$30/week

today was rainy and icky in the ATL... which was fine since boone and i were swamped with homework. our only plans (other than writing our papers) were to go to the grocery store for the week and watch house. (which was fab, btw).

i mention that we went to the groc. because this week we're participating in a hunger awareness project coordinated by tami of the ATL food blog, running with tweezers.

here's the deal. we're going to eat on $30/person this week and i'll blog about it. we're not going to cheat and eat things we already have in the freezer or pantry... nope. today, we're going to the store and starting from scratch since the national average for a person receiving food assistance is between $21 and $24 per week. can you believe how low that is?

if you're as incredulous as i was then here are some other hunger stats from her blog:

• At some point during the year, 1 in 5 Americans receives food assistance from 1 or more of the 15 programs providing help.
• In 2009, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will help feed 31 million people per month. The average monthly benefit? $101.
• Between March 2007 and March 2008, the global price of food rose 43%. 1 billion people - 1/6th of the world's population - live on $1 per day.

check back for our grocery list and recipes from this week and to see how our experiment is going...

***update
so as it turns out, this wasn't a stretch for us. in fact, i did a little backwork and research and realized that, er...um.. this was what we ALREADY spent on groceries each week. i admit, i was pretty surprised to realize that we were completely capable of meeting this challenge. I didn't post our recipes because it sort of seemed like cheating. I'll try again soon and maybe try to create fab, easy things on this "budget"