$50.00 a Week Challenge: Week Six

I am a SNAP recipient who receives $110.00 per month in benefits. To augment that, I am able to budget an additional $100.00 per month for food. Altogether, that leaves me with a budget just shy of $50.00 per week. Join me as I share what I do to make it work.

Update on Increased SNAP Benefit

Back in my Week Four post, I shared some good news with you all. Beginning in March, my SNAP benefits are increasing from $110.00/month to $193.00/month—an extra $83.00/month. At that time, I shared that I had some decisions to make, which I forgot to share with you last week.

As a refresher, I receive $110.00/month in SNAP benefits, which I supplement with $100.00/month from my income. So, my monthly food budget works out to just under $50.00/month. With this increase in my SNAP benefits, I wasn’t sure if I should continue budgeting $100.00/month towards my food budget and increase my weekly budget, or if I should allocate the extra $83.00 difference to another budget and maintain my $50.00/week budget.

Well, I generally don’t like an all-or-nothing approach. I’m a middle-of-the-road kinda gal; therefore, I decided to split the difference. I will be allocating $40.00/month to another budget and the remaining $43.00/month to my food budget. That means I could increase my weekly food budget to $58.38; however, I’ve decided to maintain my $50.00/week budget—in theory anyway. If I can maintain $50.00/week most weeks, the remaining $8.38/week can be socked away for other purposes.

Those “other purposes” will mainly be the ability to stock up on certain items like packs of butter at Costco or when Meijer is running a great sale. So, in the end, I will be spending that extra $8.38 no matter how you slice it. Beginning in March, if you average my weekly expenditures, it’s obviously going to be over $50.00. Does that put an end to my $50.00 a Week Challenge?

As long as people are interested, I would like to continue on with the challenge. Do I rename it? Leave it be? Do I reframe the challenge somehow? I’m not going to think too much on it for now. I prefer to sit with things for a while before making decisions. I’m also open to opinions and suggestions.

Now let’s finally move on to Week Six.

Welcome to Week Six

Meals

Sausage Breakfast Burritos (1 night, plus more for the freezer)

A couple of weeks back, my brother mentioned breakfast burritos, and they had been on my mind ever since. And after the Jimmy Dean Sandwich Experience last week, I decided I should make my own. Not only could I make my own, but I could make a huge batch and freeze them. Then I’d have some food available when I get hungry…because I do get hungry sometimes since I only eat one meal a day.

I made a lot of breakfast burritos when I worked at McDonald’s in the 90s, so I didn’t need a recipe. The filling consists of eggs, sausage, green chilies, reconstituted minced onion flakes, tomatoes, and American cheese.

Sausage breakfast burritos are currently $1.99 + tax each at McDonald’s. If you spend $5.00 or more, you can get 25% off, which brings the total down to $1.49 + tax. For $16.90, I was able to make 20 burritos, which means my sausage breakfast burritos only cost 85¢ each. I’m happy with that price especially considering that none of the ingredients were on sale.

“Ricotta” Pancakes w/Blueberry Sauce & Bacon (2 nights)

I’m not especially fond of pancakes, but if I’m going to eat them, I prefer them to be ricotta pancakes because they’re nice and fluffy; they are also kinda custardy. It’s rather annoying the have to whip up egg whites and then fold them into the batter, but it’s worth it for these pancakes.

As I was preparing my shopping list, I used the Meijer app to check prices. I looked at the ricotta and decided I didn’t want to spend that much on a container of it, especially since I’d only be using half of it. That’s when I decided to look at cottage cheese.

I use cottage cheese in place of ricotta in my lasagna, so why not do it here? I only needed 8 ounces, so I searched the app to find a small container of cottage cheese. I came across a two-pack that was 10.6 ounces altogether, and it was less than half the price of the ricotta. Perfect!

As I always do, I whirred my cottage cheese in my mini food processor to get a consistency closer to ricotta. I also added some lemon zest to my batter because I was going to top my pancakes with blueberry sauce; I love lemon & blueberry together.

To me, the end product wasn’t any different from the ricotta pancakes I’ve made in the past. I will definitely continue to use cottage cheese going forward.

And, no, you don’t taste the ricotta or cottage cheese in these pancakes.

On the side, I had some of the delicious Meijer bacon that I had portioned out & froze a few weeks back. I love Meijer bacon; it’s definitely my favorite.

Patty Melts w/Salad (2 nights)

A couple months ago, I came across a recipe for patty melts from America’s Test kitchen. It called for ground turkey. Yuck! They looked good despite the turkey, so I printed out the recipe. If I made them, I’d do beef.

Last week when I was planning my Week Six meals, I decided to finally make the patty melts, and I decided to get a Dole salad kit to serve on the side.

I was so excited about these, but the end result was underwhelming. I didn’t care for the “meatloaf mixture”; it would have tasted better with straight up beef. I would have used just beef, but I freeze my burger in half-pound chubs, and I needed the filler ingredients to be able to make my two quarter-pound patties large enough.

