Day 360

The challenge begins! Yes, I started the "Feed Nancy for a week with $27USD" challenge!! Yea!!! As you may recall from one of my earlier postings, I was planning to go to Walmart to get the foods I would use this week. Well, this morning I went to HEB to get the groceries for the rest of my family (no, I didn't have a budget for that food and it was not anywhere near $27). While at the HEB, I wrote down all of the prices of the items I had on my personal challenge list so that I could compare them to  the equivalent prices at Walmart. About half way through the shopping at Walmart I realized that the prices aren't better at Walmart and in some cases are actually higher! So, I put everything back and proceeded to my local HEB, where I completed my shopping for $26.68! I have $0.32 to add to next week's $27! Yippie!! Extra budget!!! Okay, let me settle down here. I learned a lot by doing this:

1. It takes lots of planning and compromise to get $27USD worth of food for a week.
2. I will NOT eat meat. (At least not in the beginning...I'll explain this as the week goes on.)
3. I will have plenty of food volume.
4. There will be plenty of protein.
5. I can make balanced meals.
6. The meals will be healthy.

Here are some things I struggled with:

1. I wanted cheese with my eggs each night. Natural cheese was TOO expensive for this trip, but I was able to get real dairy American Cheese slices, which means I can have cheese. Not the cheese I would have preferred, but I'm good with this.
2. I couldn't afford oil, butter and cooking spray. I decided that cooking spray would be healthier for me and so I went with that. Margarine would have been much cheaper, but not healthy at all. Again, I compromised.
3. I think the $0.88 spent on flour may have been a bad idea...maybe. To make this a good spend I will make muffins, but I will have to 'borrow' some backing powder from my neighbor to do it.
4. I couldn't afford yogurt, so I bought a gallon of whole milk and will make half of it into yogurt tonight and the other half will be used with breakfast each day. (I will have to again, 'borrow' 3T of yogurt from my neighbor to use as 'starter'. I'll pay it back! I promise!!!)

I'll be updating the blog each day this week with how the challenge is going. I will meal prep 4 lunches tonight and make a couple of batches of Oatmeal Muffins this evening, as well. They are going to be 'snacks' next week. A couple of things I'll be focusing on over the next week (Sunday, 7/6-Saturday, 7/12) will be: how hungry I feel on this meal plan; how much weight I lose/gain on this meal plan; how 'satisfied' I felt on this meal plan. Regardless of the outcome, I'm really glad to be doing this. In the end, I'll learn something new and I like doing that!

That's it for today. Be sure to stop by tomorrow when I'll update you on the preps and how the meals are going. I can't wait to see what happens!! Until then, Godspeed, Voyagers!!