I’ll write some more reflections later, but for now, I’ll just recap my final day of the SNAP Challenge. This is the last day of the challenge to eat only food that I purchased for $31.50. My total spending for the week was $26.01, which included 10 cents Minnesota state sales tax, meaning that I came in $5.49 under budget.

For my final day, I still had leftovers, so I didn’t bother preparing anything new. I ate well, but the variety suffered somewhat. Breakfast consisted of two slices of toast with the remaining peanut butter, along with the three remaining slices of ham. This was served with a glass of Sunny D and, of course, coffee.

I still had two hamburger buns, a third of a pound of ground beef, and three slices of cheese. Therefore, I made two cheeseburgers, which I ate with the last of the canned vegetables, a glass of Kool-Aid, and some cookies. The kids were having hotdogs for an early supper after school, so I used the last slice of cheese for a late afternoon wiener wink.

Dinner consisted of the last calzone, the very last slice of bread with a generous serving of margarine, and the last of the cookies. I also finished off the Sunny D with supper. I have about enough Kool-Aid mix for about another glass, in addition to the one remaining unopened packet.

A few days ago, when searching for “self-rising flour recipies”, I came upon this cake recipe.  I had plenty of flour and sugar, so I was careful over the last couple of days to keep enough eggs and margarine in reserve. To finish out the week, I made the small recipe shown on that page. It turned out rather well and is shown below. The recipe appears to originate in India, and shows most of the ingredients by weight rather than volume. Fortunately, we have a scale and I was able to deal with the unfamiliar notation without having to do any complicated conversions.

Over the course of the week, I jealously guarded “my food”, only allowing the kids to taste a couple of my cookies. With the end in sight, however, I decided to share my little cake with the rest of the family.

My remaining supplies of food consist of the following:

My remaining food

About a pound each of the sugar and flour; five tortillas; three hot dogs; about a tablespoon of margarine, about 8 ounces of milk, one packet of Kool-Aid along with a little bit from another packet; two little packets of salt; one packet of pepper; and a half box of pasta. I also have (not pictured) about 4 ounces of coffee, split between the Family Dollar and Dollar Tree brands. And, as noted above, I have $5.49 remaining in my budgeted money.