Saturday, December 3, 2011

X-Treme Food Stamp Challenge--makin' my own bread and bacon

The first part of the day's eatings yesterday wasn't exciting at all:  Honey Kix with milk for breakfast, leftovers for lunch, the kids snacked on Cheerios, homemade applesauce, and cheese, with my husband and I having a little cheese as well.  Dinner though....

I made whole wheat bread yesterday, two loaves: a free form artisan loaf for dinner and loaf of sandwich bread for eating today.  The rest of dinner was broccoli, cheddar, and potato soup.  I grated a couple carrots and threw them in there for a little added nutrition and the pretty color.  I love that soup soooooo much.  I admit, I way over ate.  There is still plenty more for lunches for the next day or two too though.  Yay!

Not only is that soup super delicious, but it is soup-er cheap (hahaha!  I crack myself up!) for me to make.  I made the chicken stock I used, the broccoli and carrots were gleaned from other people's gardens, the 1/2 pound of cheese I used was only about $1.60 when I bought the 10 pound block.  The bread was dirt cheap as well, since I got the yeast with a combination of sale and coupon so each yeast packet was about $0.15.  All of dinner probably cost less than $2.50 to feed the family and, like I said, there was lots of leftovers!

After dinner, I was stuffed for quite a while, but my husband and the 2yo had a bit of ice cream.  I snacked on some caramel-y corn much, much later in the day.

For drinks, we still had to use the bottled water because the boil water advisory became official with a notice on our door, but the kids and my husband had a bit of white grape juice with dinner as well, and I had my usual Diet Coke (yes, I know how bad it is for me).

After the kids finally went to sleep, I worked on making more felt food for Christmas presents for my kids.  I made another egg (using the directions here, but hand sewing, rather than using a machine) and made bacon, which was my own design.  I stripped the papery parts off some twisty-ties and stitched them behind the light strips on the bacon to make it crinkly shaped and poseable.
Tonight, I hope to finish up about 3 more strips of bacon and start something else.  Maybe fake bread?

3 comments:

  1. LOVE the felt food.

    FWIW Horrocks has cheese for $2.00 per 1/2lb brick every day. I a little there every week then stock up when there's a better sale. They've also been accepting EBT card for a few years now.

    Where do you get 10lb blocks of cheese? How does it hold up? The reason I as is all three times I've bought 5lb blocks of mozzarella from Sam's Club, it has molded before I could use it up. We're talking just 7-10 days. Definitely NOT worth the money.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I get it at Gordon's Food Service. I've never had it go moldy on me and I've gotten quite a few of them. Funny thing about cheese though, is even if it goes moldy, it isn't bad. Just wipe the mold off with some vinegar on a cloth or paper towel, or cut off the moldy part if you're too icked out by just wiping it off. When you buy cheese at the store, there is a pretty good chance it has gotten moldy before and that's all they did and repackaged it. Years ago, when I worked at the gourmet cheese counter at Meijer, that was my JOB--every day I checked all the merchandise for outdates and mold, then repackage the outdates with new dates and cut the mold off the moldy ones and repackage it as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. love the bacon...and the twisty-ties, you are very creative! coke and home-made carmely corn...my favorite snack. Have a good evening

    ReplyDelete