Crock pot pork chops

For our first meal this last saturday we had crock pot pork chops. A family favorite around here. Its as simple as this

You will need

1 pack Onion soup mix
1/2 large container sliced mushrooms
4 tbs flour
2 or more pork chops
4 cups of water


-Mix Flour and dry onion soup mix together.

-Throw the mushroom on the bottom of your stoneware insert
-place pork chops over the top of that
- Add the four cups of water to the onion soup mix flour mix and pour over everything in the crock

- Cook on low for about 6 hours
- serve over mashed potatoes with a side of corn and call it good


Todays menu so far has been a bowl full of lucky charms for everyone. Lunch will be leftover pork chops from last night and tonight dinner will be Mac n cheese mixed with broccoli and onion with breaded pork cutlets. I feel like you need to be super organized to make this work. A slip up could mean that you end up with a day with no food and no money to simply go to the store and grab something.

Last nights shopping trip

this is what i came home with last night, after several hours in the store a very grumpy toddler and a husband whining about how this was taking way to long! I added a few things that we didn't "need" for stock up purposes and for pleasure. We didn't need the almost five dollar ice cream but the baby in my belly seemed to think that it was a great ideal!

1 great value sugar snap stir fry mix 1.98

1 pack of shredded cheddar cheese  2.00

4.34lb of green apples @ 1/ 1.47 6.38

mushrooms 1.94

great value granola bars in blueberry 2.00

great value chocolate toaster pastries 2.68

great value frozen garlic bread 1.97

cracker full's in peanut butter and chocolate 2.50

2 family sized party pizzas 3.00

a big bag of generic lucky charms 3.88

crunch and munch 1.00

great value soy sauce 1.88

1 pack of blue bonnet margarine sticks 0.92

2 bell peppers 1.68

iceberg lettuce 1.38

3 baking potatoes  2.64 ( on second thought i should have just bought a bag )

Roma Tomatoes .44lb @ 1lb/ 1.12 0.49

3 Idaho potatoes instant mashed potatoes 3.00

Great value dry spaghetti noodles 1.00

great value French fried onions 1.28

3 great value Mac n cheese boxes  2.04

artichoke spinach cheese bites 1.98

2 cans of great value tuna in water  1.56

1 gallon of cranberry juice 3.88

bag of white onions 3.28

red apple ( jelly at in the store but threw on the ground during check out and threw a fit over) .53

rice with chicken chef boyard meal thing .98

2 cans of chili no beans 2.00

1 pack of easy Mac n cheese cups 3.25

2 cans of corn .96

2 cans mushroom spaghetti sauce 2.00

1 can of peas .48

1 gallon whole milk 2.26

1 1/2 gallon dryers ice cream 4.98

great value frozen broccoli .98

can of Pringles 1.50

great value saltines 1.68

pack of fruit snacks 2.00

Hershey cookie mix 2.28

total 82.22 before taxes. Food stamp purchases are tax exempt so while I paid a bit more than this, this is what a food stamp family would have really spent. It seemed like such a small amount of food for the week that I'm already starting to doubt myself and my food planning skills.

This morning for breakfast we had toast and eggs which is filling like it normally is. I have a 2 1/2 dozen eggs sitting in my fridge right now so I didn't need to buy any at the store this week. Lunch was ham and cheese sandwiches again all things that I currently had on hand. Dinner tonight will be spaghetti and meat balls. I have a 2 pound things of ground beef sitting in my fridge so I will be making double the amount of sauce and freezing half for a later meal. It's really easy because I don't make homemade sauce I find that the effort is hardly worth such a simple result. However when my roma tomatoes start ripening I hope to have an abundance of tomatoes that will most likely end up as homemade sauce. Just brown the hamburger and throw it in with a can of pasta sauce and dump that over the cooked spaghetti noodles and serve with garlic bread. Instead of buying the loaf of French bread and garlic butter spread I prefer we went with the cheaper option of the frozen garlic bread. I have had it before and its pretty tasty, just not as fresh as we are used to. Jelly loves spaghetti and will eat everything on his plate which at this point I'm pretty please with. So we shall see how everything goes this week, I'm concerned that I didn't buy enough to get us thru the week. Justin thinks I didn't buy enough snacks. 364 days to go! 

What is our Food stamp budget?

I used this calculator http://www.ndhealth.gov/dhs/foodstampcalculator.asp  and plugged in the information given to us by a family friend who is currently receiving food stamps this is what it spit out

So $423 for a family of three. This is $14.10 a day a mere $4.70 a person. $98.70 a week, that's about half of what we are currently spending per week on food. Needless to say this is going to be a very big change in our lives. We have a very picky toddler and my husband and I tend to be slightly picky ourselves. So today starts our first day in this 365 day challenge. I will be going to the store later today after my husband gets home to keep jelly contained. I thankfully have everything we need on hand for our first meal of this adventure. Crock pot pork chops with mushrooms and mashed potatoes. Dinner should be done around 5ish and of to the store after that.

What is below the line?

Below the Line is my families challenge to live on the food stamps budget of a family of three, altho when new LO arrives in september we will increase to the family of four budget. This is a project to help keep our family spending under control and see how people who fit in under the line of poverty really make their food stamps work. The rules are such

 1. I am only allowed to spend the month amount of food stamps at the store, no extras ( most people who receive food stamps use it as their only source of money for food despite it being "supplemental" )

 2. Eating out is only allowed if someone else pays for it, like my parents inviting us to dinner etc.

 3. I am allowed to accept gifts of meat and food from others

 4. I am allowed to use my garden to supplement our food ( food stamp can be used to buy seeds and vegetable plants )

 5. Jelly and I must eat 3 meals a day and Justin must eat at least 2 ( he works and his boss normally buys lunch anyways) 

6. We must try to eat "Healthy" 

7. I am allowed to use what we have currently in out pantry as a starting point.

8. I will post the weekly shopping trip including the total 

9. Our amount of food stamps will be determined by the food stamp calculator based on a lower income family that we know.

I expect our family is going to be eating a lot of chicken and cheap things. I love to cook, and make things that taste good and fill you up. I sincerely hope that we will not resort to eating a ton of processed foods. I want this year to show us that we can live on the frugal side of things. I also want to show what really happens to the lower income family when this is all that they have. So here is to a year of our family living Below the Line.