Food Stamp Challenge(Alternate Title: Stephanie is a Numbers Nerd)

"Live simply, so that others may simply live." --St. Elizabeth Seton

$31.50 per week to feed one person. That breaks down to $4.50/day or $1.50/meal, if you break it down even further. Does that even sound possible?

It's not only possible, but millions of Americans that receive food stamp benefits do this week in and week out as they feed themselves and their families. $31.50 is the average per-person weekly allowance of an American who receives food stamps. For many, these are their only food dollars, and they have to make it work.

I read an article on a local Indianapolis news website today about the Food Stamp Challenge that is going on this week across the country to help increase awareness about SNAP (food stamp) benefits and hunger in the United States. The article followed one local man who was engaged in this challenge and how he found that his food choices were limited by the $31.50/week limit for all of his food for the entire week and that he chose to eliminate breakfast in order to have enough money to eat lunch and dinner, as well as choosing less nutritious options to save pennies.

While I was unaware of the challenge, I was curious how possible it is to live on $31.50/week per person. So I pulled out our family budget to see how our family compares. Our family of six has spent slightly more than $5,000 in the first 10 months this year on groceries, also including the cost of seeds and plants for our garden, all bulk fruit and vegetable purchases for canning and freezing, 1/2 hog and 1/4 beef. We don't purchase formula or prepared baby foods, but it does take into account my extra caloric intake for nursing as well as all foods used to prepare baby food for Eliza.

If I extrapolate that $5,000 figure out for the rest of the year, we will probably spend around $6,000 this year to feed our family of 6. When I break that $6,000 figure down, it figures out to roughly $1,000 per person per year, or about $19.25 per person per week. That's $12.25 less than the $31.50 average for food stamp recipients.

Now, the $31.50 for the Food Stamp Challenge needs to include ALL foods, including eating out. So I checked the budget again and added in the almost $2,000 our family has spent dining out and school lunches in the first 10 months of this year. Again, extrapolated out, let's call our 12-month dining budget $2,500. When added to the $6,000 food budget and broken down between 6 people, the weekly average is still only $27.25.

$27.25 per week to feed one whole person? Well, surely we must eat only processed foods and rice and beans, right?

Actually, no. Over the past few years we've eliminated almost all processed foods from our house except cereals (I'm not a morning person and I have a 2-year-old that demands breakfast immediately upon waking at 6am), crackers, pasta noodles (because that's one thing that's just not worth my time to make), Annie's shells and cheese (because they are just too yummy!), granola bars, tortilla and potato or veggie chips, yogurt and ice cream--which I don't plan to ever give up. Otherwise, it's a rarity for other processed foods to jump into our grocery cart unless they are free and we will use the item.

We have chosen to purchase as much locally produced, whole foods as possible, and when that is not an option, we then choose the most naturally produced, whole foods as possible, including our choice to purchase only local, pasture-raised chicken and pork, and 100% grass-fed, pasture-raised beef.  Amazingly, when we began purchasing local and organic whole foods, our food bill is actually lower than purchasing prepared, processed foods. 

We make almost everything from scratch, down to the whole wheat bread and strawberry jam we make our PBJ sandwiches with. We do have meatless meals, but most days we have meat with 2 out of 3 meals, but we plan ahead.

Many weeks I will roast a chicken and get 3 meals out of it. The first meal is roasted chicken with our vegetables and other sides. The second meal I use the rest of the chicken that is removed from the bones and shredded--instead of purchasing the pricier boneless, skinless chicken breasts--to serve with pasta or to make chicken enchiladas, or another chicken-based entree. For the third meal I make chicken stock from the carcass and vegetable scraps and use the stock to make chicken noodle soup, or chicken and dumplings, etc.

This week I made French dips with a beef round steak one night, then used what was left to make beef and noodles for lunch the next day and had enough leftover for Jason and I to each have leftover beef and noodles for a second lunch.

Eating well for under $31.50 per week is possible, but it takes discipline and a lot of hard work.

When we were still students at Anderson University and not yet dating, Jason and I would meet for lunch every Sunday after church to clip coupons, look over the grocery ad, and plan our food purchases for the week, being mindful of our meager RA stipends that were paying for our groceries. Today, on Sunday afternoons, you'll still find us doing the same thing. Now, however, we are sitting at the kitchen counter and checking the online ads at our favorite stores. The habits we've learned from the humble beginnings of our relationship continue to stick with us and are second nature.

I do understand that at 20 and 21, we were forming habits that would be much harder to try to learn today, but it's not impossible. If you are interested in trying the Food Stamp Challenge, check it out. Even if you didn't do it this week, you can try another week between now and Thanksgiving. Anyone CAN live on $31.50/week for food, and some people have no choice.

