Day 3

Day 3 of the challenge was a strange day. We took the weekend off since DH was out of town on Saturday and we were gone all day Sunday doing family pictures. It was tough to get back into the routine of cooking-especially on time change day!

Breakfast:

Breakfast today was sausage, scrambled eggs, toast and juice-a very traditional American breakfast!

DH was up early cooking-we got a ton of food! He makes the BEST scrambled eggs, but the healthy eating plan didn't let us use cheese in our eggs :( They were good, but not nearly as good as they would have been with cheese in them.

Breakfast this morning was delicious, but too much food! I was already tired from the time change and not sleeping-the heavy breakfast didn't help! I felt so full-all I wanted to do was go back to bed! I don't know how people eat such huge breakfasts every day!

Total cost: 1.23 per serving (2.46 for the both of us)

Lunch:

Lunch creatively used the spaghetti leftovers. We added a side salad, toast and milk to make it a complete meal. I know it's important to eat your grains, but the reliance on buttered toast is getting a little bit boring! I would like to see some other ways to get grains-are there other options?

I wasn't really hungry for lunch at all. I eat breakfast around 6:20 each morning and my lunch is at 11:15. After such a big breakfast I wasn't in the mood to eat another big meal-and lunch was pretty sizable. I divided the leftover spaghetti in half, but I think I was more than a serving. 

I did manage to eat most of it though so I must have been hungrier than I thought. It was a yummy lunch and it kept well in the fridge. I'm even developing a new affinity for salads! They are pretty tasty with the right dressing and veggies added to the lettuce they are actually good. I might be eating more salads in the future.

Total cost: 1.79 per serving (3.58 for both)

Dinner:

Dinner was polenta with beans and cheese, green beans and some of the tasty yogurt cookies. We didn't buy any polenta since the recipe indicated that corn meal would be an acceptable substitute. 

While we were looking through the cabinets we realized that the beans had never made it onto our shopping list. Instead of driving into town we just skipped the beans.

You can't really get the full picture of how disgusting it looked. You boiled water and added the cornmeal to it. It was super lumpy and looked gross. I was already mentally planning back up dinners since I was sure this one wasn't going to turn out.

Next step was to add a can of corn and a canof green chilis. You waited until the cornmeal had thickened into a paste-it only took about 5 minutes.

Once the cheese was added it looked a bit better-I'm a firm believer that a little cheese can make everything better! The heat was turned down to low and you stirred occasionally until everything was well mixed. The total prep time was about 10 minutes-It was a quick and easy dinner! 

Completed dinners! The green beans were simply frozen veggies heated up. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the taste of the polenta. It tasted like creamed corn. DH put it best when he said it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. It was edible and definitely tasted better than it looked-but it probably isn't something we'll be making on a regular basis. I do think the beans might have added some more flavor. The cookies were still yummy even a few days later-they were the best part of the meal!

Total cost: 2.23 per serving (4.46 for both of us)

Overall, today was a very easy and practical day. I felt like today was probably the best day so far-not it terms of taste but it terms of practicality. Dinner was something that could be made even if you did have skills or a lot of equipment. 

Day 2

Day 2 was by far my favorite day of the challenge! We had 3 delicious meals and all of them were pretty easy to make.

Breakfast:

 Breakfast was cereal and fruit. This was something we would normally eat and it was super quick to make. DH had bananas instead of apples, but otherwise the meals were the same. Our only complaint was that there really wasn't any protein in it. We were both hungry again by mid morning.

Total cost: .80 per serving (1.60 for 2 servings)

Lunch:

Lunch creatively used the leftover honey lemon chicken in a side salad. I don't usually repurpose my leftovers when I take them for lunch-I dump them straight from the pan into a Tupperware and call it lunch. Turning it into a new meal actually made the leftovers less boring. DH travels a lot for work and I'll end up eating the same meal for lunch and dinner for several days in a row. If I can figure out ways to repurpose them it might make it a little less boring.

Lunch was a yummy salad with vinegrette dressing. The salad used chopped tomatoes and cucumbers-which were part of the cucumbers I chopped up for the wraps!

The first step was washing and shredding the lettuce. This was the small amount of lettuce in the salad. I was getting worried that it wouldn't be enough! Each salad was only 1 cup of lettuce!

 Adding the chopped cucumbers and tomatoes. I'll admit that I chopped up some extra veggies since I thought the salad wasn't going to be enough....Shhhh!

