United Way Hunger Challenge - Day 1

Our $2.44/per serving dinner

Today was the first day of the United Way Hunger Challenge. We’re hoping to raise awareness of hunger in Washington state (and really, everywhere) by trying to feed ourselves on the amount of money that someone on food stamps gets for each day. In Washington state, that dollar amount is $7 per person per day and $12 for a family of two per day.

Not only are we trying to eat on $12/day, but we’re trying to eat local, fresh, organic food on $12/day. If you’ve followed these challenges from other bloggers in the past, you’ll no doubt be aware that while not EASY, it’s not too hard to feed yourself on a food stamp budget for a week (it’s a lot harder of course if you have to do it long term, because variety can be a challenge). Things like beans and lentils are cheap. Frozen or canned vegetables are a good deal most times and as for high quality protein sources, chicken thighs and wings are usually reasonable, as is ground beef.

But can we feed ourselves on $12/day while shopping at the farmers markets? Isn’t food there a lot more expensive than at the grocery store? Well, I’ve long maintained that shopping the farmers markets isn’t always as expensive as you think it is. I think we can do this, though we’ll have to be careful with what we buy and we might have to cut back a bit on our coffee (see the end of the post for a discussion on coffee).

Today’s Recipe: Egg Scramble

Dinner was an egg scramble. We love scrambles. They’re a great way to use a lot of varied ingredients, they’re quick to prepare, and they are usually quite healthy. We had originally planned on a roast chicken for tonight’s dinner, but then we remembered that we had class tonight and we’d have a grand total of 40 minutes between work and class to eat dinner. So a scramble it was. As soon as we got home, I diced 11 oz of #2 potatoes from Olsen Farms.

Then I melted the 1 tsp of lard in a skillet and cooked the potatoes with salt and pepper until they were  about half cooked, 7 minutes.

Next I then added the rye berries and the kale and continued to cook on medium heat until the kale was wilted and the rye berries were warm, another 3 minutes. I turned the heat down to low and got a small skillet out on medium-high.

In the second pan, I melted another teaspoon of lard and cooked two large eggs, scrambling them with salt and pepper until well until cooked, then poured them over the potato mixture and topped with the shredded cheese. The entire dinner, from the time I walked into the kitchen until we ate took 20 minutes.

Dinner was satisfying and filling. It was a bit bland, as we normally like our scrambles with a bit of salsa or hot sauce or bacon, but we had a variety of textures with the rye berries, kale, eggs, and potatoes, and the sharp and smooth flavor of the cheese made us feel like we were eating a lot more expensively than we were.

You’ll notice that the Tillamook cheese isn’t from the farmers market. Well, when trying to eat fresh and local on a budget, you’ve got to know which foods are important to buy local and which ones you can stretch a little and buy something from a little farther away. For us, knowing a lot about the health benefits of pastured eggs and local meats, we chose to purchase our cheese at the grocery store and everything else at the farmers market.

Caloric intake: One of my concerns doing this challenge was whether we’d be consuming enough calories and whether we’d be consuming the right calories. Well, I’ve entered our entire day’s worth of food into a calorie counter and here’s what I came up with per person.

• Total Calories:1,311
• Total Protein: 57.5 grams
• Total Carbohydrates:137.3 grams
• Total Fat: 61.3 grams

This is a bit higher on the fat than I’d like, but we’ve used a fair amount of cheese today between the frittatas, the soft taco, and the scramble. Tomorrow we’ll be using much leaner sources of protein including chicken and white beans. However, the calorie amount is pretty spot on. No, you won’t be running a marathon on 1,300 calories a day. But you can live on it. And, other than the cheese and coffee, which were from the grocery store, our entire day’s worth of food was from the University District Farmers Market.

Day 1 Food Tally

• 1 handheld frittata each. $1.22
• 1 soft taco each. $1.70
• Coffee. Organic, Whole Foods beans, on sale: $1.05
• Cream. Golden Glen: $0.25
• Lots of water at work: free
• 2 eggs. Skagit River Ranch: $1.00
• 1 cup rye berries. Nash’s: $0.50
• 10 oz potatoes. Olsen Farms: $1.50
• 2 oz cheese. Tillamook: $0.38
• 1/2 cup of kale. Nash’s: $0.50
• 1/2 cup cabbage. Nash’s: $0.25
• 2 tsp lard. Sea Breeze Farms: $0.25
• 2 tortillas. Homemade: $0.50

Total: $9.05. Total remaining: $50.95

On Coffee: I’m sure some of you are looking at our day wondering why on earth we are still paying for coffee on this challenge. Well, that was a big debate for us. After all, coffee isn’t a food. It isn’t required for life. Coffee is a luxury item. Well, for good or bad, we are quite fond of our morning kick-start and we wanted to do this challenge while trying to maintain a minimal level of caffeine intake. (Plus, you really don’t want to be around us if we have to give up coffee cold-turkey.) It is very possible that our coffee purchase of almost $6 will put us over for the challenge. If we only go over by the amount of our daily coffee, then I will still feel very good about how we did. When money was extremely tight for us a few years ago, one of the adjustments we made was to curtail our coffee intake. The amount of money we’re spending on coffee for this challenge entitles us to between 2 and 3 shots of espresso each day per person.  We could certainly cut that back to a single shot, given a week or two to wean ourselves off. Given another couple of weeks, we’d be able to give up coffee completely and remove that line item from our budget.