For just one week, you can make the choice to live simply, and perhaps you can help someone else simply live.

A lesson in discipline

I should have known that it was too good to be true. That really should have been my first clue not to let my guard down.

This afternoon, so it seemed, the stars had aligned and somehow both Ian and Eliza were soundly napping, at the same time. This is no small miracle these days since Eliza is transitioning to one nap, and it's at an odd 11:00-1:00 time most days, and Ian has taken to napping about 2 days out of 7. So, for them both to be asleep at 2:00pm was fabulous, and I decided to take advantage of the time and slip back to my bedroom to do a little bit of reading for our small group that meets tonight. Our church, Crosspoint, is working through the Strong Challenge along with about 50,000 people in churches across the midwest right now. This week our focus is on Study, so I thought that 30 minutes of quiet in the middle of the day would be a great time to practice this discipline today.
A bit later, I thought it was a little too quiet in the rest of the house, so I went to check on Ian. His room was empty, and I found him in the living room, playing with his cars.


For some reason I didn't notice the 2 canisters of flour, can of dry milk, canister of salt or bag of sugar on the table as well--only a VERY. LARGE. MOAT. surrounding the coffee table. Suddenly I forgot that I was going to scold him for coming out of his room before rest time was over and became concerned that there was a huge puddle of water in my living room.


I asked Ian where the water came from. His response? "I don't know!" So I asked again, thinking that maybe he didn't understand my question. Same response, "I don't know!"

"So what is that on the floor, Ian?" Ding, ding, ding! That was the correct question!

Ian then brought me an almost empty bottle of Canola Oil. The same bottle that just an hour ago had been nearly full and sitting high on the kitchen island.

The subject of my "Creative Problem Solving" for today

It was not water on the floor at all. What a relief! It was vegetable oil--what a nightmare! How on earth does one clean up a half-gallon of canola oil from wood laminate flooring? And how do I keep my busy little boy out of the pool of oil?

I cleaned what I could with old towels and did a quick mopping, but clearly soap and water were not going to cut through the oil. A quick internet search didn't give any more help, so what's a mom to do?!?

Twitter and Facebook to the rescue!

mama_skull Stephanie Simpson

How do I clean up 1/2Gallon cooking oil on wood laminate flooring? #curiouslittleboy, #tooquietatnaptime, #goodthingheiscute, #momisanidiot

How did we ever solve crazy, time-sensitive predicaments like this before social networking?!? Within 10 minutes I learned from a Facebook friend that oatmeal may help absorb the oil, so I got out the canister of oatmeal and Ian and I proceeded to dump handfuls of oatmeal all over the floor until every last bit of oily floor was coated in oats.

My Mom always said that when you clean, it gets worse before it gets better.
Yes, he is wearing his duck suit from Halloween. Again.

Well, should you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to clean up a large quantity of vegetable oil from your wood laminate floor, I can assure you, from experience, that oatmeal does, indeed, clean up most of the residue. The things that you never knew that you needed to know!

Now, Jason and I have very different capacities for handling chaos. Jason is awesome at juggling lots of busyness and wrestling and activity-type chaos. That is not my gift. I try to redirect toward imaginative play and reading books when the rough-housing gets to be a bit much. Consequently, I don't tend to get upset by large messes, spills or other non-permanent instances of mass destruction. I figure, what's done is done, let's make the most of it.

Spilled milk? We all do it. Let's just clean it up and pour a new glass.

Kids went swimming in the sandbox? We'll hose you off in the yard and change clothes in the garage before coming inside.

Spill a half-gallon of oil on the floor? Let's throw down some oatmeal together and try to clean it up.

The way I see it, 20 years from now, this was probably a significant enough event from Ian's childhood that he'll remember it. At least I hope so, since we now have a "No pouring oil in the living room" Rule!

I'd rather he be able to remember it fondly, that he learned a lesson and laugh about the way that he learned it, instead of looking back upon a memory that is tempered with pain for being disciplined harshly for doing something that he didn't know that he should not do. I make a lot of mistakes too, and I find that I learn best when someone helps dust me off, and comes alongside me to help me clean up my act, instead of simply pointing out what I did wrong. I also tend to not make the same mistakes again that way.

I can only hope that I can do the same for Ian. He's got a lot of mistakes ahead of him, and I want him to know that it's okay. We all make mistakes. I may not know how to help him fix them all, but I'll do my best to help him figure it out. And I want him to know that he can count on me to to be someone to dust him off and help him make things right again.