The ingredients for the dressing. The plan didn't give us a recipe so I made my famous mixed vinegar dressing! It's delicious and always a hit. When I was growing up I was always responsible for making the dressing-it always made me feel special and proud to be trusted to make it. I spent a lot of time refining what my mom taught me and now it's my go to dressing. It's super simple to make-you simply mix olive oil, white vinegar and balsamic vinegar. I pour in the olive oil (however much I need for that particular application), white vinegar (half of the amount of olive oil) and balsamic vinegar (half of the amount of white vinegar) and whisk it together.

 We then chopped up two of the honey lemon chicken breasts and used them to top the salad. 

Lunch was accompanied by one of the yummy yogurt cookies and a cup of milk. I was really hungry at lunch after such a small breakfast and lunch was really filling! I wasn't even really hungry at dinner time. The glaze on the chicken mixed really well with the dressing and the veggies! It really made the salad super flavorful. 

I'm not usually a big salad fan since they are usually pretty bland and overly lettucy. On this salad I could barely taste the lettuce! It kept very well until lunch time and wasn't soggy! The yogurt cookies were still the best thing I've ever tasted! 

Total meal cost: 2.25 per serving (5.00 for both of us)

Dinner:

Dinner was spaghetti with broccoli and a roll. I was excited about trying the "one pan" spaghetti-it sounded like an interesting concept to make everything in one pan.

Ingredients for dinner: the Rosemary is actually fresh from our garden. We used a Kitchen Aid chopper to chop the onions-it's similar to the Slap Chop but less infomercial. It's probably the best investment we've made-it makes chopping veggies so much faster!

Best investment ever!!

Next step is to brown the meat and onions together. Quick and easy. You were supposed to drain the fat but since we were using 96/4 ground beef there wasn't really any fat to drain-I left it in to add some flavor.

After the meat is browned you add the tomato sauce, water and spices. You stir and wait for it to boil. At this point I was getting worried-it looked disgusting and watery. It wasn't looking like spaghetti. When I make spaghetti I always add a splash of red wine to the sauce (it's my secret ingredient and really gives it flavor)-I was worried this was going to be bland. There was so much water and barely any tomato sauce......

After the sauce is boiling you add the spaghetti noodles. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes covered. You have to make sure you stir it a lot to ensure that it doesn't stick (especially if you're using stainless steel pans).

Once the noodles are soft dinner is ready! I was surprised that all the water cooked off or absorbed. It smelled delicious. 

While I was making the spaghetti DH started making dessert-Pudding shake ups. Luckily this was a much quicker dessert than the night before.

 The ingredients-sliced bananas and pudding.

 You were supposed to use a quart size jar to shake together the milk and pudding mix until smooth. We couldn't find a jar so we used a Ziplock bag. It was a pretty easy substitute. The shaking was definitely tiring! It took about 10 minutes of constant shaking to get the pudding smooth-using the KitchenAid mixer would have been faster and easier.

Sliced bananas are placed at the bottom of the cups. We used plastic cups since all our regular cups were in the dishwasher from our endless milk drinking this week! The pudding is poured over the bananas and then chilled for 15 minutes in the fridge.

 The completed desserts! I'm not a huge fan of bananas (I like the taste but not the texture) but this was delicious! It was the perfect end to our dinner!

 Completed dinners. The broccoli was simply frozen broccoli with butter and the rolls were store bought with butter. The completed spaghetti was covered with Parmesean cheese right before serving! It was delicious and very filling. We have enough left over for lunch the next day (in accordance with the meal plan). The broccoli was pretty meh....once again there was no seasoning so there really wasn't any flavor. The roll was fine-there really isn't anything you can say about a roll. The spaghetti was awesome-it was full of flavor and the sauce had really soaked into the noodles so they were full of garlicky goodness.

We chowed down on that spaghetti! We are so much that we were almost too full for dessert but somehow we managed! Every component of the meal was amazing-we will totally be making this again! It took about 45 minutes to make the entire meal from start to finish which is totally doable even after a long day it work. We really didn't dirty up too many dishes either. 

