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Hunger Challenge Day 5

Friday, September 16th, 2011

OK, so remember that $8.99 chicken we roasted one night, and then chopped it up the next night for tacos? We are still not willing to let that chicken go until we get every last possible morsel out of it. That’s why I spent a few hours today cooking it down and making it into chicken soup for dinner. Once you boil the chicken so that it’s in that falling-apart stage, you find a lot more meat than you realized was still on the bird. Also, I might be looking a little harder than usual – it’s slim pickings in our refrigerator during the Hunger Challenge!

I also added one more item to my grocery list, which was a $2.99 box of matzoh ball mix. This was a tough call. On the one hand, I thought it would make the soup seem a lot more filling and satisfying. On the other hand, the mix is relatively expensive for what you get out of it – plus it called for a total of four eggs, which I wasn’t so sure I wanted to spare. I had planned for bacon and eggs at least one morning this weekend. Nevertheless, I decided to jump in and go with the matzoh balls. And matzoh ball soup is really quite filling. The only problem is that a few hours later, when your stomach realizes you’ve faked it by giving it mostly water, you start feeling hungry again. And that’s where I am right now.

Heading into the home stretch, I’m feeling a little uncertain about how the weekend is going to go. On the one hand, I have food left for two decent dinners (spaghetti, and all of those beans and vegetables I can make into chili). On the other hand, we’re all getting a little tired of the tunafish, peanut butter and jelly, and Triscuits. Can we hold it together for two more days?

Posted Under: Government Regulations, Nutrition | Tags: , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on September 16th, 2011

Hunger Challenge Day 3

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

OK, as predicted, I was way too confident yesterday. Today, the Hunger Challenge got a whole lot more complicated.

1) I came into contact with other food, and I caved. Mr. Jolly Tomato, who had a work meeting for lunch (I will subtract $1.57 from the total grocery allotment for his meal), brought home a bunch of tamales and I couldn’t bear to leave them untouched. So I had half a tamal (prorated cost: $1.50). Also, I had been testing a pie that I’m entering in the KCRW pie contest so I had some of that too (prorated cost $1.00). Gulp.

2) I had to add to the grocery list. First, I had totally forgotten to add in money for mayonnaise that I was using for tuna salad ($1.99 for small jar). Second, it seemed like we were running low on fruit. At one point today I was within a block of a farmers’ market so I stopped to grab three large pints of strawberrries ($5). Also the kids were not down with having brown rice again so I bought one more box of pasta to go with tonight’s beef stew ($1.49).

3) Real life intervened. Last month I won a years’ supply of endive in an auction to benefit A Fund For Jennie. I am excited about this beyond words, but I hadn’t expected to receive the first shipment of six pounds of fresh endive in the middle of the hunger challenge. I’m going to use four heads of endive this week and I’ll estimate the market value at $3.49, added to my list. 

So let’s review:

Current grocery total: $91.11

Half a tamal: $1.50

Slice of pie: $1.00

Mayonnaise: $1.99

Pasta: $1.49

Endive: $3.49

Strawberries: $5.00

Revised grocery total: $112.82, out of a total allowed $130.59 (that’s also a revised limit, accounting for $1.57 less in meal allotments given that Mr. Jolly Tomato ate elsewhere for lunch today).

Umm…Maybe this was harder than I thought.

Today’s menu looked like this:

Breakfast: Oatmeal and nectarine slices

Lunch: Peanut butter and jelly and veggie sticks for kids, tamale and leftover taco fixings for me.

Snack: Triscuits

Dinner: Beef and vegetable stew, served over pasta; green leaf lettuce salad with thinly sliced endive. 

To make this yummy stew, I browned some stew meat and then put it in a slow cooker along with a large can of diced tomatoes, three chopped and peeled carrots, two celery ribs (chopped), and one large diced onion. I cooked it on high for five hours and then brought it down to low for another two hours. When it was done, I added a teaspoon or two of salt, and it was perfect.*

*Unlike me, that is. Better luck tomorrow.

Posted Under: Government Regulations, Nutrition | Tags: , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on September 15th, 2011

Hunger Challenge Day 2

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Is it possible to get cocky on Day 2 of the Hunger Challenge? Yes indeed. I don’t know what the rest of the week holds, but I had to pat myself on the back today for outstanding use of available resources. Either I’m off to a good start or I’m setting myself up for an epic fail by the end of the week. We’ll see.

Today’s menu looked like this:

Breakfast: Oatmeal and honeydew melon cubes

Lunch: Peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread, diced nectarine, celery sticks

Snack: Yogurt

Dinner: Make-your-own chicken tacos with chopped onion, lettuce, tomato, grated cheese, and “Mexican” rice

I hadn’t planned to serve the chicken two nights in a row, but I forgot to defrost the beef ahead of time (I had frozen it as soon as I bought it because it was on an about-to-expire sale). So chicken it was.

Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot of chicken left after last night’s dinner. By the time I pulled off all of the chicken and diced it I got about 1/2 cup at most. I decided to disguise the lack of chicken as best I could by surrounding it with heaping piles of lettuce and cheese.

Then here’s what I did that was so ingenious: I chopped up the leftover roasted vegetables from last night, added them to the leftover rice, poured in about 1/4 cup of tomato sauce, and heated it over low heat to make a “Mexican” rice (I put “Mexican” in quotes because it’s not exactly authentic, but close enough). Who knew – it was delicious!

I probably shouldn’t have worried too much about the lack of chicken – our older kid decided it didn’t look too appealing, so he went into the fridge and got himself a slice of ham to eat with his tortilla. Fair enough – that meant there was plenty of chicken for two adults and one child.

That brings me to one last observation: I’m starting to think that we have it easier as a family to live under these cost limits than many of the individuals who are trying the same challenge. It would be difficult for me to cook solo and live under $5 per day, but I can easily cook for our family of four for $20 per day (especially considering that two of those eaters are very small people). It’s all about economies of scale, and perhaps that’s making our week a little easier than most. We’ll see if that trend continues.

Posted Under: Government Regulations, Nutrition | Tags: , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on September 13th, 2011
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