Food Stampery: Prep & Day 1

I'm trying the food stamp challenge as well. I had to make a few modifications to the amount, though. My wife agreed to try too, but only for dinner, and we can really only hit six-and-a-half days, due to some preexisting plans. Given that, I alloted $24.

I also added the rule that you can eat food you grew. In my case that only really amounts to a few tomatoes, a handful of chilies, and an acorn squash.

Here is a picture of the week's larder:

It breaks down like this:

• Kidney Beans - $1.50
• Rotini - $1.00
• Brown Rice - $1.69
• Can o' Tomatoes - $1.00
• A Chicken - $6.39. The biggest item on the ticket, but should be good for three meals. Usually you can get a White Gem chicken cheaper than this, but for some reason when I went to the store they were only selling two-packs.
• Old Wessex 5-Grain Cereal - $2.79. This stuff is amazing. If you eat a bowl for breakfast you sort of have to remind yourself to eat lunch.
• Soymilk - $1.69. To make the cereal happier, and also will likely end up an ingredient.
• 2 lb. Cabbage - $0.89
• 1/2 Kale - $0.40
• 2 Onions - $0.68
• 3 Potatoes - $1.68
• Mushrooms - $1.99. A bit much, but I'm planning to use them in a casserole.
• 6 Apples - $1.50
• 1 Acorn Squash, 1 Tomato - $0.

The total is $23.34. I could have gotten more kale :( .

I used the little hand-held shopping gizmo Stop & Shop has to track stuff going into the cart. It didn't work well on the vegetables, but it could run a quick total on everything else. The whole trip took an hour and some change.

When I got back, I put the beans on to soak. The next night I made lunches for the week—brown rice, kidney beans, and kale with garlic and onions. (Garlic counts as a spice I hope.) I brought these all in at once and left them in the freezer... though I just realized I'm taking Wednesday off of work so maybe that wasn't the optimal plan. Anyway, lunch for the week rings in at $3.59, and I have half a bag of rice left.

Breakfast today and for the rest of the week will be the 5-grain cereal with half soymilk/half water. This morning, however, I learned the microwaving it for that extra minute means eating half of it off the rotating tray. I might have picked up some bonus calories that way, since I'm not sure of the last time I cleaned that, but I tried not to think about it too hard. Tomorrow: 3 minutes. Breakfast for the week: $4.48.

Tonight, I cooked the chicken, a couple potatoes, and a handful of mushrooms. Honestly, it could have gone better. I took the chicken out too early, and had to reintroduce it to the over after I started carving. The potatoes came out well, even though we had to eat in shifts, and I'm still terrible at making gravy.

The rest of the chicken has been stored for future incarnations as casseroles or soup, and I'm boiling stock right now for similar purposes. The stock smells promising. We're looking at chili, chicken soup, casserole, something with cabbage and squash, and maybe some kind of pasta/bean resurrection for the rest of the week.