Total cost: .74 per serving (1.48 for both)

This was much easier and much more practical that Day 1. I feel that most families, even with minimal kitchen equipment or training. Many families who are living in poverty don't have access to large amounts of kitchen equipment or dishes or have a dishwasher to wash dishes. Last night's dinner would have been difficult to handle if we had to then do all the dishes by hand after spending so much time cooking dinner. This dinner was much more practical for families who are struggling. However, it doesn't address the many families that don't have access to a stove. Currently I have three students who are living in motel rooms with just a microwave as their cooking implement. Four of my students live in homes that do not have electricity. In a situation like that cooking is practically impossible-I keep hoping for some meal ideas that would work for those students but I haven't found them yet. 

The issues that go into the link between poverty and unhealthy eating are bigger than most people imagine. It's not as simple as telling people they have to eat healthy-most of them know that-they need the tools and the skills to achieve that. 

Today was an awesome and easy day! I'm feeling a little more positively about the challenge. I'll admit after yesterday I was feeling discouraged, I wasn't sure if eating healthy was possible if you consider all the factors that go into poverty-not just SNAP benefits-but today I'm feeling much better! 

Day 1

Breakfast:

Breakfast was cooked oatmeal with peanut butter and raisins mixed in along with a glass of juice. It was pretty easy and simple to make-it took about 25 minutes to cook.

My first bowl of oatmeal EVER!!

I've never eaten oatmeal-it just wasn't something that ever appealed to me (I'm just not a big breakfast eater). This wasn't bad-if we had been able to add some sugar it probably would have been tastier. The texture of the oats was a little chewy, but the combination of the raisins and the peanut butter was tasty. The dog especially liked it :). Overall, this was a decent meal but not something we will make again-it's just not our taste.

Total meal cost: .95 per serving (1.90 for two servings)

Lunch:

Lunch was tuna and cucumber wraps-a bit of an odd combination. We prepared these the night before and they were simple to make. It required measuring cups and spoons, peeler, cutting board and a knife. This meal didn't come with a formal recipe, just the ingredients. It wasn't very clear how it was supposed to be assembled. 

Ingredients for the wraps: whole wheat tortillas, cucumber, mayonnaise and tuna fish.

First step was to peel and slice the cucumbers into strips. I went ahead and peeled the whole cucumber since we will be using it for other meals this week. 

I used half a can of tuna for each wrap. This was 2.5 oz instead of the 3 the recipe called for-2.5 oz was already a lot of tuna!

Finished wraps! Prep time for 2 wraps was about 15 minutes.

Lunch also included 1/4 of a cup of vanilla yogurt. This was half of a single serving container-we had to package the yogurt in Tupperware containers.

It wasn't very much yogurt compared to what we're used to.

The beverage for the day was milk. The question became how do you take milk to work? We used empty Nesquik bottles-this was a special purchase for this project not something we normally buy. 

1 cup of milk each. Compared to my usual 12 oz. can of LaCroix water this wasn't very much. I also don't really like plain milk so I had a hard time drinking all of it.

Finished lunches! It took about 25 minutes total to prepare the lunches. This was longer than I spend when I'm packing lunches made of leftovers. 

Total meal cost: .85 per person (2 servings=1.70)

I also realized how much packing your lunch costs. If you work or go to school you need containers for the food (either Ziplocks or Tupperware), a lunch bag (plastic or paper sack or an insulated lunch box with ice pack if food needs to be kept cold) and a drink container. We already had all these things since we already pack our lunches, but many people might not have access to these items. That would add to the cost. Honestly fast food or a prepackaged meal would be easier and not require these supplies. I can see why some families might struggle with packing their lunches-this really isn't something that I had thought about before starting this project. It's easy to say to pack your lunch to save money but a lot goes into making a healthy lunch. 

The wraps were delicious! We will be making these again in the future! They kept well in the fridge and we're still tasty at lunch. DH and I both agreed that we will be keeping these in our lunch rotation. The yogurt was terrible! It had no flavor and tasted sour-I barely ate mine! I really noticed a slump in the afternoon without my afternoon dose of caffeine. It was replaced with milk which was odd. I also felt that the lunch didn't keep us as full as our usual lunches-it seemed to be pretty low in calories.

Dinner:

Dinner tonight was honey lemon chicken great, almond rice pilaf, peas and corn and chocolate chip yogurt cookies. The leftover chicken was used to make salads for lunch the next day. The cookies were also used to take for lunch.

The rice cooking-the last time I made rice that wasn't microwave rice I was in high school. I didn't put enough water in the pan and almost burned my parent's house down! I'm happy to report that the rice turned out and our house is still intact. You can't really see the slivered almonds but they were in there! It was a strange combination.

