So, just to be up front, there are no pictures again. Things have been a little harried.
Last night I felt so on it. My partner was exhausted from working 10 and 11 hours days all this week so I cooked us all dinner then put him to bed at 7:30, got my son down at 8:30, and then cooked a lovely lentil stew from cheap and nutritious ingredients for today’s lunch. So on it. I ate my usual fabulous oatmeal breakfast, got my son and I packed and out the door 10 minutes ahead of schedule and the day was off to a great start. Oh yeah, sooooo on it. I was feeling great. Until I started getting hungry around 10:30 am and realized I had, once again, left my lunch at home and that I had solid meetings ahead of me except from 11:45 to noon when I had planned to scarf my lunch. While I live close to the co-op, I don’t live close enough to run home eat and run back in 15 minutes by a long shot.
And so, I led meetings while others scarfed their lunch and became more and more jealous and cranky. Finally, I gave in and spent $1.05 of my $4.50 a day budget on a vegan protein bar. That helped, but made me cranky with myself for screwing up my budget for the day because it would mean a small dinner at best. That would be annoying most days, but I started work at 8 today and other than a few little breaks, was scheduled to be at work until between 8 and 10pm to oversee the quarterly inventory at the co-op and the instillation of our third register lane. That’s the thing with hunger, it never lets up. Today was just to chaotic and stressful to contemplate rationing every bite of food and counting each penny, I’d have rather just turned off my need/desire to eat entirely. If only it were so easy.
So far today, I’ve eaten:
The usual oatmeal goodness with a few extra chocolate chips (it was going to be a loooong day, I felt I needed the pick-me-up): $0.70
The protein bar: $1.05
The lentil stew: $0.87
I had thought that was going to be all I could afford today when I was running around and trying to keep track of my eating in my head, but when I wrote this out I realized, hey, I’ve only spent $2.64! So, on a short break home I defrosted a bunch of black beans, tossed them in a pan with a diced up raw tomato from my garden and some spices and then ate it with half an avocado with a few Brazil nuts for good measure and got to:
TOTAL: $4.32
So I’m going to treat myself to a $0.15 mini fair trade chocolate to get me through the rest of this inventory night. Thank the gods.
What’s coming back to me today is the cumulative toll that eating on such a tight budget takes on you when you are balancing a full life. When you’ve got one (or more) demanding job, kids, bills hanging over your head, the stress of having to find time to eat is bad enough. Then try eating well enough that you don’t feel like hell and compromise your health while being on a tiny food budget. This is the reality so many people are living with, day in and day out.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Day 5 and Still Alive!
I mostly picked that title because it was catchy, but there’s some truth behind it too. There were definitely times during day 3 of the SNAP Challenge that I started thinking, “I’m trying to work 45 plus a week, my partner’s boss is out of town so he’s working overtime, I have a guest in town, my toddler is feeling more demanding than usual this week . . . maybe it is just not reasonable to try to do this challenge this week. Maybe I should throw in the towel, how am I going to find time to keep cooking and cleaning this much?” I didn’t give in to this voice, but I was tempted. And now, at the 5th day, its starting to feel more natural, I am getting into the swing of it. That said, I broke the rules big time today.
Part of the SNAP Challenge rules is NO free food, you’ve got to make it on the $4.50 per day allotment. From the beginning I said I would follow this rule but items from my garden would not have this rule applied to them, as SNAP covers the cost of seeds and most of my plants came from free seed anyway. I’ve said it a lot this week and I’ll say it again, growing food is easier than it seems and a terrifically cheap way to get fresh vegetables and even fruit (in the right seasons) into your diet. The reason for the “no free food” rule is to get a feel for what its like for those who are struggling the most. Most everyone I know who’s ever been on food stamps has used their social network as a support and source of food in hard times. One friend’s church knew of her plight and happily fed her family at the weekly potluck without asking them to bring anything and even sent home leftovers with them as often as they could. Many a friend dined with local family on a regular basis to help cover the gap. Everyone I know worked opportunities like out of date food at their bagel joint job or leftover donuts in the coffee room. There are as many different ingenuitive ways of sourcing free food now and again as there are people on SNAP and when you are poor, you get pretty darn ingenuitive. So why no free food if we are trying to better understand the experience of those forced to use SNAP to help get by? Because some people are not only fiscally poor, but also poor in human relationships or resources. For some, the family and friends who they rely on around them are just as bad off, if not worse, than they are. For a percentage, there are no resources beyond SNAP.
