Six days down, one to move on our Reverse SNAP Challenge. Here's what we needed to devour on Day 6:
Amy's breakfast (toast and cocoa): 27 cents
Brian's breakfast (cereal with add-ins and juice, PLUS half of a cup of more cereal): $1.Sixteen
Lunch: Leftover couscous salad, leftover pasta, and the the rest of the pint of blueberries we started out the day past. Total: sixty two cents.
Amy's afternoon snack (popcorn and egg cream): 39 cents
Dinner: quesadillas and salsa. We used you may of tomatoes (sixty nine cents at Aldi), 1 crimson onion (31 cents at H-Mart), a tiny little little bit of jalapeno pepper we had saved inside the freezer (anticipated cost five cents), 4 cloves of garlic (expected fee 10 cents), home-cooked black beans equivalent to about 1/three pound dry (33 cents), 1.Five tablespoons of lime juice (predicted fee 10 cents, based mostly on a price I determined on Google Shopping), four ouncesarugula from the garden (loose), approximately 3/four of a half-pound block of Monterey Jack cheese from Aldi ($1.50), and six flour tortillas ($1.19 for a package of 10 at Aldi, so this is 71.Five cents). Total: $three.80
Dessert: Ice cream soda for Amy (22 cents); for Brian, 3/4 cup of GORPCC, meaning 1/4 cup each of herbal raisins from Trader Joe's ($2.Ninety nine a pound = 75 cents a cup, so about 19 cents), peanuts from Aldi ($2.39 a pound = 15 cents an ounces, which is set 1/four cup), and chocolate chips from Aldi ($1.Fifty 9 consistent with bag and about 23 tablespoons to a bag, so approximately 27.Five cents). Total: 83.Five cents.
Additional snacks sooner or later of the day: 3/4 cup Life cereal (10.Five cents) with half of cup milk (10 cents); water with a touch of orange juice (about 1 ounce, or 3 cents); 1 ounce string cheese (29 cents); 2 graham crackers (11 cents). Total: sixty 3.Five cents.
TOTAL FOR TUESDAY: $7.Seventy one
TOTAL FOR DAYS 1-6: $forty seven.34, or $7.89 in keeping with day. One day left, $15.66 left in our charge range, and plenty of leftovers in our refrigerator; we've got completely got this. Heck, I could go out to Starbucks this afternoon and no longer blow the charge variety. (But I may not.)
We had a friend over for board games after dinner, and I told him that we were doing this challenge and why we were doing it differently from the standard way. I noted that I think the standard SNAP challenge is designed to make it as difficult as possible, because most of the people taking the challenge have a particular political agenda; they're trying to show that it's really difficult to get by on food aid and that, therefore, the benefit needs to be increased (or at the very least not cut any further). If you look at the webpage for the SNAP Challenge, you can see that the questions they ask about the challenge are all based on the assumption that getting by on this amount of food is very difficult: "What choices did you have to make about the types of food you could afford, where you shopped, or the nutritional quality and variety of food? What have you cut out of your routine to stay on budget (e.g. COFFEE)? Are you worried about your groceries running out before the end of the Challenge?"
Anyway, I expressed my concern that the people who sponsor these challenges aren't going to be interested in my experience. I even said that I feared the Democratic party might "revoke my member card" for publicly stating, and showing, that for us it was not only possible but very easy to eat a healthy diet on a food-stamp budget. The friend in question is probably somewhere to the left of the salad fork on the political place setting himself, but his response was something along the lines of, "I don't think dismissing awkward facts is a productive approach." So I'm heading into the last day of my challenge with renewed hope that my experience actually will be a useful contribution to the conversation about food aid. Perhaps instead of just wringing our hands over how difficult it is to feed a family on the amount of money SNAP provides, we can start talking more about what can be done to feed a family on this budget, and even feed them well.
