Day 5: Food

We're all 5 under one roof for the weekend, so Josh gets to join in on the SNAP Challenge fun.  He is overall supportive and willing to join in as long as he can have his normal weekend booze. Fair enough. 

For breakfast, the kids had cereal or oatmeal.  Josh hadn't quite plugged into our cupboard situation when he asked James what kind of cereal he wanted for breakfast.  I suppose I could have bought two kinds of non-organic cereal for the one box of the organic cereal I did buy, but in general around here, there aren't too many choices.  Josh had oatmeal, and I had toast with peanut butter and honey.  I took a chance and had a banana too.  I'm fairly certain we'll be able to buy some more to get us through the weekend with the money we have left. 

Funny moment when Josh tasted the coffee:  He made a face and exclaimed, "What is wrong with this coffee?".  Someone has obviously not been reading the blog carefully.

Clare took a banana for her working snack.  Nora had a field trip to the Lexington Children's Theater and needed to bring a snack and lunch to school.  I made her some popcorn for snack and her lunch consisted of a peanut butter and honey sandwich, an apple cut up into slices, and yellow pepper. 

James ate on and off the entire morning.  He's not generally a snacker, so I'm not sure what was going on.  He had popcorn, an apple, and a banana.

For lunch, James and I went up to Picadome to dine with Clare.  Clare had pepperoni pizza, corn, mixed salad with ranch, canned peaches, a cookie, and chocolate milk.  I spent $1.00 on getting James some food too.  He chose chocolate milk, applesauce, and a cookie.  Quite a lunch!!  Josh and I ate at home.  He had a mixture of the three leftovers in the frig:  hoppin' john, enchilada casserole, and mac n' cheese.  I had hoppin' john doused with Sriracha sauce again followed up by a few carrots to cut the heat in my mouth.

That afternoon, I made pizza dough for that night's dinner and another loaf of bread.

After school, Nora ended up having a friend walk home with us.  I was slightly apprehensive to have another mouth to feed mostly because I had so little to offer, but it seemed worth the trouble.  They had, you'll never guess, popcorn as a snack.  I made Clare a hard boiled egg with a big piece of bread to get her ready for her 3 hour gymnastics practice.  She then took a granola bar and a whole apple cut up for her mid-practice snack.  James also had a granola bar at some point in the afternoon.  I had almost thought we were going to make it through the week without having to open up that box, but not quite.  I was a little disappointed about that because I don't really think of them as the best snack.  They're Quaker Chewy 90 Calorie Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Granola Bars.  They have a lot of ingredients:

GRANOLA (WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS, BROWN SUGAR, CRISP RICE [RICE FLOUR, SUGAR, SALT, MALTED BARLEY EXTRACT], WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED WHEAT, SOYBEAN OIL, WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, SODIUM BICARBONATE, SOY LECITHIN, CARAMEL COLOR, NONFAT DRY MILK), CORN SYRUP, BROWN RICE CRISP (WHOLE GRAIN BROWN RICE, SUGAR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, SALT), SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE CHUNKS (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR, COCOA BUTTER, SOY LECITHIN, VANILLIN [AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR]), SUGAR, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, GLYCERIN, INVERT SUGAR.CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SOYBEAN OIL, SORBITOL, FRUCTOSE, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SALT, SOY LECITHIN, MOLASSES, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, WATER, CREAMED COCONUT, BHT (PRESERVATIVE), CITRIC ACID.

My rule is generally that the fewer ingredients the better, and I need to be able to pronounce them.  I'm just now noticing that there is artificial flavoring.  On the front of the box, it clearly says "FLAVOR WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS".  No mention of artificial flavoring, which usually they admit to on the front of the box, although maybe that is what the first "FLAVOR" refers to.  I try to stay away from artificial flavoring, although I recently made the mistake of looking into natural flavoring.  Not much better really.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  You might also check out the Food Labeling Chaos report released by the Center for Science in the Public Interest unless you'd really rather just not.

I had Nora's leftover apple slices for my afternoon snack.  As I mentioned on Facebook, apparently one is not above that when trying to survive on SNAP benefits.

For dinner, we had pizza.  "Ninjun Turtle" boy helped me:

The dough was from the breadmaker (water, salt, oil, whole wheat flour, unbleached white flour, and yeast).  I used the left over tomato sauce from the enchilada casserole.  It wasn't quite as flavorful as a true pizza sauce, but it did the job.  One pizza was just mozzarella, and the other had mozzarella and pepperoni.  That pepperoni has absolutely nothing to do with local, natural meats.  I checked the ingredient list and was sorry I did.  But it only cost $1 as opposed to the $4 all natural pepperoni sold at Whole Foods.  Those $3 might matter.

Final products:

We ate all but 2 pieces between the 6 of us (the friend stayed for dinner).  I don't know about anyone else, but I woke up starving at about 2am.  Just had to rollover and go back to sleep.

Josh and I also had some beer and wine with dinner and afterward.  It was the first money I had spent all week.  I meant to get through all 7 days, but I'm feeling OK about my 4 1/2.