Then there were the onions. I absolutely love onions, but these were straight up disgusting. After cooking them as directed, the end result was a small pile of disintegrated onion mush. Blech!

The finished patty melts lacked flavor and were definitely missing something. It needed another layer of flavor, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it needed. However, despite my aversion to the melts, I dutifully ate them both nights…because that’s all that was available. At least on the second night, I cooked the onions so there was some body left to them.

The Dole Applewood Bacon salad kit was okay. Of course you only get a minuscule amount of toppings—in this kit it was cheddar cheese and those texturally off-putting bacon bits. I loved the dressing though, and I wish I could purchase it as a stand alone. I prefer making my own salads as salad kits are pricy, and I often find that the lettuce or cabbage is a bit musty tasting. Plus, I can control the toppings.

Tomato Soup/Grilled Cheese (2 nights)

I despise the taste of Campbell’s tomato soup, but it goes hand-in-hand with grilled cheese sandwiches. So, back in November, when I was planning my soup menu, I decided I’d do my own take on a simple tomato soup, which would essentially be just tomatoes, onion, and chicken stock…and of course, since it’s a tomato-based soup, Caldo de Tomate. No cream, however. I can’t handle the thought of cream and tomatoes together.

The soup was okay. It was, of course, a thin broth as opposed to the thick, velvety Campell’s version that I don’t like. While Campbell’s tomato soup is perfect for dunking your grilled cheese, my soup was more of a sipping broth. In the future, I guess I’ll just eat my grilled cheese sans soup like I’ve always done.

For the grilled cheese, I decided to switch things up and include some Gouda along with the American cheese. I saw that Sargento has aged Gouda slices. Perfect! Sargento was also on sale for $3.00, so I decided to splurge and get it. Imagine my disappointment when I got home and nowhere on the package said the Gouda was aged. Oh no!

As I suspected, Meijer sells both regular and aged Gouda. Dammit! I paid 72¢ extra to get aged Gouda! Cheated! It’s my own fault though.

Also, I don’t know whether “Gouda” should be capitalized or not, but my iPad capitalizes it, and I can’t be arsed to fix it.

The grilled cheese was fine, but for as many “grown up” grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve tried, I always come back to the original American cheese version. Me and my unsophisticated palate just prefer it.

Total Spent on Meals (including 18 burritos for the freezer): $32.03

Baking/Dessert Project

Blueberry Buckle Cake

Blueberries are my favorite fruit, but at 5 bucks per pint, I won’t be getting them anytime soon. So, instead I bought a 48-ounce bag of frozen wild blueberries last week to make blueberry sauce for my pancakes. And since I bought such a large bag, I decided to finally make one of the many recipes with blueberries that I have been saving over the past five years.

I decided on this blueberry buckle coffee cake from King Arthur. When it comes to recipes for baking, the King Arthur website is always my first stop. Their recipes are tried & true, they often provide videos, and they are very responsive to people’s questions and comments. This website is a great resource for beginners & seasoned bakers alike.

As usual, their blueberry buckle recipe didn’t disappoint. The cake tasted like my favorite blueberry muffin recipe but with the delicious addition of a cinnamon streusel topping. I can’t wait to make one to share with Sam or Bree…or another one for myself!

Total Spent for Baking: $0.00

Stock Up

There’s not much to say about this week’s stock-up, except that I wish Meijer would run the occasional sale on their butter. Pre-pandemic they did, but these days…well, I can’t remember the last time their butter was on sale. Last week I was down to my last box of Costco* butter that I had purchased in November, so I bought one box—but only one; $3.99 is too pricy.

*I don’t think I can go into Costco because it’s Sam’s membership, and I don’t know if she added me to it. If she did, I don’t think I have a card. Plus, I hate driving over there.

Total Spent to Stock Up: $15.87

The Final Tally

The regular price for last week’s groceries was $53.39. Between sales, coupons, and my redemption of $2.00-worth of mPerks rewards, I only saved $5.49. But that little bit adds up to 11% of my weekly budget, and it helped me come in under budget. All told, I spent $47.90.

Grand Total Spent on Food This Week: $47.90

In Conclusion

So guys, my grocery budget has increased to $58.38; therefore, I’m not sure what to do about the “$50.00 a Week Challenge.” While I will still be striving to stay below $50.00 each week, I’m definitely going to be spending that extra $8.38/month when I have the opportunity to stock up on things.

I would love ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to comment, or you can contact me privately; the link to the contact form is up at the top of the page, in the menu. And just an FYI, the only reason I ask for your email is so that I am able to reply to you. I will NEVER use your email for any other reason!

As far as this week’s meals, they offered a mix of successes and learning experiences. The breakfast burritos were a cost-effective and delicious way to ensure I have quick and easy meals on hand. I discovered a clever substitution for ricotta cheese in pancakes, and while the patty melts weren’t quite what I hoped, they inspired me to experiment with different patty and flavor combinations in the future. But through it all, I managed to stay under budget, so this week was an overall win.