My Plate on food stamps? Challenge Accepted!

 By Thaint T

For this budget exercise I challenged My Plate on a food stamp budget. Was I successful? Read on to find out.

For this set up, I have a beautiful family of 5. Two adults and 3 kids. And the money for my food comes from food stamps. My weekly amount is $192, (or $38.40 per person, or $2.13 per meal). This is more than the national average food stamp cost per meal, which is $1.40. I had to prepare 90 meals each week, Monday through Sunday for my lovely family.

Hey Thaint you might ask, how do you know how much food you need? 

Well, I calculated using a conversion table Danielle provided me. Using cups and ounces I figured out how many servings I need. Servings to me is the easiest way to know how much food I need to grab at the store.

Looking at my list of food that I 'bought' at the grocery store, I can imagine the dishes I could make. I did buy food from every category - dairy, grain, vegetables, fruits and protein. Sure, it may not be diverse, but I still bought a little bit of difference food.

I did buy a lot of canned veggies, but I can still work with it. Plus, it was 10/$10 for canned veggies, and you can't beat that. I did not buy a lot of 'breakfast foods,' but from the looks of it, I can still make a decent breakfast. I bought milk, orange juice, and muffins. What more do you need for breakfast? I even bought fruits. Now my kids can't run away!

Some foods that really wouldn't 'work' would be this Italian cheese blend that I bought. It's a seasoning, so I can't do much with it. I also bought six jars of meat sauce, but no pasta or noodles. I can add my chicken thighs to the meat sauce with cheese and eat it with toasted bread.

I had about $40 left over after shopping. One big difficulty was that time was our enemy. But then again, who does their weekly shopping in one hour?? Either way, I succeeded.