This week we took our first official grocery trip after we spent the afternoon at ArtPrize. As I mentioned in my original Spending Freeze post I am planning to spend no more than $10 each week to feed my family of 3. I know it seems crazy, but we do have a small stockpile of food in the basement so I think we'll make do for a while.
Since we were going to be in Grand Rapids for ArtPrize we decided to do our shopping at Sam's. With $10. Yeah, it was a crazy idea. To be honest if we lived closer to Sam's or Aldis I think I could do $10/week for food fairly easily. However being 40 minutes away from the nearest Sam's and Aldis does not make weekly shopping there feasible. That being said I knew my $10 for the week was not going to go very far, especially since I knew I could stand to stock up on flour (I'm baking my own bread now) and milk (it's only $1.99!), among other things.
I started praying that God would provide more money for us to stock up on a few items. After perusing Sam's website I determined that I could really use $40 to buy the following items: 25lbs of flour, 1 canister of basil (since Liam dumped mine and I use it a lot), 5 gallons of milk (we freeze it), salt, 2 rotisserie chickens (they're only $4.88!) and a pair of winter pajamas for Liam (they have the cheapest new fleece pajamas around). I began praying specifically for that amount.
God answered my prayer in two phases. First, I suddenly remembered that I had gotten a $5 gift card from Sam's in the mail recently. I was going to use it when we stocked up at Sam's before beginning the Spending Freeze but Will went for me instead and I didn't have a chance to give it to him. So I tucked that into my wallet along with my $10. Then, a couple days later I unexpectedly received $25 as a gift for something that I had done for some friends thus giving me the exact amount I had prayed for.
So we stopped at Sam's on our way home from ArtPrize and picked up the flour, milk, chicken, salt, basil, and pajamas. Our total: $39.09! So I guess technically we spent more than $10 but the money beyond the $10 didn't come from our bank account so I'm willing to let it slide.
Then we went home and I made one of our favorites: Southwest Chicken and Rice Casserole!
And lest you think we don't eat very well I'll recap a few of the meals from this week:
Breakfast:
- Cold Cereal
- Baked Oatmeal
- Toast
- Fresh Fruit
- PB&J
- Deli Meat Sandwiches
- Fresh Fruit/Vegetables
- Ham and Cheese Stromboli
- Will was able to score free lunch at work several days this week
- Leftover Chicken Teriyaki and Rice (with peppers from our garden) from last week
- Chicken Alfredo Pasta, Zucchini sauteed with Italian Dressing and Tomatoes, Salad, Breadsticks
- Ditto (we had it Tuesday night with Will's parents and then ate leftovers on Thursday)
- Popcorn (because we leave for church on Wednesdays shortly after Will gets home from work I feed Liam dinner before we leave and Will and I have popcorn when we get home)
- Southwest Chicken and Rice Casserole with corn on the cob (we'll have the leftovers next week!)
- Pizza (our Saturday night/Sunday afternoon tradition)
You mean you can eat on $10 a week and people on government aid can't make it on $4.50 per person per day? Shocking. ;)
ReplyDelete(Not to knock people on government aid, just the media attention that this low number gets.)
This is so inspirational Ashley!! You are doing great! I love that you are so intentional with seeing this from the hand of God - praise Him for you and food! ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks Sarah! I've noticed that sometimes in the routine of life I forget to acknowledge that God is intimately involved in even the smallest details of our lives so this adventure has really helped to bring that back to the forefront of my mind :-)
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