So, understanding where the rule came from, I am accepted it and have adhered to it. Until today. As I’ve mentioned, my dad was in town Monday and Tuesday. Monday night when I cooked a Food For All recipe for dinner I remembered to make 1.5 times the regular recipe so there would be leftovers for my lunch the next day despite having an extra person at the table with a big appetite. When I made the delicious (man was it good!) shepard’s pie Food For All recipe last night, I forgot to increase it so there were no leftovers for lunch today. And, with a guest in town and a long work day, I forgot to scrounge up something else to take for lunch. So, it got to lunch hour today and I realized, “drat, I have nothing to eat!” I looked around the co-op and there wasn’t much I could afford that was instantly edible. Hmm. I was wandering around looking lost when one of the deli staff asked me what was the matter. When I explained, she said, “oh, but we have some out of date corn chowder in the walk-in, its free, you could have that for lunch!” I thought about the rules for a minute, then I thought about how hungry I was and how my next meeting started in 15 minutes and how I wouldn’t have another pause in meetings for hours. I gratefully took the corn chowder and ate it.
Now, I could have simply bought something from the deli, I have the money to do that, but that felt like a true break from the spirit of the challenge. Accepting free food that I felt sheepish and not so great about taking felt a lot more like what I remember feeding myself when I was poor to be like. You often do find yourself accepting free food because someone wants to be generous or because you just need to but you don’t feel good about it. It feels out of balance to be constantly accepting free meals from a friend you can’t repay the favor to or your pride hates taking it or something. Free food rarely turns out feeling free in your heart of hearts, no matter what the intention of the giver, when you can’t repay it in some manner.
I also had no plan for dinner when 4:30 rolled around and it was time to get ready to pick up my son from daycare. Uhg, how could I have let my planning get so behind and bungled! Thank goodness that hunger (and I was definitely hungry already) spurred creativity. I came up with a simple idea. I would roast carrots (cheap), russet potatoes (cheap), beets (from my garden), and red onions (from my garden) and serve them with a simple mustard dressing over quinoa. It turned out great, and thanks to my garden, affordable! A secret about quinoa – while it is just about the priciest grain around, its also the most nutritious and it increases in volume with cooking more than any other grain I’ve tried! I bought one cup of quinoa and it made three generous beds for our roasted veggies. I tossed the greens from the beets into the quinoa for extra vitamin action, but otherwise just cooked it up plain, its got a natural nutty flavor to it that doesn’t need much help to be tasty. I’m getting addicted to throwing dandelion greens or whatever other free greens I can get out of my garden into everything to increase nutrients. I’ve found when you mince them up small you don’t even really taste them much and they can blend into just about anything at all savory. I put them in the sheppard’s pie last night, and tossed them in with the beet greens and the quinoa today.
I keep forgetting my camera at work so, once again, no pics today. Sorry about that, dinner was so pretty I wish I could have shared a few shots of it in the handmade pottery bowls from Mike’s wheel. I will try my darnedest to remember to bring home the camera tomorrow.
A co-worker overheard me talking about how I was getting only about 1500 to 2000 calories a day doing the SNAP Challenge on all local and organic food and how I felt it really wouldn’t be possible for an active adult male, athlete of any gender, or active teen to eat exclusively organic and local food on SNAP (they could definitely do a significant part of their food organic, but not all of it, to get adequate calories.) She disagreed, pointing out that when her husband and her were really struggling fiscally in the past they got by on organic beans and rice, meal after meal, and how at least that was better nutrition than succumbing to the fast food dollar menu. And she’s right. That’s not the perspective I am taking the Challenge from, I am trying to create actual well balanced meals, but she’s right that it can be done and that people are driven to choices like that all the time. If it’s a nutritional choice between kidney beans and whole grain brown rice and a burger and fries, the organic beans and rice will win hands down.
The conversations and thoughts stimulated by taking this Challenge are still very engaging to me, and, despite the extra hard work involved during a challenging week, I am glad I am taking it.
