Day 2 = Day 0

Hello all! Today is the official day 2 of the SNAP Challenge, I'd love to hear from any of you that are taking it as well. If today is day 2, why have you heard nothing from me at all about what I am eating and how it is going? Good question.

The answer is that I had set aside Sunday to make food and finish up planning my food for the Challenge. And then the stomach flu knocked me over and landed me in bed by noon. Everything besides keeping fluids down has been erased from my agenda for the last 36 hours. I'm now about 50% recovered and hope, barring someone else in my family coming down with the bug (which they don't show signs of as of yet, hurray!)to be getting started on my SNAP Challenge week in the next few days, after getting my life back to a sense of normalcy.

And that's a luxury, make no mistake about it. Getting to say, "hey, time out, I've been sick so I'll start on this $4 a day for food thing in a few days," is a luxury a family subsisting on just food stamps for food would not have. Now, I could say I started my challenge Sunday and actually be ahead of the game as I ate 72 cents worth of oatmeal that morning and nothing but a 22 cent banana since, that would be two days and only 94 cents spent. And since I am the only one in my household taking the challenge I could technically do that, but what happens when the mom of house is sick? Not always, but in many cases, the family food budget goes right out the window because it becomes all about convenience food for the rest of the family while the main mean maker and food budget maven of the home is out for the count. And such has been the case in my house, its been several nights of my partner and son fending for themselves with bottled tomato sauce and whole wheat pasta and other such expensive, prepackaged delicacies while my partner has tried to balance caring for our son solo, working his full time job, and caring for me. Now imagine if the SNAP Challenge hadn't been an educational experiment these last two days. Just those two convenience meals of pasta and sauce with a few veggies thrown in would have knocked out $12 out of our $90 of weekly food stamps for a family of three.

My day 1 is yet to begin, servings of meals costing $0.50 - $2.00 each coming soon!