United Way Seven Dollars a Day Challenge

I’m taking the United Way of Snohomish County seven dollars a day challenge. It started yesterday. After signing up on the local United Way website a page showed with the rules including a set of more challenging rules, the rules that food stamp recipients actually follow. With the more stringent rules our family doesn’t receive $21 a day, we only get $18. I like a challenge, I’ll take it, but I’m finding that my biggest hurdle is getting my husband Kurt to join in. He’s having flashbacks to nights of liver and onions on the days just before payday. His family actually needed these services when he was growing up and if his mother reads this post I know what she’ll say, “I wish I had eighteen F*&#^&% dollars a day to spend on our family of four back then!”

The Rules

• You should eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, spending only $7
  per person, per day on food.
• Salt and pepper don’t count as expenditures, but all other
  seasonings, cooking oils, condiments, snacks and drinks do.
• Don’t use food you already own.
• Don’t accept food from family, friends, coworkers or others
  in the community. That includes free samples at your local
  grocery store!
• Try to include fresh produce and healthy protein each day.

Want more of a challenge?

• Purchase only what the Washington Basic Food Program allows. This means no fast food (including hot items from the grocery store deli), alcohol or tobacco.
• Participate with your family, coworkers or other community group. The amount of benefits changes based on the size of your “household”:

Household Size – Hunger Challenge Budget
1 $7/day
2 $12/day
3 $18/day
4 $22/day
5 $26/day
6 $32/day
7 $35/day
8 $45/day

I’ve made it my job in the last two years to save money on groceries, since I’m not bringing in an income, without compromising taste or quality of food. If I come off sounding like this is too easy it’s due to some practice. I’ve never actually done the math to figure out how much I’m spending over a week, month, or year, all I know is that I’m keeping the food spending in check by buying on sale, embracing certain store brand items, and utilizing the bulk food section. I don’t bother with hours of coupon clipping and didn’t for this challenge either. There are some stores that are just cheaper than others like Ranch 99 and WinCo Foods and have the same food quality as “high end” stores.

Fred Meyer has milk on sale every week. One week it’ll be ten half-gallons for ten dollars and the next it’ll be one gallon for a dollar ninety-nine. Normally I buy my milk, cheeses and a few other food staples at Costco. Milk there is always a dollar ninety a gallon, which is important to know for a family that drinks four gallons a week. Yeah I know, that’s A LOT! Buying in bulk saves a lot of money, but most Costcos don’t accept food stamps and we aren’t supposed to use food we already have. Also buying cases of food would put me way over budget for one week. In some ways, this would be a lot easier to do over the course of a month.

I never considered my almost daily mochas as a food item, so in my past grocery-cost bill-analysis they never made the cut. Though I have been trying to quit them for a while not because they are very expensive. I’m using this week to help me drive past the stand without stopping in for my fix. Our other major switch for this week is Kurt will be bringing lunch to work instead of going out, which means I have to get up at zero-crack-of-dawn-thirty to make it for him.

I bought oatmeal, raisins, and dates in the bulk section for breakfasts, and didn’t have to leave out the ever important brown sugar and cinnamon. I wound up spending thirty-eight dollars and eight cents on condiments for this week. Most of which will be used in multiple recipes.

Yesterday we had muesli for breakfast (I didn’t add nuts or fresh fruit), chicken salad sandwiches for lunch, and ‘Chinese Chicken’ with broccoli and rice for dinner. Today we had oatmeal for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, and we’ll be eating leftover ‘Chinese Chicken’ for dinner.

Chinese Chicken recipe:

Foster Farms’ directions on this recipe says to cook in a dutch oven on the stove-top. I baked our chicken in a cast iron dutch oven in the oven at 350 degrees for about 1 ½ for a 3 ½ pound chicken so I skipped the bit about browning the chicken on all sides and just popped it in the oven with the sauce. I used a slice of regular onion instead of green onion and left out the sesame seeds.

Mixture:
1/3 cup soy sauce, regular or reduced salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon catsup
1/4 cup dry sherry or apple juice
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 green onion, sliced

Other:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds*

1. Remove giblets, rinse chicken and pat dry. Heat oil in Dutch oven, brown chicken on all sides.

2. Mix together soy sauce, brown sugar, water, catsup, sherry, red pepper, garlic, and green onion. Pour mixture over chicken. Cover and simmer 35 to 45 minutes or until meat is no longer pink at thighbone.

3. Turn chicken once during cooking. Remove chicken to platter, draining juices back into pan. Skim fat from sauce.

4. Blend together cornstarch and water and stir into sauce. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Spoon some sauce over chicken, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve chicken with remaining sauce.

*Sesame seeds need to be toasted to develop their nut-like flavor. Toast sesame seeds in shallow pan at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Here is the United Way of Snohomish County blog. There you can see what other people are doing for this challenge.

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