Part of the SNAP Challenge rules is NO free food, you’ve got to make it on the $4.50 per day allotment. From the beginning I said I would follow this rule but items from my garden would not have this rule applied to them, as SNAP covers the cost of seeds and most of my plants came from free seed anyway. I’ve said it a lot this week and I’ll say it again, growing food is easier than it seems and a terrifically cheap way to get fresh vegetables and even fruit (in the right seasons) into your diet. The reason for the “no free food” rule is to get a feel for what its like for those who are struggling the most. Most everyone I know who’s ever been on food stamps has used their social network as a support and source of food in hard times. One friend’s church knew of her plight and happily fed her family at the weekly potluck without asking them to bring anything and even sent home leftovers with them as often as they could. Many a friend dined with local family on a regular basis to help cover the gap. Everyone I know worked opportunities like out of date food at their bagel joint job or leftover donuts in the coffee room. There are as many different ingenuitive ways of sourcing free food now and again as there are people on SNAP and when you are poor, you get pretty darn ingenuitive. So why no free food if we are trying to better understand the experience of those forced to use SNAP to help get by? Because some people are not only fiscally poor, but also poor in human relationships or resources. For some, the family and friends who they rely on around them are just as bad off, if not worse, than they are. For a percentage, there are no resources beyond SNAP.
So, understanding where the rule came from, I am accepted it and have adhered to it. Until today. As I’ve mentioned, my dad was in town Monday and Tuesday. Monday night when I cooked a Food For All recipe for dinner I remembered to make 1.5 times the regular recipe so there would be leftovers for my lunch the next day despite having an extra person at the table with a big appetite. When I made the delicious (man was it good!) shepard’s pie Food For All recipe last night, I forgot to increase it so there were no leftovers for lunch today. And, with a guest in town and a long work day, I forgot to scrounge up something else to take for lunch. So, it got to lunch hour today and I realized, “drat, I have nothing to eat!” I looked around the co-op and there wasn’t much I could afford that was instantly edible. Hmm. I was wandering around looking lost when one of the deli staff asked me what was the matter. When I explained, she said, “oh, but we have some out of date corn chowder in the walk-in, its free, you could have that for lunch!” I thought about the rules for a minute, then I thought about how hungry I was and how my next meeting started in 15 minutes and how I wouldn’t have another pause in meetings for hours. I gratefully took the corn chowder and ate it.
Now, I could have simply bought something from the deli, I have the money to do that, but that felt like a true break from the spirit of the challenge. Accepting free food that I felt sheepish and not so great about taking felt a lot more like what I remember feeding myself when I was poor to be like. You often do find yourself accepting free food because someone wants to be generous or because you just need to but you don’t feel good about it. It feels out of balance to be constantly accepting free meals from a friend you can’t repay the favor to or your pride hates taking it or something. Free food rarely turns out feeling free in your heart of hearts, no matter what the intention of the giver, when you can’t repay it in some manner.
I also had no plan for dinner when 4:30 rolled around and it was time to get ready to pick up my son from daycare. Uhg, how could I have let my planning get so behind and bungled! Thank goodness that hunger (and I was definitely hungry already) spurred creativity. I came up with a simple idea. I would roast carrots (cheap), russet potatoes (cheap), beets (from my garden), and red onions (from my garden) and serve them with a simple mustard dressing over quinoa. It turned out great, and thanks to my garden, affordable! A secret about quinoa – while it is just about the priciest grain around, its also the most nutritious and it increases in volume with cooking more than any other grain I’ve tried! I bought one cup of quinoa and it made three generous beds for our roasted veggies. I tossed the greens from the beets into the quinoa for extra vitamin action, but otherwise just cooked it up plain, its got a natural nutty flavor to it that doesn’t need much help to be tasty. I’m getting addicted to throwing dandelion greens or whatever other free greens I can get out of my garden into everything to increase nutrients. I’ve found when you mince them up small you don’t even really taste them much and they can blend into just about anything at all savory. I put them in the sheppard’s pie last night, and tossed them in with the beet greens and the quinoa today.
I keep forgetting my camera at work so, once again, no pics today. Sorry about that, dinner was so pretty I wish I could have shared a few shots of it in the handmade pottery bowls from Mike’s wheel. I will try my darnedest to remember to bring home the camera tomorrow.
