Hunger Action Week - Day 2

Day 2 started out fine. As usual, the kids made their own breakfast. Rachel had peanut butter toast and Alex had baked oatmeal. They also made their own lunch - quesadillas for Alex, leftover mac and cheese for Rachel.

This morning I started cooking some beans which had soaked overnight in the crockpot. When I returned home from working out, they were ready so I had them for lunch, with a little cheese, salt and pepper. They were delicious! I would have eaten more, but they needed to also be part of dinner.

Dinner was porkchops, tuscan beans and broccoli. I even curbed my use of butter, so we don't run out before week's end.




So far no complaints. I am so happy that this is Rachel's thing , though. Otherwise I know she would be complaining. I seriously think she is addicted to sugar. (Actually, so does she.) And usually my attempts to keep her away from it go unheeded. There is always somebody giving away junky candy or sugary treats. And somehow she always has a stash in our pantry or her desk drawer. If this week weren't her idea, then I'm sure we would have complaints.

Hunger Action Week - Day 1 and Random Thoughts

So, here we are on Sunday – Day 1. So far, so good.

For breakfast we had baked oatmeal with honey and cream. It was unusual to all eat the same breakfast. Usually it’s just a free-for-all. Lunch for Alex and Pat was prosciutto/ tomato sandwiches and tortilla chips with salsa. Rachel had gluten-free macaroni and cheese purchased from Champion Foods for $1.50 a box! And dinner was roast chicken seasoned with olive oil, oregano and fresh garlic; potatoes mashed with cream; and kale sauteed in olive oil. The kids and Pat had a dessert of blueberries with cream. Sounds quite gourmet for $22.00 a day. I hope we don’t run out of food at the end.

I've found quite a few interesting blogs about Hunger Action Week and thought I'd post links. Here they are:

Cook Local

Family Friendly Food

Kitchen Sink Unplugged

Savory Sweet Life


There are more blogs on the United Way website, but these are the ones I seem to like best.

Having just started this week, and having tweaked the challenge using some of my own rules (which I'll explain later), I find the reflections of those people who have participated in the Hunger Challenge very interesting. Many reasons to do it, and many different approaches and outcomes. Some of the blogs have provided quite a lot of detail as to pricing out meals and such. I don't feel the need to do that. I'd rather focus on the big picture. And I can, because I am lucky enough to be able to afford anything I want to eat. Many people can not.

The main reason for our hunger challenge week is Rachel. She has wanted to do something like this before we even knew it was an official thing. I think it is an excellent exercise in understanding where our food money goes, where we can cut back, and exactly how much we generally waste (lots). And, hopefully along the way, it will give all of us more empathy with those individuals who really do have to eat on $7.00 a day. For us, it's a game. If we run out of food purchased for the challenge, guess what? We have a ton sitting in our pantry, just waiting for the week to be over. We are lucky. Many are not. Thank you United Way, for coming up with a way for people who can to understand just a little bit more about people who can't.

Hunger Action Week

While reading the Gluten-Free Girl blog a few weeks ago I noticed a post about United Way’s Hunger Action Week. By the time I read the post, it was too late to take part in the actual week. Since she has been cooking so much, I showed the United Way website to Rachel. I wanted her to start thinking about how much money we are spending. I also knew she would be interested as she has asked me several times over the past 6 months if we could try and spend $100 for groceries for a week. This, usually after we go grocery shopping and she watches me pay. I kept saying no way, we couldn’t do that. But this challenge got me thinking. Why not? And after showing Rachel the website, I had no choice but to agree anyway. She was all over it. We informed Pat and Alex, who both looked a bit startled a first and then resigned. We decided to begin on Sunday, February 28th and end on the following Saturday.

Here are the rules:

1. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner spending only $7 per day, per person. Maximum $22 per day for family of 4.

2. Salt and pepper don't count but all other seasonings, cooking oils, condiments, snacks, drinks, and everything else do.

