TGFSC - Day 4

I can't believe we've made it this far! I thought for sure we'd cheat here or there, but we haven't! And we've even gone to bed 'hungry' aka no dessert.
More and more each day this challenge is making me realize how gluttonous I can be and how truly thankful I am, that I have that choice.

Our Menu today:
Breakfast: Yogurt ($1)
Lunch: Chicken Sandwich on ww bread with cheese, lettuce & tomato ($1.25)

Our typical lunch sandwich - Grilled chicken, ww bread, cheese, lettuce & tomato

 Dinner: Ground chicken, roasted red peppers, cabbage, onions, corn, beans, rice and a tomato ($1.35)

Dinner Day 4 - A bit blurry, but you get the idea.

No snack today, there was food left over from a meeting at work and I had a plate of salad for free!

Total for today: $3.60
A new record!
But will this savings of $1.40, I of course will spend it on dessert!
2 Peeps and a scoop of ice cream will set me back $.63

TGFSC - Days 2 & 3

I couldn't write about the food stamp challenge we're doing this week last night because I was busy baking my self silly.

Day 2
Again pretty easy. But I notice that I've gone from counting calories to counting cents. Its just as annoying and tiresome.

Our Menu for Day 2:
Breakfast:
Yogurt ($1)
Cottage Cheese ($.5)
Lunch:
Chicken sandwich on WW bread with cheese, lettuce and tomato ($1.25)
Snack:
Apple ($.17)
Dinner:
Chicken, broccoli rabe, mushrooms and onion with pasta ($1.67)

Our #foodstampchallenge dinner day 2

Dessert:
Peeps (2/$.016)

Total for the day: $4.58
$.42 cents left!!

This was great...seriously. I can't believe how cheap it was!

Day 3
Today was harder. We had some running around town to do and didn't have time to eat breakfast, so by noon we were both hungry and cranky, but knew we had another 2 hours until we could get home to eat something...it sucked!
Another reason today was particularly difficult, a new restaurant opened up in our neighborhood and we had made plans to meet friends there prior to agreeing to this challenge. We decided to have some cottage cheese after the gym to hold us over while we met our friends and shared a drink. When they were ready to order dinner, we left.
I feel very privileged that I do not have to make these scarifies on a routine basis.

Our Menu for Day 3:
Breakfast:
None :( $0
Lunch:
Chicken sandwich on WW bread with lettuce and tomato ($1)
Pretzle ($.12)
Snack:
Summer Sangria from SoWe ($2.5)
Dinner:
Chicken, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes ($1.34)
Total for the day: $4.96
$.04 left

Chicken, brussel sprouts and sweet potato for $1.34

Unfortunately, I'm still hungry today...damn that drink with friends! ;)

'We' baked...and baked...and baked...till we fell asleep!

I didn't end up blogging yesterday because 'we' (I) had to bake thank you gifts.
'We' (I) made: 4 dozen S'more muffins, 2 loafs of cinnamon bread, and 2 dozen peach scones
This kept me up until 1am, and I got a bit delusional, I forgot to take a photo of the scones and the final project. FAIL.

The photo is a bit dark, but this cinnamon bread came out AWESOME!

S'more muffins...we bagged and tied all the goodies for our thank you gifts.

TGFSC - Day 1

I'm not gonna lie, I was nervous that we were going to be hungry...But we weren't!
Although the constant fear of being hungry just makes me want to eat more...I found some control and stuck to our $5 diet.

Here is what we ate:

For Breakfast: ($1.17)
yogurt & apple (I also had two cups of tea which work provides free of charge)
For Lunch: ($1.40)
grilled chicken sandwich on ww bread with cheese lettuce and tomato
For Snack: ($.50)
cottage cheese
For Dinner: ($1.85)
grilled chicken, rice, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, zucchini, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots.

This whole plate cost us $1.85!

With $.08 left for the day, I opted to have 2 (!) Peeps ($.008/each) and a cup of tea ($.1), which actually leaves me with some change!

Even better than some change in my food pocket, my little food tracker app tells me I ate adequate carbs,  and received plenty of protein, calcium , iron and vitamin A & C.
38% Carbs
23% Fat
38%Protein

I had a pretty tough workout at the gym tonight and I feel pretty good. I was worried I'd feel more run down, or that perhaps my body wouldn't recover well, but so far so good. And I'm full!

Bring on Day 2!

Food Challenge Prep Work

We started by looking through all the circulars, and coupons in the Sunday paper. Based on what was on sale we created our menu for the week. Some things we were not willing to compromise on, our bread and yogurt.

We decided that we needed to have our daily greek yogurt, the amount of protein alone, just can't be beat;  And the bread we usually purchase is 1/2 the calories of other bread. With summer coming, we were not willing to compromise on this.

Already in our the fridge:
Bread - $4
4 Yogurts - $4
Broccoli Rabe - $.50
Sweet Potato - $1
Sweet Peppers (4) - $1
Onion (3) - $1
Brussel Sprouts - $1
Eggs - $1

This is what we purchased:
6 Greek style yogurts - $6
2 Cottage Cheese - on sale for 2/ $5
Coffee Creamer - on sale $2.50
Coffee - It was on sale and we had a coupon, $4.50
Chicken Breasts - on sale for $1.49/lb!, we bought 6 pounds for $8.95
6 Apples - $1
4 Tomatoes - $1

This is what we're thinking our daily menu will consist of:
Breakfast
  1 yogurt
  1 cottage cheese
  Possibly a hard boiled egg
Lunch
  Bread
  Chicken
  Tomato
Snack

  Apple

Dinner

  Chicken

  Rice or Pasta

  Veggies from the $1 rack

Dessert

  Peep

Last week we randomly picked up 2 cartons on Peeps left over from Easter for $.10/each making each one .008! A saving grace for my sweet tooth. :)

Tonight (Sunday) knowing that we had some produce and meat which would go bad if we did not eat it by next week, and knowing that because of the price of it we couldn't eat it during the challenge, we had a fabulous meal which cost $3.75 each.

Martin's chicken sausage with jalapeno & cilantro; homemade guac, refried black beans and grilled corn, sweet peppers and onions.

It's springtime

And things are growing!! Or at least starting to...
:)

This is the beginning of sweet basil, we were successful in growing this last year, so we planted twice as much this year! If it grows even remotely well, I don't know what we'll do with it all. I hope our friends like basil!

These are the shoots of a few pepper plants, we got seeds for 5 difference varieties and threw them in the dirt...Whatever we get I hope it HOT!

The Great Food Stamp Challenge!

So I found out about this today in the paper...and we're doing it!
http://www.hungercoalition.org/foodstampchallenge

Can you eat off of $5 a day?

I thought we could, then I sat down to do some math and realized, its going to be very difficult to get our daily requirement of protein and vitamins within $5/day.

We're going to have to get creative...

It will be interesting to see how our energy levels are impacted and if this impacts our results from the gym.

I guess I should cancel my dinner plans with friends next week...

She's excited!

1st try at home made green curry shrimp