A co-worker overheard me talking about how I was getting only about 1500 to 2000 calories a day doing the SNAP Challenge on all local and organic food and how I felt it really wouldn’t be possible for an active adult male, athlete of any gender, or active teen to eat exclusively organic and local food on SNAP (they could definitely do a significant part of their food organic, but not all of it, to get adequate calories.) She disagreed, pointing out that when her husband and her were really struggling fiscally in the past they got by on organic beans and rice, meal after meal, and how at least that was better nutrition than succumbing to the fast food dollar menu. And she’s right. That’s not the perspective I am taking the Challenge from, I am trying to create actual well balanced meals, but she’s right that it can be done and that people are driven to choices like that all the time. If it’s a nutritional choice between kidney beans and whole grain brown rice and a burger and fries, the organic beans and rice will win hands down.
The conversations and thoughts stimulated by taking this Challenge are still very engaging to me, and, despite the extra hard work involved during a challenging week, I am glad I am taking it.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Day 3, the Hornet's Nest Around Food
Oh sing, sing, the praises of the modest vegetable garden!
Why? I’ll tell you why. But first, what I ate today:
Breakfast: My usual oatmeal concoction, $0.63
Lunch: On sale organic yogurt cup, $1.09; Organic banana, $0.25
Afternoon snack: a whole organic avocado, $1.49; some cherry tomatoes from my garden
Dinner: Tamale pie (a Food for All recipe), $0.96
TOTAL: $4.42
I just don’t get tired of that oatmeal concoction, yum! This afternoon I wanted an avocado sooo much. I meant to eat half of it with dinner but by mid afternoon I just to a spoon to the whole darn thing. And you know what? I am hungry right now despite eating a whole avocado.
To help with my afternoon avocado lapse, I picked a dinner I could use a lot of ingredients out of my garden for. For the tamale pie I used 1 cup of chopped fresh tomatoes from my garden, removed the carrot from the recipe and replaced it with a mess of fresh kale from my garden, exchanged two red bell peppers from my garden for the green bell pepper in the recipe, and used an onion from my garden. The result was a very filling, cheap meal that was entirely organic. My dad is in town helping us finish some work on our house and I served the tamale pie to both him and my partner, Mike. Both are big eaters. Both declared the meal yummy and filling! I knew I’d done well when my dad asked me toward the end of dinner, “so, when are you starting that food stamp challenge thing you told us about?” “I’m doing it now, this is one of my super cheap meals,” I replied. “Oh, wow, because this is really good,” dad replied. Score!
But the reality is, by day three, I am thinking a lot about food. I catch myself fantasizing about food and when I estimate my calories for the day I know why – because I am eating about 1500-2000 calories a day. That’s not starvation level or anything, but it is weigh loss level for a woman of my size and activity level, for sure. It is certainly not enough food for an active man or teen. And it is taking a lot of time. Do I usually cook from scratch, boil my own beans at home, etc.? Yes. But do I have to add up every penny and plan this much? No. And do I have to hike back to my house when I forget the lunch I packed? No, I just eat from the co-op deli and eat the packed lunch the next day. Heck, I go through whole weeks where I am working so much that I don’t have time to pack lunches and my partner and I pay for meals at work. That option is completely gone now. I have to find the time or I don’t eat. Who here doesn’t go straight to eating out when under stress? Had a horrible day at work or school and still have work you need to do all evening? I don’t know about you, but I often relieve some of the stress and work load by going out for a meal between all the responsibilities. With that option gone, I feel I am honestly more stressed, just knowing that is right out no matter how hard things get that day.
Someone called the co-op yesterday and gave one of the staff an earful about my efforts with the SNAP Challenge and the Food for All recipes. She was very angry. She felt the recipes were misleading because we were claiming they cost $1 to $2 a portion but you had to buy all these ingredients to make them so you had to outlay much more at first. She was angry because she felt we had to be full of it claiming these healthy meals could be made for so little when some radio DJs she listens to on WIXY say they tried doing the SNAP Challenge with conventional food and could not make it work so how could we possibly be implying it could be done on organic food?
Let’s be clear, I’ve never said that one could definitely eat a well-rounded diet made up entirely of organic and local foods on a SNAP allotment, I simply said I was going to give it a try. I am giving it a try, and its only kind of working, and I’m being honest about that. As for the recipes, I never claimed you could put $5 worth of product in a basket at the co-op and go home and cook dinner for four, the recipes prices are based on what the actual food that is prepared in the recipe costs with the assumption that you have or are building a basic pantry of ingredients you can make these recipes from. But, in reality, this caller didn’t want a response. She didn’t ask questions, listen to explanations, or share things she’d like to see the co-op do differently. She just needed somewhere to vent her frustration, and the co-op ended up being that place.
