WIC shop & meals

WIC women infant and children is a program for low income pregnant moms, postpartum, nursing moms and children under the age of 5.

Over 6 million people currently receive WIC benefits. 

As a young mom receiving wic I struggled I felt like I was being given various foods but not sure how to put these together.  I did not grow up learning how to cook and the thoughts of cooking rice was beyond me.  I didn’t even know how to make boil in the bag rice.  I know many women and families struggle with the same situation.  Sometimes I even wasted food because I just didn’t know what to do.  Fast forward I have come along way.  I hope some of these ideas might bless you.

Most of our family is not currently eating dairy or grains but I wanted to share somethings I used to make all the time. I have so many more ideas I want to share with you all as well. 

So this time this is what a women with a 1 year old and a 2 ½ year old could receive in the state of Maine.

List of items of WIC for 2 children under 5

So there you have it!  Quite a list to look at this list it might get confusing!  Then what to choose what cereal what whole grain items do you choose.  Choose things that you eat.  If there are 2 items in a category that you eat consider using your WIC for the higher cost item.  For example buying PB instead of dry beans.

So on this day here is what I chose

Here is my WIC shop items

4 half gallons organic milk

1 gallon whole organic milk

7.5 gallons skim milk

2 cranberry juice

2 apple juice

2 frozen orange juice

1 pineapple juice

2 greek yogurt

1 organic whole yogurt

3 dozen organic eggs

1 red bean

3 organic pb

2 lbs rice

2 bags of oats

5 cans organic corn

3 lbs Berry blend

1 Kraft American cheese

2 8 oz package of Colby jack cheese make sure you look to see these are 8 oz bars and not 6 you don’t want to waste the ounces

1 16 oz package of string cheese

2 Honey bunches

1 rice cereal

2 cheerios

1 chex

1 celery

1 2lb of carrot

1 small pepper bag

10 lb potatoes

1 bag onion

10 lbs of potatoes

6 lbs of apples

1 asparagus

2 avocado

1 cherry tomato

1 pineapple

4 broccoli stir-fry

2 2lb bags of broccoli

4 mixed veggies

2 frozen onions and peppers

2 snap pea stir-fry

Ok so now we have all of our WIC items we are ready to make some meals.  As I grow my blog the recipes will be link to this post.  One day at a time…

WIC meals I came up with

Cottage pie

Cottage pie also referred to as shepherds pie.  But technically shepherds pie only has lamb or mutton in it. Cottage pie is a layer of corn, beef and mash potatoes.  This is a great way to use other leftovers.  If you have any meat leftovers just throw in the bottom of a pan.  Cover with corn or peas or even a bag of frozen mixed veggies.  Then plop on some mashed potatoes!  Did you know you can make mashed potatoes with peeling them?  Just throw in a pot of water and boil until soft.  Drain and mash adding milk and butter.  We are using the canned corn here from our WIC shop.

One thing I want to mention is just because you are low income don’t make the mistake of buying low quality foods.  Higher quality food choices with bring so much more nutrition.  For instance using real butter or coconut oil is a lot more nutritionally dense then margarine which has so many biproducts its almost like eating plastic.  Is butter more expensive?  Yes.  Maybe cut back on store bought juices or prepackaged snacks so you can buy real butter.

Chicken pot pie

Chicken pot pie has a mix of veggies in it we are using the pre-done frozen mix with green beans, corn, carrots and peas in it from our WIC shop.  We also used the milk from our WIC shop.

I made this recipe 2 ways

1 with a cornbread crust

 1 with a pie crust.

Next we made a couple type of stir fry one is a broccoli stir fry the other is using that pea stir fry from the WIC shop.

Chicken broccoli stir fry

We made the broccoli stir fry using the broccoli stir fry mixes we bought from our WIC shop.  Along with some chicken thighs chopped up.

Creamy chicken and rice

For the creamy chicken and rice I used the rice, cheese, mixed frozen veggies and milk from WIC. Rice is always a good way to make your meal budget friendly it helps to stretch your meals.

Cream of Broccoli soup

We used quite a few item from our WIC shop here we used 1 2 lb bag of broccoli, milk, onion, potato, and milk. 

Corn chowder

I love some creamy corn chowder! I used milk, potatoes, corn and onion from the WIC shop. 

Well I think that is about it for this time.  If you enjoy post like this I would be happy to share more ideas!  If you haven’t already seen the video to go with this post make sure you check it out here.