Day 6/7: The final stretch

We are on the last day of the week.  Good news:  We still have $3.95 to spend on food.  We may pick up half a dozen eggs tonight to have for dinner.  We are down to brown rice, potatoes and milk.  I might also use this to buy some desperately needed fruit.  Either way, we are almost there. For dinner on Wednesday we made another giant batch of soup.  The ingredients we used: black beans, onion, carrots, turnip, celery, potato, salt and pepper.  We both brought soup for lunch yesterday and I brought some today.  We also cooked a big batch of brown rice on Wednesday night, which was going to be breakfast, but I was not in the mood for rice yesterday morning. Instead, Ben created turkey bacon hash.  We microwaved a couple of potatoes and added it to sauteed onion and turkey bacon.  It was delicious.

Last night was chickpeas, brown rice, onion and frozen spinach, and we ate the leftovers this morning for breakfast.  I miss fresh vegetables!  Today's lunch includes the remainder of the soup and last night's dinner.

We are almost at the end and I couldn't be happier to eat whatever I want again.  The hard part is knowing the majority of recipients on food stamps are constantly facing this challenge.  Sometimes, there is not an end in sight.  I will reflet more tomorrow when the challenge is over, but I know this: eating on a food stamp budget is very limiting, repetitive and requires a lot of time planning and preparing.  Is this really something that is sustainable for millions of Americans?