There is a lot to be frustrated about. There is a lot of anger simmering just under the surface in our culture about poverty, the fiscal inequities of our country, and about our relationship to food. I knew when I took this challenge in such a public way I was risking being a lightning rod for some of that anger and was possibly putting the co-op in that position too. And you know what? That’s okay. The co-op’s mission isn’t to only forward local and organic food, it’s also to build strong community around food. To do that, we’re going to have to start talking, especially about the touchy stuff like accessibility, eating habits, class, our responsibility for our relationship with food, and more. Real conversations about such topics are going to stir up strong emotions for many of us, that’s just going to go with the territory. And that’s healthy. Here’s hoping we can find the courage to keep having these conversations and find the maturity to come to them with open minds and basic respect for one another’s good intentions.
Why? I’ll tell you why. But first, what I ate today:
Breakfast: My usual oatmeal concoction, $0.63
Lunch: On sale organic yogurt cup, $1.09; Organic banana, $0.25
Afternoon snack: a whole organic avocado, $1.49; some cherry tomatoes from my garden
Dinner: Tamale pie (a Food for All recipe), $0.96
TOTAL: $4.42
I just don’t get tired of that oatmeal concoction, yum! This afternoon I wanted an avocado sooo much. I meant to eat half of it with dinner but by mid afternoon I just to a spoon to the whole darn thing. And you know what? I am hungry right now despite eating a whole avocado.
To help with my afternoon avocado lapse, I picked a dinner I could use a lot of ingredients out of my garden for. For the tamale pie I used 1 cup of chopped fresh tomatoes from my garden, removed the carrot from the recipe and replaced it with a mess of fresh kale from my garden, exchanged two red bell peppers from my garden for the green bell pepper in the recipe, and used an onion from my garden. The result was a very filling, cheap meal that was entirely organic. My dad is in town helping us finish some work on our house and I served the tamale pie to both him and my partner, Mike. Both are big eaters. Both declared the meal yummy and filling! I knew I’d done well when my dad asked me toward the end of dinner, “so, when are you starting that food stamp challenge thing you told us about?” “I’m doing it now, this is one of my super cheap meals,” I replied. “Oh, wow, because this is really good,” dad replied. Score!
But the reality is, by day three, I am thinking a lot about food. I catch myself fantasizing about food and when I estimate my calories for the day I know why – because I am eating about 1500-2000 calories a day. That’s not starvation level or anything, but it is weigh loss level for a woman of my size and activity level, for sure. It is certainly not enough food for an active man or teen. And it is taking a lot of time. Do I usually cook from scratch, boil my own beans at home, etc.? Yes. But do I have to add up every penny and plan this much? No. And do I have to hike back to my house when I forget the lunch I packed? No, I just eat from the co-op deli and eat the packed lunch the next day. Heck, I go through whole weeks where I am working so much that I don’t have time to pack lunches and my partner and I pay for meals at work. That option is completely gone now. I have to find the time or I don’t eat. Who here doesn’t go straight to eating out when under stress? Had a horrible day at work or school and still have work you need to do all evening? I don’t know about you, but I often relieve some of the stress and work load by going out for a meal between all the responsibilities. With that option gone, I feel I am honestly more stressed, just knowing that is right out no matter how hard things get that day.
Someone called the co-op yesterday and gave one of the staff an earful about my efforts with the SNAP Challenge and the Food for All recipes. She was very angry. She felt the recipes were misleading because we were claiming they cost $1 to $2 a portion but you had to buy all these ingredients to make them so you had to outlay much more at first. She was angry because she felt we had to be full of it claiming these healthy meals could be made for so little when some radio DJs she listens to on WIXY say they tried doing the SNAP Challenge with conventional food and could not make it work so how could we possibly be implying it could be done on organic food?
Let’s be clear, I’ve never said that one could definitely eat a well-rounded diet made up entirely of organic and local foods on a SNAP allotment, I simply said I was going to give it a try. I am giving it a try, and its only kind of working, and I’m being honest about that. As for the recipes, I never claimed you could put $5 worth of product in a basket at the co-op and go home and cook dinner for four, the recipes prices are based on what the actual food that is prepared in the recipe costs with the assumption that you have or are building a basic pantry of ingredients you can make these recipes from. But, in reality, this caller didn’t want a response. She didn’t ask questions, listen to explanations, or share things she’d like to see the co-op do differently. She just needed somewhere to vent her frustration, and the co-op ended up being that place.