Lemon and honey chicken ready to go in the oven. The shopping list had us buy fresh lemons to juice-if we were doing it again we would buy the frozen Minute Maid Lemon Juice. It's cheaper and still just as healthy-plus it keeps longer (and saves time when cooking).

After the chicken baked at 375 for 45 minutes we added the glaze (a half and half mix of honey and lemon juice) and baked for another 15 minutes. The overall cooking time was 1 hour! That was a long time when you're making an after work meal-after I've been on my feet all day I'm not really enthusiastic about long, complicated dinners!

Ingredients for dessert (the two jars of jelly and the bag of pecans in the back aren't part of the cookies)! It felt wierd to be baking on a Wednesday night. DH and I don't usually eat desserts and if we do they are prepackaged. If I'm going to bake I do it on a weekend or on a day off from school. We're usually too busy during the week to bake.

The cookies were pretty simple to make. The best kitchen tool ever is my Kitchen Aid! My parents got it for my birthday a few years ago and it's one of the best presents I ever received! It makes mixing up cookies a breeze! My assumption was that most people living on a budget wouldn't have such an expensive kitchen gadget so I attempted to mix the dough in the bowl with a spoon. I don't have the arm muscles for that! How do people manage to get their dough completely mixed and totally smooth? I gave up and broke out the Kitchen Aid and five minutes later I had perfect dough!

Finished cookies! I really think that this was an unnecessary part of the meal. Do most people really make a complete dessert from scratch every evening? If I didn't work and stayed home I might have the time, but to me it was just a waste of time.

Finished dinners! The peas and corn are simply frozen veggies heated up and mixed with a tablespoon of butter. The recipe called for margarine but DH and I both whole heartedly refuse to consume ANYA margarine so we substituted butter. It's only a few more calories and not that unhealthy! The beverage was once again milk! We're only on day 1 and I'm already sick of it! We usually drink half a gallon a week-by the end of day 2 we were already through a half gallon! 

Overall we were pretty pleased with the taste of the dinner, but not the time it took to cook it. It took us over 2 hours to cook the dinner and another 45 minutes to prepare lunches for the following day using the leftovers and clean up! We didn't sit down for dinner until after 8! This was just too complicated to be a feasible weeknight meal-however it would work for a weekend meal where we could start earlier. I couldn't imagine attempting to prepare this meal and clean up if I was also trying to take care of children or if we worked a shift job where we didn't get off work until 7 or 8. 

The chicken was AMAZING! I was nervous about the honey lemon combination-it just sounded a little strange to me. We will totally be making this chicken again-it wasn't too difficult to prepare (just took a long time to cook) and it was perfectly moist and really flavorful (even though it wasn't marinated). I think I'm going to try making it in the slow cooker next time and see how that works!

The rice was pretty good-our rice was a little crunchy but that was more due to my inexperience than a fault in the recipe. The almonds added a little hint of sweetness that went well with the taste of the brown rice. On its own it wasn't very flavorful but when we mixed it with the sauce from the chicken it was heavenly!! 

The vegetables had NO flavor-even with using salted butter. They were okay but nothing special. When we usually make frozen veggies we jazz them up with spices and they are awesome-theses were just plain and boring. The sweetness of the corn didn't pair well with the chicken sauce either so we couldn't even use that to jazz them up. 

The cookies were probably the best part of the meal! They were super smooth and creamy! They tasted really rich and were bursting with flavor! You only got a slight hint of yogurt taste-it mostly tasted like vanilla and chocolate chips! It was hard to limit ourselves to only one-I totally could have eaten the whole batch! They were worth the crazy long time it took to cook them! We will be making these again pretty soon-I have a potluck coming up next month and this will be my contribution. I'm excited to find a reasonably healthy cooking recipe that doesn't taste like cardboard! 

This meal was on the expensive side. The total cost was 3.94 per serving  (7.89 for two servings). The priciest ingredient was the chicken at 4.00. We will use the cooked chicken and the cookies for other meals (which is figured into the cost). This meal also made a ridiculous number of dishes-we used several bowls, measuring cups, 2 pans etc. I feel that many families would not have access to enough dishes to prepare this meal. 

