A number of people at the United Way offices are taking the Hunger Challenge this week.  The Murray family (mom, dad, and two kids) will be guest-blogging about their experience here.  They’ve even gone and cleared out their pantry to show the food that is available for the week.  You can see the pictures below.

I’m actually playing catch-up, so this will be two day’s worth of posts!

Our menu this week:
Breakfasts: eggs, frozen waffles, or oatmeal
Lunches: pb&j on bread or tortilla, salads featuring leftovers
Snacks: apples, carrots, celery, string cheese, Goldfish
Dinners:
M – homemade chicken noodle soup
T – pasta with beans and bacon (three slices of Hempler’s bacon for $0.92 – YES!)
W – chicken (cooked Monday in the soup) with peanut sauce over broccoli and rice
Th – frozen pizza
F – meatloaf with roasted cauliflower

A couple of things I’ve been thinking about:

1. I’m surprised and pleased by how much we were able to buy organic – I was sure beforehand that organic meats were going to be way too expensive, but we were able to work them in.
2. I really struggled with whether or not to buy the ingredients for bread instead of loaves of bread.  In the end it just came down to the issue of time.  I’m reasonably sure we could have budgeted for it, and made better bread less expensively than we bought.
3. I was impressed with our six year-old’s weighing of his options this morning at breakfast, and glad we had the chance to talk about “budgeting” with him – i.e. if he has another waffle now, we might run out by the end of the week.
4. It’s a little bit of a struggle to deny food options to the three year-old.  He has asked twice today about snacks that we’re not offering this week because of The Experiment (as we call it).
5. I’m glad we’re not coffee drinkers – the good stuff is expensive.  But I’m missing having a selection of tea.
6. Regarding the before picture of the pantry: please don’t judge too harshly – I SWEAR there is a method to the madness in there.  And I love how the picture showcases the Whoppers.  Not.

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Their chicken soup recipe from Martha Stewart.

It says it serves 6, but I started with as much water as my pot would hold and threw in a small handful of broken spaghetti at the end, so I’m hoping to get 8-10 servings out of this. And that doesn’t count the fact that the chicken breast will be our dinner Wednesday night!

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Today’s Hunger Challenge Thoughts

I’m hungry, but I think that has more to do with knowing I can’t snack on whatever I feel like.  Certainly the kids are getting enough to eat, but my attitude about “having enough” is shifting.  I was surprised by how important it was to me that the kids finished every drop of soup last night, when usually I let them manage their own hunger.  And I’m surprised by how relieved I am that they are headed to their respective daycare/afterschool programs today, where they’ll have opportunities for more variety.

The six year-old goes to a before/afterschool program three days a week where breakfast and two snacks are built in.  From the program literature:

“Breakfast is one item from each of the following food groups: 1 cup fluid milk, ½ cup full strength juice or fruit or vegetable, 1 serving bread or bread alternate (dry or cooked cereal).

PM and Late Snack is one item from two of the following food groups: 1 cup fluid milk, ¾ cup full strength juice or fruit or vegetable, 1 serving bread or bread alternate, 1 oz. meat or meat alternate (beans, hummus, cheese).”

He’ll buy lunch at school one day this week, where he’ll have the choice between two entrees and three or four fruit and vegetable options.  It is sinking in that 73% of his elementary school is on the free or reduced lunch program; I have a new appreciation of the choices the students are offered and vow to pay more attention to the school lunch conversation.

The three year-old goes to a daycare center where they offer breakfast, lunch, and two snacks, and the guidelines are much the same.  They offer both a fruit and a vegetable at lunch, and their second snack is usually a grab-and-go Dixie cup of crackers or pretzels for departure time, which makes the time from pick-up to dinner much easier.  (As an aside, they eat both breakfast and evening snacks at home on daycare days as well, living up to their reputations as growing boys.  I can’t imagine what this would be like with them at the ages of 13 and 16.)

I’m used to thinking about food in terms of what sounds delicious.  Today I’m wondering if we have enough, and in what kind of variety.