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| My family's food for this week -- all of it. |
I have a confession: My first thought about the Hunger Challenge wasn't that it would be hard. I thought it would be pretty easy.
I regularly spend $100 or so per week to feed my family of four. Or so I thought.
That's what I spend at Safeway. I also load up on massive quantities deeply discounted staples at Costco once every few months.
Before I carefully read the rules, I figured we'd be able to dip into those Costco staples during our Hunger Challenge week.
Nope. That's when I had my "Duh!" moment. Shopping at Costco is a luxury. Someone who relies on food stamps to make ends meet has $22 a day for everything.
So I went back to the drawing board with my shopping list, scanning Safeway's website to price out everything we'd need for the week (except salt and pepper). Before adding it all up, I subtracted the weekly cost of the lunch and two snacks my kids' preschool serves (about $53), leaving us with $101 for the whole week.
We're foregoing some of our go-to faves, which I never considered splurges: yogurt, granola, honey, lunch meats, frozen pizza.
We'll be having oatmeal (with water, not milk) for breakfast most days. My husband and I will have PB&Js for lunch (though we almost couldn't afford the J). For dinner, we'll have some of our kids' favorites: rice and beans, mac and cheese, Ramen noodles with tofu and broccoli, quesadillas, and a tuna and penne pasta dish I'm going to try out for the first time.
I checked out of Safeway with $85.41 worth of food -- leaving $15.59 worth of wiggle room in case we run out of food later in the week.
Here's hoping we don't.
I regularly spend $100 or so per week to feed my family of four. Or so I thought.
That's what I spend at Safeway. I also load up on massive quantities deeply discounted staples at Costco once every few months.
Before I carefully read the rules, I figured we'd be able to dip into those Costco staples during our Hunger Challenge week.
Nope. That's when I had my "Duh!" moment. Shopping at Costco is a luxury. Someone who relies on food stamps to make ends meet has $22 a day for everything.
So I went back to the drawing board with my shopping list, scanning Safeway's website to price out everything we'd need for the week (except salt and pepper). Before adding it all up, I subtracted the weekly cost of the lunch and two snacks my kids' preschool serves (about $53), leaving us with $101 for the whole week.
We're foregoing some of our go-to faves, which I never considered splurges: yogurt, granola, honey, lunch meats, frozen pizza.
We'll be having oatmeal (with water, not milk) for breakfast most days. My husband and I will have PB&Js for lunch (though we almost couldn't afford the J). For dinner, we'll have some of our kids' favorites: rice and beans, mac and cheese, Ramen noodles with tofu and broccoli, quesadillas, and a tuna and penne pasta dish I'm going to try out for the first time.
I checked out of Safeway with $85.41 worth of food -- leaving $15.59 worth of wiggle room in case we run out of food later in the week.
Here's hoping we don't.
Go, Liz, go!! Super planning, and impressive that the entire family is involved!
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