Overall, the meal was our favorite so far but the most expensive and the most time consuming! I don't think this meal would be a practical choice for many families-even if the baking and some of the prep work was done ahead of time.

Choose My Plate Shopping

The Choose My Plate website provides a grocery list and a pantry staples list. We went through the staples list before we went to the store expecting that we would have most everything on the list. Boy were we surprised! A lot of the things they considered to be staples we didn't have in our well stocked pantry!



The grocery lists were CRAZY long! Even for a family of four I felt that they had tons of food on them! There will definitely be lots of variety in our diet during these two weeks! We made a commitment not to change anything on the list. We were nervous about some of the recipes since they use ingredients that we don't particularly care for. I don't eat fish at all-I simply can't tolerate the smell-and several recipes used fish. DH isn't a fan of tofu (and I only really like it in miso soup) and I detest bananas. We were nervous that we would end up starving to death over these two weeks-however a lot of the recipes did sound delicious! It was also nice to not have to think about menu planning or making a grocery list. DH did the grocery shopping for the first week of the 2 week challenge. It took him almost 2.5 hours to find everything that was needed. We were buying a lot of new things that we don't usually buy so he had to hunt for them. We also bought WAY more food than we usually do-he completely filled the cart (we usually only fill it halfway). When I saw how much food was on the lists I was worried about the cost! Take a peek at these lists-they have tons of food right? They also have tons of veggies (which can turn out every expensive) and meat (definitely expensive) on the list!

When he came home with the bags I had already decided that the experiment was a failure. There was so much food! I guessed that the total was around $300.00.

The grand total for one weeks worth of groceries (including vegetables?)-$152.60! We did not use any coupons. We did save $9.22 by using our Dillon's Plus Card which is a store savings card. Honestly the store card doesn't really save you a ton of money-it just brings the prices down to what regular price would be at other grocery stores. This figure doesn't include any other purchases that we made that week-there are no personal hygiene items on there and no extras. We did purchase yogurt for the two of us-both of us eat a yogurt every day with our lunch. We put those on a separate order even though we will be eating them during the challenge (the calcium is important to us). The total also doesn't include pop-however it does include milk and juice. We did buy some pop separately since we do drink a limited amount of pop. If we included those two items our total would be about $12.00 higher! We buy most of our household goods (paper goods, cleaning supplies, shampoo, pet food and supplies etc.) on Amazon anyways-and SNAP benefits wouldn't allow the purchase of those things anyways! The total for the one week of food was way too high for our SNAP benefit one month of food would be $610.40-which would be over our family allotment by about $253.40 (assuming we received the max allotment). However, some of the items on the list were "pantry staples" so they could be reused for many other recipes. We did purchase all store brands (when available), however there might be cheaper options. We could also use coupons to save some money on a few of the items. The menu also includes desserts and snacks which is not something we typically eat-we could cut those out to save money.

Overall, the food expense wasn't any cheaper than what we usually spend-it was actually double our typical grocery budget (which is on the healthy side anyways and includes a lot more name brand items and specialty items such as expensive cheese and European food). We would be spending more on food in the long run if we followed this and I don't think we would be eating any healthier than we usually eat. We did get more food than we usually do-especially more meat and vegetables. We also got ingredients to make real meals for breakfast (instead of fruit and toast) and ingredients for dessert. Those are two things that we don't usually buy. We also bought more fresh food instead of our usual packaged food (such as organic frozen pizzas and bag meals). I think we do pretty well already with our spending and eating healthy already. I do feel like this program wouldn't be possible if we were receiving SNAP benefits-I could easily cut some things and modify recipes to save some money but I don't know that it would be feasible for every day.

I did feel like the pantry staples list was too long-there were a lot of expensive spices on there. You can get spices at the dollar store, but how many people know that? I wouldn't consider a lot of the items on there to be staples-I keep a well stocked pantry and I didn't have a lot of the stuff (cornflakes?!). It also took FOREVER to do the grocery shopping. DH and I both work full time (well over 40 hours a week), but if we were raising children and working multiple jobs I don't know that we would have had the time to do this kind of shopping. I can also see that if you didn't have a car it would be hard to transport this large amount of groceries (keep in mind-all that food is just for two people for one week!!!!). Even if we had bought the food a couple of days at a time it would be a lot of food to carry on the subway, bus or while walking. Also, some neighborhoods do not have a decent grocery store available-residents may have to rely on a mini mart or convenience store. Many of these items wouldn't be available at that type of store-some of the items are more specialty items (like tofu)-they wouldn't be available at a smaller or more rural grocery store.  Our small town only has a convenience store-and the nearest large grocery store is 25 minutes away by car. There is a small rural grocery store 10 minutes away by car, but many of these items wouldn't be available (they have a very limited selection). If DH and I didn't own a car we would be limited to the small selection at the gas station-bologna, milk, bread, chips, candy and doughnuts.

