Well, if you have followed this blog in the past month you know that I intended to attempt to feed my gluten free family of 4 on a food stamp budget in October.
You also know that I have been extremely quiet about that experiment.
And I think you deserve to know why.
- I hadn't planned it out and didn't have menus ready.
- The viral illness du jour came to our house, giving me laryngitis, the girls nausea and vomiting, sore throats and lethargy.
- Post healing from the illness, Fiona developed an aversion to potato in all forms including potato starch. This meant that I had to adapt a lot of my recipes.
- I developed more true understanding about my intolerance of dairy. Like I shouldn't do it at all. Ok, so I went into mourning. Actually I went through all 7 stages of grief. I'm better now.
- And I had to rethink a lot more recipes to eliminate the dairy.
- I had to learn a lot more about the restrictions and guidelines for food stamps. Like which stores I could go to. Costco up to this month didn't take food stamps. Thank goodness that has changed.
- I am fortunate to have a dear friend letting me know about the ins and outs of shopping using a food benefits card. But she is a bit embarressed by needing the support so I will call her Ellen. We finally spent a day wandering Bellingham with her teaching me all the details of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card useage.
- Lastly,I had to figure out how to use the pantry in my calculations. See, I have a pantry that contains enough food to eat for a month easily. And a chest freezer full of wonderful free range meat that I traded for with a patient.
So I know I could keep our budget under $480 for the month just by eating from that storehouse of food. But it just didn't feel right.
Thinking about all of these components lead me to my list of guidelines for my November food stamp challenge.
Yes, I am going to attempt to eat a food stamp budget in a month with a major food based holiday.
Luckily, our family is staying home for the holiday this year so in actuality it isn't that different a meal from what we usually eat, just a bit more of it on one day.
So for our guidelines:
- I will not attempt to price out each meal since that will make me insane. I am maintaining a spreadsheet of purchases over the course of the month for those of you who love data like that.
- I am placing $480 in an envelope and when the envelope is empty, we are out of food money.
- I will use the meat in the freezer at will but add it into the spreadsheet at Coop costs. Since although I knew how much I spent on all the meat in total (I account for it as a cash payment in my office and declare the taxes accordingly), I didn't know what each package was worth. I will deduct that amount from the envelope.
- If any one gifts me food during the month, I will gladly accept it. I have patients who like to give me produce as well as vendors who desire my opinion on products. If these gifts/samples arrive during this month, I will happily accept them. I mean, it would be rude to look a gift horse in the mouth.
- I will only shop in stores that accept food stamps.
- Anything I use from my pantry has to be replaced within the monthly budget.
- If I do know what I spent on the food when I purchased it, I can use that cost instead of replacement cost. Yes, this will allow me to use the wild Alaskan salmon I bought during the anniversary sale at Fred Meyers at 2.99 per pound. I am a good thrifty shopper.
I am sure that there will be other situations during this month that will need to be explained, but here are the basics.
Gluten-free, organic, GF recipes, recipes
celiac, children, diet, bellingham, naturopathic, gluten
enteropathy, gluten intolerance, Whole foods, non-celiac gluten enteropathy
