The Food Stamp Challenge

The allotment for a family on Food Stamps is $4/person per day.  For my family, that is a total of $12/day, or $84 a week.

I am going to attempt to do this, and I'm going to use the prices and food that I can find local to me. 

I've been debating whether to break this down by serving, but considering that I only have $84 for the week to work with, I don't really want to quibble over the cost per serving.  If there are leftovers, then the leftovers can be used for a meal on another day.

Setting out to spend only $84/week, I can already see one very big problem.  The planning involved.  Granted, I always plan my meals out a week in advance, and I grocery shop with that week in mind.  That's a lot of time and effort that goes into planning out a week of meals.  I also cook most everything from scratch.  Why?  One, it's cheaper and Two, with our food allergies, it's safer.

We also eat a lot of vegetarian meals.  A plant based diet is healthier for you and for the planet, and its also cheaper.  So, these are our guidelines going into this week.

I went and did my preliminary shopping for the week yesterday.  I went to our local farm store, Local Homestead Products, and bought the weekly box of veggies.  They sell these boxes of produce - it's like a CSA box, but you don't have the up front commitment to pick up a box a week.  You go and buy the box.  It's an excellent deal, and we've been using the produce box for most of the summer - picking one up every couple of weeks.

This week's box contained:

image: Local Homestead Products, LLC

2 onions
2 zucchini
1 squash
1 pepper
2 sweet potatoes
1 acorn squash
1 bunch radish
1 pound green beans
1 bag of spinach
2 tomatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 bag of apples (your choice of variety)
1 dozen eggs

I already see a problem here.  I live in farm country, and this bounty is locally and easily available to me.  Many families around here have gardens in their back yards.  What about families who live in the city, far removed from local farms?  What about those that don't have back yards to grow produce?  What do they do?  Something to think about as we begin our week of eating on a very tight budget....


So, the challenge begins.