I went shopping on Monday morning. My budget: $30 for a week’s worth of food. Here’s what I got:
4 cans of tuna fish (I need protein). That’s 4 five ounce cans for 4 lunches. Shabbos protein will be dealt with later. Two lunches of I’m not sure just yet. Looking at a bread sandwich right now. Slice on top, slice on bottom and bread in the middle.
2 lbs pasta – that’ll cover 4 dinners.
2 lb rice – Shabbos side dish (2 meals) and two other dinners.
1 loaf whole wheat bread –I couldn’t bring myself to buy white bread.
1 box whole what matza – On $30, I can’t afford challa. That matza was on sale.
1 head Romaine lettuce – it was per head, on sale. I got the largest one I could find.
4 tomatoes – with some of the lettuce, this will be my salad appetizer on Shabbos.
1 cucumber – this too goes into the salad
1 1lb bag baby carrots – snacks during the day
2 apples – dessert for each of 2 Shabbos meals
1 box Cheerios – breakfast for the week. Also on sale.
1 quart 1% milk – for the Cheerios
As the receipt from the store shows, the above comes out to $25.85.
That leaves me with $4.15 for meat for Shabbos. Or about 1.5 pounds of chicken legs and thighs, with the bones. I’ll have to see what a small salami costs. Worst case, and I hope to avoid it, I could get a few hotdogs.
I’m allowed to use spices that I already have at home, as well as condiments. I could not rationalize the meat pasta sauce as a condiment. So it’s plain ketchup, with pepper, onion powder and garlic powder to spruce it up. I couldn’t afford a real onion. I might get a head of garlic (they’re not very expensive) for the Shabbos chicken.
For the most part, though, the food is bland. Because if I’m taking this challenge seriously, I should look at what spices cost and think about what families will buy in the way of spices. Even everyday spices, other than salt and pepper, are out of reach.
Pasta for dinner, with nothing else, gets boring after 2 days. I’m dreading dinner tonight.
To be continued….
