Food Stamp Challenge, week 10
Saturday, March 14, 2009
My goal? Feed my family for $2 per person, per day. ($140 a week)

Last week husband dear did most of the shopping and lost the receipts. He used his debit card, so I do have amounts, I just don't remember a lot of what we bought!

For week 10, we spent $90. I did get some sesame oil, mung beans, nori wrappers, and spring roll wrappers at the Asian store. Kroger had some awesome over-ripe produce deals - I got 16 nectarines for $2, 10 plums for $1, 3 artichokes for $1, and two bags of vine ripe tomatoes for $2. I bought 4 heads of lettuce for 88 cents each (wish I could really stock up on that, but it goes bad too quickly!) We also bought oatmeal, and eggs, and some premade meatballs... it gets fuzzy after that! Randall's had some deals, and I got 40 lbs of potatoes for $8 (and a bag of Oreos for $1.29!)

At the Mexican grocery, I got 8 lbs. of dried pintos for $4 and 8 lbs. of white rice for $3. I cannot eat white rice, but I still have some brown in the pantry that I'm making for myself. One night we spent $29.00 on rotisserie chickens (3), macaroni salad, and tortilla chips (my birthday!) and that amount is included in the $65.00 total.

Basically, we ate everything that was left in the pantry and our meals weren't planned, either.

We ate: spaghetti and meatballs, homemade pizza, cream of potato soup with whole wheat bread, pancakes and eggs, white bean pasta salad, and had a meal of rotisserie chickens, macaroni salad, and tortilla chips. We ended up with a chicken left over (we bought 3) and also made chicken tortilla soup.

Today I'm going on a major run to the stores. My goal is buy a month's worth of staples to restock our empty pantry, and I plan to spend $300 on food. You can see a nifty calculator here, to see how much they calculate your family needs for a year. I had to laugh to see that for my family, they recommend I lay in a store of 45 lbs. of KoolAid and 10 lbs. of Jell-O!

This is why I keep a running total of food costs. I did not start out with empty cupboards, but I *will* have to replace what we use. Over the course of months, everything will even out, and pantry stock accounted for. Yes, we ate some bulgur that was in the pantry before I started tallying the food; but when I replace the bulgur we eat, the cost will show up in the totals (even if we don't eat it that week or month).

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posted by Milehimama @ Mama Says at 3/14/2009 12:28:00 PM | Permalink | |