Day 1 breakfast

Full disclosure: I am a classically trained chef. I don't cook anymore professionally but I do have the knowledge. That being said, nothing that I will do is overly complex or not readily available on the internet or your public library. All it takes is a little bit of work.

Now, let's make some BISCUITS!!!

So, here we have a bowl, a 2 lb bag of self-rising flour, 1 qrt of buttermilk, and two sticks of butter. I use only butter. Butter is more expensive than alternatives, however, the point of this is to get the most high quality calories you can for your buck. Since margarine and shortening basically have no redeeming nutritional value we must use butter.

I used about three quarters of this bag of flour and a little over half of the buttermilk. First you meld the butter into the flour and then add buttermilk until you get a dough.

You should kneed the dough as little as possible so as to not make your biscuits tough. Then cut and place your biscuits on a sheet pan. This yielded 11 biscuits and a bit of extra dough.

I am going to bake 9 of the biscuits and freeze the remaining two along with the extra dough. The extra dough has many different uses. I can make more biscuits or I can use the dough for chicken and dumplings or chicken pie. When you are eating on a budget you have to save everything. You have to choose foods that you can get 100% utilization.

Now we place the biscuits in the toaster oven and bake them until they are golden brown. I typically cook in a toaster oven because turning on the full size oven for small cooking like this just needlessly wastes power. I highly recommend getting a high quality toaster oven.

Yummy. So, here are the biscuits. I will have 1 biscuit along with a two egg omellette for breakfast. The remaining biscuits will be bagged and kept in the refrigerator to be eaten for breakfast for the rest of the week and into next week. This is the point of eating on a budget. I am already preparing food for next week with the groceries I bought for this week.

So, here is the first week of shopping. I wasn't able to get everything I wanted but such is the life of the "poooor". I would have liked to have gotten some cheese and maybe some more fresh vegetable but that will just have to wait until next week.

I am eating steak tonight and will begin the challenge tomorrow. I did buy my orange juice and I make no apologies for it.

There are certain things you should recognize about what I bought. Eggs. Eggs are an integral part of eating on a budget. They are a tasty and inexpensive source for high quality protein. Also, notice the chicken. This is a ten pound bag of leg and thigh quarters that Walmart sells for $7.80. This is one of the keys to eating on a budget. The chicken will be used in several different ways so stay tuned for that. Also, fresh vegetables. Fresh vegetables are inexpensive and good. They are not quite as nutritious as frozen but that's ok.

Notice there is no convenience packaging and no junk food. Fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh poultry is the only way to go when eating on a budget.

So, tomorrow I start cooking and living the SNAP challenge.

begin the snap challenge

I have read with great amusement about the "snap challenge" lately. My friends have posted about it on my Facebook. I have read numerous articles about politicians taking the snap challenge and having to suffer through on peanut butter sandwiches. I have read about CEO's taking the snap challenge and getting constipated because they ate too much pasta.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/09/26/panera-food-stamps

I am sure that all of this is supposed to make me feel bad about being successful and make me want to pay even higher taxes to help the "po' folks". Well, I am sorry, it does not and I will tell you why: there have been times in my life when I had to live on less than $4.50 per day (the snap challenge daily food budget) and I never took a nickel from my fellow citizens and I was happy and thankful that I was able to provide for myself. It actually makes me laugh and disgusts me a bit to see these politicians and CEO's in their mock sacrifice to show the plight of the "pooooor" in our country. I have lived it so I can see right through the bullshit.

All of this being said, I have decided to take the snap challenge to show that it really isn't that difficult to feed yourself on $4.50 per day and have satisfying and nutritious food. Granted, I will not be eating steak every day. It is my opinion that if you like steak then you should make the life choices that will lead to you eating steak and not being on SNAP.

A few stipulations about this before we get going. There are two things that I will not be giving up and that will not be included in the snap challenge that I am going to do. I will not be giving up my expensive coffee or my expensive orange juice. Other than these two things everything I consume over the next several weeks will be on the snap challenge.

I feel it is necessary to go longer than one week. The reason is that some food items that I buy can carry over to the next week. This allows you to have some variety in what you eat. It also makes the week to week expenses not as bad as the politicians would have you believe.

It is the point of eating on a budget to get the maximum amount of high quality, nutritious calories that you can get for your dollar or in the case of SNAP recipients, the maximum amount for the dollar that someone else earned, the government took from them and then gave to the SNAP recipient. For this reason there will be some stipulations:

1) no vegetarianism, fruititarianism, veganism, or wtfianism. If you want to make social or political statements with the food you eat then get a job.

2) all shopping will be done at Walmart. Walmart has by far the lowest prices of any grocery store. When you are living on the tax payers money then you should forfeit your "right" to shop at Whole Foods.

3) No junk food or soda of any kind. Again, these are low quality calories and therefore a luxury. If you want to eat that crap then, again, get a job. Also there will be no desserts.

So, here we go.