Food Stamp Challenge

I read an interesting article a while ago about a congressman trying to survive on the food stamp privilege of $21 dollars a week and i thought id try it out. $21 dollars a week is $3 dollars a day and $1 dollar a meal. the article can be found here: http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/ i looked more deeply into the article and found the the things some of the congressman bought were items that werent on sale. i think i could do a much better job at finding sale items and making my $21 dollars go further.

I can remember at a time, i was eating mostly cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and chicken breasts and some veggies for dinner so i think thatll be my gameplan. I will be trying to keep the same standard of living of exercise/work and socializing with still only the $21 dollar food stamp allotted. ill be shopping this weekend but i already know i have some of those supplies at home that are unopened and recently bought on sale of course. they are as followed:

1.99 - 1 jar of skippy all natural peanut butter
1.99 - 1 package of sara lee 100 percent whole wheat bread
1.99 - 1 package of whole wheat pasta (thats gonna last me a long way)
1.49 - 1 jar of tomatoe pasta sauce (id usually go for more sauce but budget doesnt allow)
1.50 - campbells chicken/sausage gumbo
1.49 - 12 0z hieneken beer

haha just wrote all of that and it seems like a big piece of the pie from my 21 dollars. but im very confident i'll be able to make it. i left room for nice commodities like a can of soup and also a beer. the total on the products i have at home is $10.45 so that leaves me with $10.55 to get chicken breasts, a salad of sort, cereal and milk. darn, thinking again, this might not work out. estimates on those items are 6 dollars for chicken, 2.50 for salad, 2.50 for cereal and 2.75 for milk. im already over by 2.75. looks like i will have to sacrafice the beer and soup for milk which leaves me at $20.74 for the week.

I will get my supplies on Saturday Dec. 8th and Day 1 will start on Sunday and last until next Saturday. in the meantime, let me know if you have suggestions or comments.