This week, from June 2-10, I’m participating through the Food Stamp Challenge along with over 150 others who registered at BeCentsAble to participate. You can read more about the challenge here. If my family had to live on food stamps, we would likely receive between $50 and $102 a week to spend on groceries. I decided to challenge myself to stretch $50 to cover both my family’s meals and items to donate.
Yesterday’s total for food was no more than $3.50. You can read about what we ate here. I haven’t made it to the grocery store yet, but we still have plenty of food in the house so we’re not in dire need. We ate cereal with milk again for breakfast. I purchased a box of Multigrain Cheerios last week for $0.99 with a rain check from a sale and a coupon. I think this box will last us most of the week, especially if we don’t eat cereal every day. I think $1.50 for breakfast is a pretty fair estimate of how much that meal plus the additional milk we drink is day is costing us.
For lunch, we ate at quesadillas and salad at my brother’s house. My older sister, brother-in-law and niece are in town this week and my mum provided lunch for us all. Anna mostly ate cheese and one piece of lettuce. It’s unusual for us to have eaten out of the house for lunch two days in a row and we appreciate the generosity of our family and friends.
I put dinner in the crockpot before we left for lunch. I’ve never made salsa chutney chicken in the crockpot before, but it worked really well. I served the chicken and sauce over rice (cost $0.10) with a side of steamed veggies (Bird’s Eye Steamfresh purchased on sale with a coupon, cost $0.35) . Anna also ate a large helping of applesauce for dinner (cost $0.35) and my hubby and I split an orange (cost $0.15). Anna drank milk and I drank water and some of my hubby’s Sierra Mist, purchased at CVS in January. I got four 12-packs at CVS in January as well as some potato chips for $0.09 after ECBs and we’re still drinking them. Soft drinks are a rare treat in our house.
We only ended up eating about half of the chicken I prepared so we’ll have plenty for lunch tomorrow, and there’s leftover rice and veggies for tomorrow’s fried rice. Here’s the crock pot version of the recipe and breakdown in approximate cost for the chicken:
Salsa Chutney Chicken
1.5-1.75 lb. chicken pieces ($1.75)
3/4 cup salsa ($0.25)
3/4 cup chutney ($1.00)
1-2 T. minced garlic ($0.10)
Place chicken pieces in the crockpot. Pour garlic, salsa and chutney on top. Turn crock pot on low and cook for 5-7 hours. Cooking time will vary depending on the crock pot. I let ours cook around 6 hours and the chicken was falling off the bone.
Total cost: $3.10
Besides combining sales and coupons to purchase the ingredients for this recipe, another way I kept the cost low was by purchasing the chutney at an Indian Market instead of at the grocery store. I paid less than $3.00 for a small jar of chutney instead of the $5.00 to $7.00 I’d pay my local supermarket. 
Approximate daily food expenses: $5.55
Running total: $9.05
Tomorrow I’ll focus on getting us more fruits since we haven’t been eating our daily dose. How did you do today? I’d love to hear what you’re eating if you’re participating in the Food Stamp Challenge.
Keep tabs on all the best deals by subscribing to BeCentsAble’s feed or get updates direct to your inbox!
