Before Shopping Photos #2

You may remember our Before Shopping Photos a little over a year ago, before receiving SNAP when our monthly grocery amount averaged $250 a month for a family of 5. You can refresh your memory and see that post HERE.

For the last 6 months we have been receiving 575 a month ( which now has gone down for the next 6 months  to $505) for a family of now 4. This is a whole lot of food for us and as you can see, puts us at a much better standing at the end of a grocery term, right before the major shopping day around the 5th of each month.

The first photo shows the  small chest freezer we purchased at the beginning of the year with a 25 pound bag of flour, several bags of homemade stock and some fries. Items were transferred from here to fill the freezer above the refrigerator so that the chest freezer had room for that days shopping.

The next photo is the fridge freezer after the chest freezer had been combined in it. It is full and has no room in it for more. It has frozen fruits,  veggies, a pork loin roast,  a duck, a whole chicken, chicken breasts,  sweet potato fries, pork chops and a steak that was on sale.

The next photo of the refrigerator, well  that is actually pretty empty but has milk, butter, eggs and some condiments left.

Then we get to the cupboards that has oatmeal, sauerkraut, soups, relish, tomato paste, jelly, raisins, and some rice a roni boxes (my sons friend gave us them as it is not something I would buy).  The one cupboard I forgot to take photos of, has fresh potato's, brown rice  and 10 pounds of rolled oats..

All in All I had 2 weeks worth of meals still at the end of the month, breakfasts and dinners were covered, however we were lacking things for lunch  although I could have fudged that for a little by making muffins, waffles, biscuits and banana breads as I have bananas frozen already for that purpose.

As for the duck, my hubby and kids have never had duck before so I wanted to give them that experience as this country girl loves a good duck! While it is pretty expensive, I was able to purchase it due to how frugal I am in general for grocery shopping.  It is in my freezer for a special occasion dinner, and this is the only meat I purchased last month that was not on sale.  All the other meats were drastically reduced and I pick them up through out the month when I see them at the greatly reduced prices which builds up our food  inventory at home.

All in all , the food stamps certainly puts us in a much more comfortable position at the end of a food shopping period and we plan on building up our food  inventory in a very substantial way over the next 6 months when our goal is to get back off of the food stamps.

How long would your food stash last if that was all you had?