There is a lot to be frustrated about. There is a lot of anger simmering just under the surface in our culture about poverty, the fiscal inequities of our country, and about our relationship to food. I knew when I took this challenge in such a public way I was risking being a lightning rod for some of that anger and was possibly putting the co-op in that position too. And you know what? That’s okay. The co-op’s mission isn’t to only forward local and organic food, it’s also to build strong community around food. To do that, we’re going to have to start talking, especially about the touchy stuff like accessibility, eating habits, class, our responsibility for our relationship with food, and more. Real conversations about such topics are going to stir up strong emotions for many of us, that’s just going to go with the territory. And that’s healthy. Here’s hoping we can find the courage to keep having these conversations and find the maturity to come to them with open minds and basic respect for one another’s good intentions.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Day 2 Wrap-Up
Let's dive right in, shall we?
Breakfast -
organic rolled oats with peanut butter, honey, sliced banana, and a few chocolate chips, $0.63
Lunch -
Ramrong Over Noodles (Food for All recipe, leftovers from last night), $1.62
Snack -
mini Equal Exchange chocolate $0.13
4 org corn chips and 2 T homemade salsa, guessing around $0.40
small handful raw almonds $0.22
Dinner -
Yam covered in black bean stew $1.10
Dessert -
made up rice pudding thingee $0.35
TOTAL for Day 2: $4.45
I was hungry when I woke today, and I was crabby about anything that got between me and getting breakfast made, fast. I again found it very satisfying and again craved a mid-morning snack and skipped it due to lack of funds. Today was the annual meeting of owners at Common Ground and it was, as always, a potluck. Man, do co-opers know how to potluck, so much good food was there! But I brought my leftovers from yesterday's dinner and stuck to them, other than the tad of salsa and chips I just couldn't resist that Blue Moon Farm brought to the party. I estimated the cost of that fabulous homemade salsa and the chips and put them in the budget.
Dinner was divine! A whole medium yam came to $0.90 at the co-op. While it was baking, I took 1/2 a cup black beans from my freezer that I had cooked from their dried state, which are immensely cheaper than canned beans. I went out to my trusty, messy garden again and picked what you see below:
Yes, that is two lovely red bell peppers and . . . dandelion greens! I just picked them out of my sidewalk. They are nutritionally terrific and, if picked when small, have a very mild flavor that blends in well with soups and stews. They are a free way to get some great nutrition, no need to go to the store. I also used an onion from my garden and added some fresh garlic, a tad of veggie bullion, a smidge of canola oil, and some spices (cumin and cinnamon.) When the yam was done I split it down the middle and smothered it in my simple black bean stew. Soooo filling, I almost didn't want to finish it, but I knew I'd be hungry later if I didn't, so I found room.
I had some change left for today so I put together a plan to defrost a small amount of free service berries from my freezer, mush them up, then mix them with 1 T half and half I had in the fridge, a pinch of sugar, and some leftover brown rice that needs using up. It'll be a very purple rice-pudding-ish kinda deal with lots of fruity antioxidants to round out my day.
I was tempted when I realized I'd be at this terrific potluck today to put aside the SNAP Challenge rules for one meal. Friends even asked me, "can't you just put aside the rules for one meal?" But that didn't feel right so I instead pulled out those leftovers and braved it through. Luckily some people there already knew why I wasn't eating with everyone else, but I found myself trying to hide what I was eating to a degree so I didn't have to explain over and over again and then take time making everyone else feel okay about it. I remember doing something similar with coworkers years and years ago. They would come back from lunch with gyros and fries (which I use to go get with them before a change of fortunes) and I'd be eating my PB&J and I'd have to make sure it seemed I was just fine with it, that it was no big deal, so they could be comfortable eating their more sumptuous meal in front of me. And I'd know they really didn't get it, that they had no idea what it was like to live as tight as I was then, and I'd feel our worlds pulling away from each other. Food is such a powerful cultural force, not being able to share in it together can create real distance.
I was asked the other day how it was economical how to use just a 1/4 cup of coconut milk in my ramrong over noodles recipe because they you had to find another use for the rest of that costly can quick or waste it. Ah ha, not so! I found this easy solution out of need one day.
