Day #4

Here is my menu for day number 4:

Breakfast

-cheese toast

Lunch

-Spaghettios

Dinner

-Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup



Today I started to notice how little food I had left for the challenge. I notice now how $21 is not really enough to live on. I was also faced with this reality at work today. I had a few clients call me and talk about how they needed food assistance from local food pantries due to "running out of food stamps." I could sympathize with this, because I am really starting to see how easy it is to run out of money using this food stamp budget. I was reminded of my early college years while I was making minimum wage. I was back to eating spaghettios and soup a lot. This is okay with me, but could I do this on a weekly basis?

Day #3 Hump Day

So today is number three of the food stamp challenge and here is my menu:

Breakfast

-Toast

Lunch

-Sandwich and Crackers

Dinner

-Soup and Sandwich

Here is one thing I am noticing about living on this low budget. I notice that I am planning out what I am eating more and it is not as exciting. I may be craving steak, but this is what I am getting because this is what I have budgeted for. That is just the reality and I am working on accepting this. Today I ate a lot of carbohydrates, which is more carbs than I usually intake. The foods that are high in carbs have been low in price so that is what I purchased. Also today, I was a little disappointed. A group of my friends were going out to lunch and I had to decline this offer, because my budget does not cover this. This was not fun to do, but I continue to remind myself that this is the challenge.

Day #2...I Think I Can Handle This!

So today is day number 2 of the food stamp challenge and here is my menu:

Breakfast

-Granola Bar

Lunch

-Peanut Butter Crackers

(and yes quite a few of them)

Dinner

-Leftover spaghetti

I thought that today would be a tough day for me with all the repetition of the same foods, but it really wasn't too bad. I had an incredibly busy day at work and somehow my thoughts of what I was eating throughout the day disappeared. I imagined many people on food stamps feel this way. They have too much on their mind to continually worry about what food they don't have, and instead tend to focus on what they do have. I usually don't eat leftovers, unless I bring them home from a restaurant, but there was so much spaghetti left over from last night that I though I would make that $2 meal stretch to another night. I was glad that I did this, so I can save some of my other items until later in the week. What I don't like so far about the challenge, all the carbohydrates that I am consuming. The spaghetti noodles and the crackers alone were above my normal intake of carbohydrates. This is something that I need to think more about when planning more meals. They really need to be more balanced. Is there a way to have a more balanced diet while still maintaining the $21 a day budget? Today my thought is that I can easily handle this for a week, but could I handle this if it was my reality?

Day #1....Getting back to basics!

I woke up today and was pretty optimistic about how the day was going to turn out. The first thing I did was get my things ready for the day. I knew that the items I had planned to eat for this day were pretty simple and this is why I titled the blog: Getting back to basics! Here is my daily menu:

Breakfast

-Granola Bar

Lunch

-Ham Sandwich

Dinner

-Spaghetti

When I thought about this menu, the options did not seem so bad to me. I typically eat fruit or a granola bar for breakfast, and the bar was the cheaper option of the two. I also broke out my lunch box to take my lunch today. I typically eat out for lunch with colleagues or I grab something on the go, so this was different for me. So I made myself a ham sandwich and took this for lunch today. I didn't purchase any chips for this challenge so I ate the sandwich alone. I also had to change how I would make a sandwich. I purchased the store brand bread, instead of the brand name to save money and I purchased the meat in a pack and not from the deli. These seem like simple money saving changes, but I could really tell the difference in what I was eating today. Spaghetti was my meal of choice for dinner. It was actually really cheap to make when I only used the sauce and the noodles. Eating no meat is not a problem for me, so I was okay with leaving this out. Now that my three meals are eaten for the day, I feel like I stayed close to a pretty average meal for a typical day for me. I feel that this will get harder as the day goes on as I may feel like my meals are getting pretty repetitive.

Beginning the Food Stamp Challenge

Today is the first day of the food stamp challenge. I have been thinking about this assignment since the class began. I really enjoy having my own routine and I pretty much eat the same way weekly. So changing my routine is difficult for me...but here goes!The thought of eating on $21 per week is pretty daunting, but not impossible. This is the reality of many Americans, so I am going to try my best to keep reminding myself of that when I am struggling to make due with what I purchased.

Shopping

Grocery shopping for this week was difficult for me. I usually purchase the same food when I go to the grocery store each week and I know generally how much this is going to cost me. My husband and I usually spend around $100 per week on groceries alone and then you add in the eating out that we usually partake in and this amounts to well over $21 in one week. My husband did not want to participate in this with me, so I was shopping for one person on my shopping trip. While shopping for this week I really had to focus on what I was spending while I was shopping. I typically purchase lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, but the costs for these are way more than the money that I had to work with for this shopping trip. I tried to chose items that would last me through the week and try to stay as close as possible to my usual eating habits. I will update my blog daily on what I chose to eat for the day and how it is different than that of my day to day schedule.