I'm super excited to start the challenge and see how this goes! I really want to encourage healthier eating in my students and they are enjoying learning about my project! I can't wait to see what some of the recipes taste like-some of them sound delicious (and some sound disgusting!).

All our food!

It really is a ton of food for 2 people to eat in just a week!

Here are the links so you can join the challenge! I would love to have you join me in this!
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/downloads/2WeekMenusGroceryList.pdf
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/downloads/2WeekMenusPantryStaplesList.pdf
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/downloads/2WeekMenusAndFoodGroupContent.pdf
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/downloads/2WeekMenuCookbook.pdf

Choose My Plate Challenge Introduction

DH and I have been trying to eat healthier and cut our grocery budget down. Last week DH feel down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up on choosemyplate.gov. This side is from the USDA and replaces the old food pyramid site. They have a whole section called Healthy Eating on a Budget. They have tips for grocery shopping, sample menus and recipes. Their two week menus are designed to meet all the nutritional needs, fit into a typical SNAP (food stamp) allocation and only use basic kitchen equipment. All the lunches are designed to be packed and taken to work and/or school!

DH and I are really into politics and social issues. We spend a lot of time discussing various social issues. We agree on most things-even though one of us is registered Democrat and one is a Republican. On a car trip (our usual place for discussion) DH brought up the two week menus and the idea of following them for two weeks. We thought it would be neat to really see if it would be possible to eat healthy even if we didn't have the financial resources that we do. One of the biggest complaints about the food stamp program is the difficulties people have in eating healthy with limited resources. Those who do not have kitchen equipment, live in a motel without a kitchen or work long hours say it is impossible to eat healthy. The complaint has also been made that healthy food is too expensive and that it is unaffordable. I have a special interest in understanding the struggles those who are living in poverty face. Many of my students (85%) are living under the poverty line and most of those students are receiving some form of government benefits. A lot of my students do not receive healthy meals at home-due to lack of funds, lack of time and lack of kitchen equipment. I want to know if it really is possible to live healthy on SNAP benefits-and I would like to be able to pass on some tips to parents that need help making healthy food choices for their families.

The website is really nicely set up and provides you with a grocery list and a list of pantry staples along with a cookbook for everything. I printed it all off and put it in a binder-two weeks of recipes and shopping lists were 33 printed pages. If you didn't have a computer and were having to print these at a public library it would cost $3.30. The recipes include the nutritional information which is handy to have-all the recipes fit federal nutritional guidelines.

For a family of two the maximum monthly allotment of SNAP benefits is $357 dollars. The average benefit for a family of two is $247 a month (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1269). DH and I usually spend between $200 and $300 per month on our food. We eat out pretty rarely-a few times per month. DH eats out at least once a week for lunch at work-usually his company pays. We grocery shop on Sundays-however we stockpile food so we are able to skip weeks. There have been months that we haven't gone grocery shopping at all. If we average out our yearly expenditures on food (including eating out and grocery expenses) it works out to about $75.00 a week.

We cook most meals at home-usually in the slow cooker and we always bring leftovers for lunches. DH cooks breakfast-usually we eat something simple like fruit and toast. We've agreed to follow the plan for two weeks. We will allow ourselves to skip 1 day (my birthday), but other than that we will eat three meals a day from the plan.

I'll be blogging as the challenge goes on-judging the value of the meals, the taste, the ease of preparation. I feel that DH and I have a pretty well stocked kitchen (as far as utensils go). Compared to many people who are receiving SNAP benefits we probably have better and more kitchen utensils. We are not using anything from our stockpiles except for spices and condiments (this means we purchased items that we already have in the pantry-such as canned soup and spaghetti). The recipes are all designed for a family of four so we did have to halve the recipes (and hopefully the cost). I will also be breaking down the cost of each meal based on the real prices at our grocery store.

Stay tuned for the next two weeks to see how our experiment turns out-and what insights we learn from our experiment!