Day 1 of the Mazon SNAP Challenge: what we ate and what I'm thinking

My husband and I are taking the Mazon SNAP Challenge from 7/16/12-7/22/12.  That means that during this week, we will eat no more than $63 worth of food, which is the same budget allotment as two individuals receiving food-stamps (now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP).

SNAP/Food-Stamp Factoids That I'll Bet You Didn't Know #4:  Nearly half of SNAP participants are children. Forty-seven percent of all participants are less than 18 years old, and about half of all households include at least one child. Households with children receive 71 percent of all SNAP benefits. About 56 percent of the households with children are single parent families.  Many SNAP participants are elderly or disabled. Eight percent of all participants are age 60 or older, 73 percent of whom live alone. About 16 percent of all households include an elderly member, and about 20 percent include a disabled member. 75% of American households living below the poverty line owned one or more working cars in 2009.  Source: Building a Healthy America: a profile of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (issued by the USDA, 4/2012),  and the US Census

Day 1 of the Mazon SNAP Challenge was uneventful.

Breakfast was coffee with organic soymilk (sadly, NOT made with our Keurig....Joshua is still grumbling), egg white omelets...Joshua had his with a little Cabot cheddar cheese and I had mine with 2 mushrooms, salt and pepper, and a banana each.

Lunch was tunafish with a little mustard and organic grated carrots, tossed salad (very simple, just romaine and tomato) with a little fat-free Italian dressing,  and a cup of split pea soup (split peas, water, garlic, onion powder, basil, salt and pepper).  The soup was plentiful (enough for at least three more meals) and tasty but boring  and textureless, so tonight I'm going to bake some of the Rhodes dough and make some garlic croutons out of the bread.  Admittedly, I was hungry between lunch and dinner and had a snack of coffee and some pineapple.  

Dinner (pictured above) was roasted chicken with a cherry glaze (made with a handful of mashed cherries, ground cloves, nutmeg and boiling water, surprisingly delicious even without sugar, grilled organic carrots, a shared baked potato, a salad of romaine lettuce, razor thin tomato slices and avocado chunks with fat-free Italian dressing and spices, and bowl of carrot/ginger soup (carrots, ginger, cardamom,  and a tiny bit of onion, all boiled and liquified with my immersion blender.)  No complaints from the husband (except for the endless Keurig gripe), but I do think we could use some more snack food.

I'm thinking popcorn.  We have enough in the budget to afford it. We bought a huge 8 lb. jug of Orville Redenbacher plain kernels from Costco a few weeks ago for $11.99.  I might just take about a half pound of that for our Challenge week...that would take away $0.75 from our surplus of $9.78, leaving us with $9.03.  My favorite way to make popcorn is in a brown lunch sack in the microwave.  

I'm also adding a bottle of Kraft barbecue sauce to our SNAP stash, as it's on sale for nine cents at King Sooper after a doubled coupon is applied.  That will leave us with $8.94 in our surplus.

Been ruminating quite a bit about the SNAP Challenge, about both the wonderful support as well as the not-so-nice emails that I've received about the challenge.  As a blogger, you've got to embrace the bad with the good when it comes to reader input, and not run out of the room screaming every time your inbox catches fire.  I understand the controversy surrounding food stamps and I understand that some people would call me a hypocrite because I'm a Republican. I'm actually okay with that now (after some friends talked me down).  I didn't want to bring politics into this challenge at all; I want this to be about sharing an experience with those who have so much less than we do, and seeing if I was up to the challenge of eating healthy, tasty foods on a minimalist budget.  That's all.  I didn't want do this in order to feel sympathy for the poor; I already did before I started the Challenge, and what compassionate person wouldn't feel bad for those who are living in poverty?  I want to feel empathy with the poor. That's a whole different ball of wax.

More on this as the week goes on.  Please share your comments (good and bad) below.

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