getting them to order foods or coconut milk, or anything we ask them to, like we requested.

How can we solely support our local store when they WON’T support us? The month we shopped local, we spent very hungry.

Our solution? Let’s pretend we don’t have a car. Let’s also pretend, for a moment, that we actually want to eat something other than lettuce and apples for a month. What would we do?

Oh yea! We would shop Amazon.com because of the Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping. I get nothing for saying this, I just love Amazon. So, for this week, we will figure out how much it would cost per item on Amazon and pretend we had it mailed to us.

We’re also counting the total and taking it off the weekly price of $56 because, really, who buys 1 egg?

Our Meals for Today (with Prices)

Breakfast: I know… major faux-pas but, we don’t eat breakfast. I had a cup of coffee. I buy whole beans and grind them for coffee.  My son had a cup of green tea. 

SO… 1 pound of coffee beans is… EGADS! $12.99 a pound. Luckily, this week it was on sale for $9.99 a pound. I searched the internet and found this helpful page. I figured I drink about 41 cups a week (or about 6 cups a day?) and the rest of the time I will be drinking water. Since I can buy coffee here, I am stuck with the local prices. Also, I drink my brew much weaker than regular coffee and grind it fine. I will probably only use 1/4 pound of coffee. 

One fourth pound of coffee is $2.50. Damn. Ouch.

Green tea comes in a box of 40 tea bags for $3.89 here. That’s .10 per cup of tea.

I was going to have coconut milk in my coffee but I priced it on Amazon. I found So Delicious Coconut Milk for $36.98 for a package of six. Or $6.19 a box. SWEET BABY JESUS! Did they milk a golden coconut? Okay, no coconut milk for me. 

I then found that they sell So Delicious Coconut Milk at our local store in the refrigerated section for $4.19 a half gallon. I may need that later in the week but for now, black coffee it is. No sugar either. I can't afford to sweeten my coffee.

BREAKFAST TOTAL: 6.39
AMOUNT OF FOOD STAMPS LEFT: 49.61

I better start planning a little better. 

Lunch Menu and Pricing

For lunch we decided to splurge and have Annie's Gluten-Free Rice Pasta and Cheddar Mac and Cheese. That's $2.30 a box. Not bad. That's better than I can get at the out of town store. And since they refuse to sell it here, $2.30 it is!

We made it with, crap!, I had to buy Coconut milk for $4.19 but I'll be using it to cook other dishes too.

LUNCH TOTAL: $6.49
AMOUNT OF FOOD STAMPS LEFT: $43.12

Let's recap, I have coffee, tea and coconut milk for the week. And we aren't having mac and cheese again for the week because... ouch, that is pricey!

Dinner Menu and Pricing

We decided to have tortillas for dinner and bought Garbanzo Bean flour to make them. What we wanted looks like this. What we ate was chicken on flatbread with a little mayo (remember condiments don't count toward your total). We have 4 chicken tenders left for tomorrow too!

Chicken tenders were $4.99 for 8 pieces. This is why I don't shop here...

Garbanzo bean flour was $3.49 for a bag. We can use it the rest of the week too. I left of the flaxseed meal that I like to add for flavor and only used water to make the flatbread.

DINNER TOTAL: $8.49
AMOUNT OF FOOD STAMPS LEFT: $34.64

Well, at least we'll have chicken wraps for lunch tomorrow. So that will be a "free" meal. And I will keep track of the coffee consumption throughout the week.

Stay tuned!

The Food Stamps Challenge

Read about Day 1 on the Food Stamps Challenge here.

For those of you who don't live in the USA, foods stamps are vouchers that you can get from the government that you can exchange for food.

Although, now they are electronic debit cards instead of paper vouchers. They changed the program name to SNAP also, which stands for “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”.

What is a food stamp/ SNAP challenge?
Oh it’s easy. Pretend you are on food stamps and only buy food on the budget you would have if you were actually receiving food stamps.

How much is that?
For the Houston Food Stamps Challenge, introduced to me by my writing friend, Michy, that is only $4 a day per person.

But I have a tiny advantage. I am actually on food stamps. My family of three gets $526 a month for food and most of the time, that is all we have for a food budget.

I did the food stamps math
$526 a month X 12 months = $6312 a year for food

$632 a year for food / 365 days a year = $17.26 a day for food for three people.

OR $5.76 a day for one person to feed themselves 3 meals a day (assuming you eat three meals a day)

OR $1.92 a meal per person. Hungry yet?

Well good! Because my oldest son and I are going to do the food stamps challenge Houston style. Our meal budget will be $1.33 a meal!



The Food Stamps Challenge Rules
From the Houston Food Bank SNAP Challenge page, the guidelines are

SNAP Challenge Guidelines

1. Each person should spend no more than a total of $28 on food and beverages during the Challenge week.
2. All food purchased and eaten during the Challenge week, including fast food and dining out, must be included in the total spending.
3. During the Challenge, only eat of that you purchase for the project. Do not eat food that you already own (this does not include spices and condiments).
4. You may not accept free food from friends, family, or at work, including at receptions, meetings or parties.
5. Keep track of receipts on food spending, and take note of your experiences throughout the Challenge week.

Considering that we are two people doing this challenge together, our weekly food budget is $56. This includes all drinks and food bought, even eating out. We don’t eat out, so that isn't problem.

So what’s the catch?
Here’s the part that will throw us. We have many food allergies, so we can’t just buy top ramen and call it good. We still have to plan our meals around foods we can eat.

Wait? There’s more?
AND In the spirit of the challenge, we are going to shop only locally. Usually we buy some foods locally and do a lot of our shopping out of town. But I know from my friends around here, that people can’t always afford to drive out of town to buy cheaper food.

We will be shopping at our local stores, on $4 a day per person, and posting our experiences throughout the week with menu plans. 

Who’s with us? Want to try the Food Stamps Challenge?