Pour the leftover coconut milk into ice cube trays! Trays vary in size so you'll want to measure yours, but mine hold exactly 2 T of fluid per cube. I pour the milk into the ice cube tray, freeze it over night, then pop out the cubes the next day and put them in a zip lock freezer bag. Tada! No wasted coconut milk and a pre-measured amount of coconut milk available in seconds whenever I want to add a bit to a recipe.
My dad is visiting tomorrow and Tuesday. Do I send my partner, son, and dad out to eat without me or do I come up with such a great tasting cheap meal that they join me at the SNAP Challenge dinner table? I really don't know yet myself, off to plan. See you tomorrow!
Breakfast -
organic rolled oats with peanut butter, honey, sliced banana, and a few chocolate chips, $0.63
Lunch -
Ramrong Over Noodles (Food for All recipe, leftovers from last night), $1.62
Snack -
mini Equal Exchange chocolate $0.13
4 org corn chips and 2 T homemade salsa, guessing around $0.40
small handful raw almonds $0.22
Dinner -
Yam covered in black bean stew $1.10
Dessert -
made up rice pudding thingee $0.35
TOTAL for Day 2: $4.45
I was hungry when I woke today, and I was crabby about anything that got between me and getting breakfast made, fast. I again found it very satisfying and again craved a mid-morning snack and skipped it due to lack of funds. Today was the annual meeting of owners at Common Ground and it was, as always, a potluck. Man, do co-opers know how to potluck, so much good food was there! But I brought my leftovers from yesterday's dinner and stuck to them, other than the tad of salsa and chips I just couldn't resist that Blue Moon Farm brought to the party. I estimated the cost of that fabulous homemade salsa and the chips and put them in the budget.
Dinner was divine! A whole medium yam came to $0.90 at the co-op. While it was baking, I took 1/2 a cup black beans from my freezer that I had cooked from their dried state, which are immensely cheaper than canned beans. I went out to my trusty, messy garden again and picked what you see below:
Yes, that is two lovely red bell peppers and . . . dandelion greens! I just picked them out of my sidewalk. They are nutritionally terrific and, if picked when small, have a very mild flavor that blends in well with soups and stews. They are a free way to get some great nutrition, no need to go to the store. I also used an onion from my garden and added some fresh garlic, a tad of veggie bullion, a smidge of canola oil, and some spices (cumin and cinnamon.) When the yam was done I split it down the middle and smothered it in my simple black bean stew. Soooo filling, I almost didn't want to finish it, but I knew I'd be hungry later if I didn't, so I found room.
I had some change left for today so I put together a plan to defrost a small amount of free service berries from my freezer, mush them up, then mix them with 1 T half and half I had in the fridge, a pinch of sugar, and some leftover brown rice that needs using up. It'll be a very purple rice-pudding-ish kinda deal with lots of fruity antioxidants to round out my day.
I was tempted when I realized I'd be at this terrific potluck today to put aside the SNAP Challenge rules for one meal. Friends even asked me, "can't you just put aside the rules for one meal?" But that didn't feel right so I instead pulled out those leftovers and braved it through. Luckily some people there already knew why I wasn't eating with everyone else, but I found myself trying to hide what I was eating to a degree so I didn't have to explain over and over again and then take time making everyone else feel okay about it. I remember doing something similar with coworkers years and years ago. They would come back from lunch with gyros and fries (which I use to go get with them before a change of fortunes) and I'd be eating my PB&J and I'd have to make sure it seemed I was just fine with it, that it was no big deal, so they could be comfortable eating their more sumptuous meal in front of me. And I'd know they really didn't get it, that they had no idea what it was like to live as tight as I was then, and I'd feel our worlds pulling away from each other. Food is such a powerful cultural force, not being able to share in it together can create real distance.
I was asked the other day how it was economical how to use just a 1/4 cup of coconut milk in my ramrong over noodles recipe because they you had to find another use for the rest of that costly can quick or waste it. Ah ha, not so! I found this easy solution out of need one day.
Pour the leftover coconut milk into ice cube trays! Trays vary in size so you'll want to measure yours, but mine hold exactly 2 T of fluid per cube. I pour the milk into the ice cube tray, freeze it over night, then pop out the cubes the next day and put them in a zip lock freezer bag. Tada! No wasted coconut milk and a pre-measured amount of coconut milk available in seconds whenever I want to add a bit to a recipe.
