Buying Groceries to Eat on $4/day or less!

Gary and I decided to accept the SNAP Challenge for Hunger Awareness from Foodshare (CT) and to follow the posted rules (http://site.foodshare.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SNAP_Challenge):

• Each person should spend only $28 on food and drink per week. 
• All food purchased and eaten in this time must be counted in total spending, this includes dining out. 
• During the challenge, do not eat any food previously purchased. 
• Avoid accepting free food from family, friends and coworkers during the week since these opportunities would not be available for the general public. 
• Get your kids involved in the project by informing them of what you are eating and why, but do not restrict their budget. 
• Eat as healthy as possible, keeping in mind that this is how many people eat every day, whereas you can make up for lost nutrients next week. 
• Keep track of how you spend money on food during the week and your daily impressions of the experience on a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or your town’s newspaper. Send your blog to Foodshare. 
• Share your experience with anyone that you come in contact with. Let them know what you are doing and encourage them to explore ways that they can take a stand against hunger.

We also decided that we would donate the money we saved to a local food shelter.

Since we wanted to eat as healthily as possible, we began by choosing recipes that seemed fairly nutritious as well as inexpensive.  Gary is quite a bit "choosier" about his food selections, so we made different lunch choices but agreed on the breakfast and dinner options.

We usually eat cereal for breakfast, so we decided to buy one generic cereal for both of us.  We didn't want to waste the milk in our refrigerator, so we included the cost of the already-purchased milk in our total.  Since I was almost out of milk, I agreed to use some non-fat powdered milk for the week. We included coffee and creamer in our list.  We decided that we would confine ourselves to coffee and water for the week's beverages.

Lunch options included 2 loaves of bread (which we can also "snack on"), ham and cheese for Gary, and peanut butter for Jahn (I wasn't sure if the budget would allow for jelly).  I added some fresh fruit - 3 apples and 3 bananas for the week.

Our dinner choices were ones that we knew would allow for a second meal of leftovers: a simple pasta and tomato dish that we both like, and two crock pot chicken dinners (chicken and dumplings and low fat chicken and vegetable stew).  We figured we would probably have to buy chicken thighs for the slow cooker meals. For the 7th meal, we decided to buy hot dogs and see if we have enough money left for something heartier.  

Next we went online to check grocery prices for the week and settled on two stores: Aldi and Shop Rite.  We went to Aldi first to get whatever items were at or below our estimated costs.  We had great luck there with cereal, coffee, bread, packaged cheese, canned tomatoes, onions, butter, hot dogs and chicken broth, so we added two boxes of light microwave popcorn for snacking.  We got the remainder of our grocery list from Shop Rite and were able to add a Perdue oven roaster for our 7th meal.  (We can have the hot dogs for lunch if we want.) We also added a small box of Bisquick for the dumplings, which we had planned to make from scratch:-)

Our total for a week's worth of meals and snacks was $54.07 (or $27.04 per person).  That leaves us a whopping $1.93 for contingencies!  

I'm having lunch with a friend tomorrow, so we will begin the Challenge at dinner tomorrow night!

We have embarked on this adventure to support Foodshare in their efforts to increase hunger awareness and to personally experience hunger and deprivation for a very short amount of time.  We are blessed with the resources to eat well and in abundance every day and fully realize that we will not be able to actually feel the desperation that those without resources experience every day.  Our meals will include prayers of thanks for what we have and prayers of hope for those who "have not."

Who knows where this effort will lead us next?