Day 12

We're so close to the finish line! I'm getting excited to get back to my regular cooking schedule! This has definitely been a very eye opening project. It is a lot more difficult to eat healthy than I previously thought. I was really one of those people who was dismissive of a lot of the excuses that were given for not eating healthy. I tended to look down on a lot of the choices people who were living in poverty made. While I still disagree with some of the choices made I can be more understanding of the challenges that go into making healthy choices. The average food stamp allotment provides $3.00 per person per DAY! That is not a lot of money to make healthy food choices. Many of our meals were over 3.00 per serving-that would be impossible to make on our food stamp budget. I will say I'm thankful that DH and I have the resources to do a project like this and that it isn't our reality-it was way harder than I expected.

Breakfast:

Breakfast today was cereal and scrambled eggs with salsa. We essentially combined the meals from the past few days to make one meal.

Getting ready to cook up the eggs! 

Finished breakfasts! I've already talked about the values of cold cereal so I don't have much to add. The eggs and salsa were delicious-I liked them better in burrito format rather than just scrambled but they were still pretty good.

Total cost: 1.86 per serving (3.72 for both of us)

Lunch:

Lunch was the leftover white chili from the night before.

The leftover chili was accompanied by a side salad-carrots, lettuce and vinegarette dressing.

Finished lunches! The toast and milk were the usual accompaniments. The chili kept well for the next day and was pretty easy to reheat in the microwave. The salad was yummy. The toast was actually a good accompaniment to the chili-it was pretty tasty to dunk the buttered toast in the chili.

Total cost: 3.78 per serving (7.56 for both of us)

Dinner:

Dinner was quick and easy but strange-it was misickquatash also known as Indian succotash. We had a side of mashed potatoes to go along with it.

Ingredients for our dinner. Luckily it was WAY less ingredients than yesterday's dinner!

First step was to brown the ground beef.

Once the ground beef was browned the tomatoes, Lima beans and corn were added. Once they were added simmer for 5 minutes covered and dinner is finished! This was a less than 15 minute dinner which was nice! 

Finished suppers! This wasn't a bad supper-it was definitely full of veggies, colorful, healthy and easy to make. It tasted pretty good as well-right before serving it was topped with nutmeg which was an interesting choice. If I was making this on my own I probably would have added more seasonings to it to give it some more flavor. This meal could work with lots of different types of veggies and still be good! However, it was kind of expensive which worked against it. I do think this is something simple to make and something that we could make again.

Total cost: 3.10 per serving (6.20 for both of us)