3. Don't use food you already own.

4. Don't accept food from family, friends, coworkers and others. Not even the free samples from Costco!

5. Try to include fresh produce and healthy protein each day.

To begin, we added up our weekly total based upon the Hunger Challenge Budget. At $22.00 per day for a family of 4, we have $154.00 to spend for 7 days. The kids and I talked about what they might like to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. On Friday we headed to Trader Joe’s to do most of our shopping. We spent $69.00. To that we added $29.00, the cost of our weekly produce delivery from Jubilee Farm. We also added in the price of items we already had at home ( not really supposed to do this, but I didn’t want to waste what we already had), for a total of $120.00 spent. We figured we better not spend all our money at the beginning of the week, since there are sure to be some items we will need money for later. Shopping at Trader Joe’s with a budget was fun. Rachel pushed the cart and Alex added up the price of all the food on my calculator.( I used to do this in my head on shopping trips as a kid!) We made sure we had enough food for all our breakfasts, most lunches and all our dinners. Each kid chose a luxury item. On Saturday the kids ate lots of chocolate and drank Inca Cola, knowing those were not in the hunger action week budget. Went to bed looking forward to the week…

Curriculum 2009 - 2010

I've been really remiss on homeschooling posts this year. All posts, actually. But blogging is fun and I hope to begin anew in the near future.

One thing I have been meaning to post is what the kids are doing this year. Mainly as a reminder to me, when I am wondering what they actually did two, three or four years from now.

In general, we are following The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. I say in general, because I love her theories and concepts, but we do not have time for everything. We are following the path for Ancient History. I really wish we had done ancient history last year, rather then modern with a focus on American history, mainly because I think we would have better understood many things about American history with such a background. But, then of course our trip to the East Coast would not have been as exciting, so I guess it all works in the end. When following ancient history, according to Susan Wise Bauer, one should also study the science most interesting to the ancients - biology. One should also read Great Books, and historical fiction related to the time period. So that is mainly what we are doing, in addition to math and foreign language.

Here are the details:

Rachel

Math - Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra / Algebra 1

Science - Johns Hopkins University Life Science

History - History Odyssey level 2 - Ancients

Spanish - Rosetta Stone Level 2, Spanish for Children, and private tutoring

Grammar - Painless Grammar

Writing - Excellence in Writing "All Things Fun and Fascinating" (taught at the homeschool coop)

Rachel is also taking an earth science class and a folkart class at the coop.


Alex

Math - Saxon Algebra 2

Science - Northwestern CTD Honors Biology

History - History Odyssey Level 3 - Ancients

Spanish - Rosetta Stone Level 2, Spanish for Children, and private tutoring

French - Rosetta Stone Level 2 , First Start French

International Conflicts - Northwestern CTD

Alex is also taking American Government, Debate and Photography at the homeschool coop. He says these are so easy, he spends very little time on them.

In addition to all this academic stuff, we watch documentaries and historically set movies on dvd. We also watch Teaching Company courses, which I especially love. (As does Bill Gates...)

And the fun never ends around here with extracurricular activities: piano lessons, jazz ensemble, swim lessons, soccer, choir, theater, rabbit 4H, girl scouts - I'm sure I'm missing something. It's busy. Sometimes too busy. That's why I love vacation...

A Global Action Fair

On February 6, our Girl Scout troop hosted a global action fair for 150 girl scouts in the Snoqualmie Valley. The theme was based on the WAGGGS theme, “Together we can change our world.” Different booths were sponsored by attending troops and featured crafts, food and activities. Booths covered a wide variety of topics including poverty, hunger, endangered species and the education of girls in the Middle East. One troop created an entire coral reef, complete with 3-D plants and animals, to illustrate the loss of habitat in Jamaica. Another troop allowed attending girls to write take action letters to address the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

Our Cadettes were instrumental in organizing the event from start to finish. They learned about WAGGGS and the Millenium Development Goals. They learned about the 2010 WAGGGS theme addressing hunger and poverty. Most importantly, they learned that when girls put their minds to something, they can make a difference.

AND, we are on the Web!

See Girl Scouts of Western Washington and World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

Help Haiti Now

Helping Haiti - New Video!

Gnu Blog

Here's a funny blog the kids set up:

Gnu News