hunger challenge

Today I finally made it the grocery store to re-supply on milk, bread, and a few other items to get us through tomorrow.  While grocery shopping I was pleasantly surprised to discover marinaded teriyaki chicken thighs in the butcher case were MUCH cheaper than plain thighs in the case next to it.

One type of food we haven’t been cooking around here is Asian food.  The way the Hunger Challenge is set up made it difficult to buy basic Asian food ingredients.  Had this been real life, buying items like soy sauce, sesame oil, chili sauce, etc would be doable because these types of condiments and sauces are stretched over a period of months, not 5 days.  Seeing marinaded teriyaki thighs made me very happy!  I purchased 6 pieces for $2.25 and pounded each one before grilling them – just like teriyaki restaurants do.  We also had our daughters’ friend stay over for dinner and managed quite nicely. [click to continue…]

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Yesterday I shared with you how we blew our food budget because of a couple of dining out episodes.  Although I was upset momentarily, waking up this morning I realized my husband is an awesome dad for taking our kids out to dinner.  Our family comes first- before my blog and the Hunger Challenge.

So today I made some adjustments.  We all had our typical breakfast and I made myself an orange julius smoothie for lunch while Rob worked through his lunch hour. This brings us to dinner. Tonight I made huevos rancheros made with eggs, black beans, left over salsa and tortillas, and a side of edamame beans.  Using left over ingredients from one meal to create another meal is not only resourceful, its economical.  Certainly our meal wasn’t glamorous but it was quick to prepare and nutritious to eat.  Personally speaking, I think I could eat huevos rancheros every week.  It’s nutritious, delicious, easy to prepare, and budget friendly – the best kind of meal!
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I’m going to be very honest with you.  Today we failed the Hunger Challenge.  Every Tuesday morning my husband meets his small group at Starbucks for coffee and an oatmeal.  I figured I could budget that in without problem.  Then, every Tuesday night he takes our kids along with another dad and his kids spending time doing something fun and finishing it off by going to out to dinner.  I forgot this was happening tonight and didn’t budget for this.. crap.  When they were leaving for their special night out, I reminded them to find somewhere cheap to eat because of Hunger Action Week.  I honestly believed they were going to spend around $15 max.  Upon returning home I discovered they spent $25 on dinner – not okay with me.  But the reality is… people make choices.  Tonight I feel as if our family (Rob) made terrible choices with our food budget which will effect how we eat the next few days.  Not the end of the world, but certainly not a good day for us.  [click to continue…]

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