My dad is visiting tomorrow and Tuesday. Do I send my partner, son, and dad out to eat without me or do I come up with such a great tasting cheap meal that they join me at the SNAP Challenge dinner table? I really don't know yet myself, off to plan. See you tomorrow!
Day 2, the Power of the Garden
Last night's dinner, Ramrong Over Noodles, was a Food for All recipe from Common Ground and costed about $1.80 for a big helping. I love this recipe, but usually dress it up with extras from my garden and last night was no exception, it actually cost me less than $1.80, now that I think about it, because I forgot to take out the cost of the red bell pepper.
I recently outed my dirty little secret on Lisa Bralts' radio show, "In My Backyard" on WILL. The secret is simple, I don't actually like to garden. I advocate that everyone food garden to one extent or another, its true, but I'm not into it. I have friends that are into it. Every late winter I am just as excited as they are, pouring over seed catalogs and planning what I am going to plant as soon as the ground is soft enough. And that first early spring harvest of greens and radishes is heady, I crow all about it and love the food. But every time I have to plant seeds my knees complain about being used and I never remember to water. I'll weed a few time a summer, letting the unwanted buggers get overgrown before I pull them. If a crop is being consumed by bugs I no longer fight them, I just harvest what I can around them and move on. I don't particularly enjoy dish washing or teeth brushing either, but I do advocate for them. They aren't painful things to do, they are just boring things to do that are part of life. I feel the same about gardening.
So I get things planted and I get things harvested and I usually get things cleaned out of the garden in the fall, but I don't do much more. My coworker, Anne, calls it "benevolent neglect", this style of gardening, and we both practice it.
Here's a pic of the current state of the "benevolent neglect" of my garden. Its a total mess, I haven't purposefully watered it in probably months. And I am harvesting cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, kale, bell peppers, and herbs out of it almost daily, I've got a big bin full of onions that will last me through December in my basement out of that garden, and I've got beets just about ready to harvest. Earlier in the summer I harvested a lot of radishes and peas too, as well as tons of currants and some black raspberries and black berries. Oh, and two pumpkins. I got all of this out of about 3 or 4 hours of work all season long and about $20 worth of plants, starts, and a few seeds (most anything I grew from seed was grown from seed saved last year.)
Worth it? I have harvested over three dozen meals worth of kale just this season alone (kale is a biannual so this is actually my second year harvesting the same plants) and have a bazillion seeds for next year. I get to throw an organically grown red bell pepper in my dinner whenever I want most of the summer long, and have luscious and pricey fresh snow peas for stir fries for weeks in the spring. And the tomatoes! I'm a huge fan of cherry tomatoes and could never afford the copious amounts I eat if it were not my garden.
So last night I was able to put two whole red bell peppers in our dinner batch of Ramrong Over Noodles as well as a handful of my favorite spice in the world, Thai basil.
My herb bed is a mess, as you can see, but it doesn't matter, I have still harvested many a meal's worth of fabulous flavor from it with no work at all put into these babies other than planting and watering them the first day I got them.
I know not everyone can afford the time and money to put into building a garden of raised beds like our family did a few years back. We used all free, recycled wood from construction waste and pallets, but we did pay to have a truck load of compost brought to us from the recycling center and have to purchase a few garden tools. If it weren't for my partner's love of physical labor and building things, it probably would never have happened at all and I would have continued to garden out of a few recycled construction pails in my back yard. But even out of a few containers you can grow a lot of food for very little effort, its something worth considering when trying to figure out how to eat healthy on a very tight budget or any budget at all.
Those bell peppers and basil turned dinner last night into something very special and very nutritious. I am certain my messy, neglected garden will continue to factor prominently for me into meeting this Challenge.
I recently outed my dirty little secret on Lisa Bralts' radio show, "In My Backyard" on WILL. The secret is simple, I don't actually like to garden. I advocate that everyone food garden to one extent or another, its true, but I'm not into it. I have friends that are into it. Every late winter I am just as excited as they are, pouring over seed catalogs and planning what I am going to plant as soon as the ground is soft enough. And that first early spring harvest of greens and radishes is heady, I crow all about it and love the food. But every time I have to plant seeds my knees complain about being used and I never remember to water. I'll weed a few time a summer, letting the unwanted buggers get overgrown before I pull them. If a crop is being consumed by bugs I no longer fight them, I just harvest what I can around them and move on. I don't particularly enjoy dish washing or teeth brushing either, but I do advocate for them. They aren't painful things to do, they are just boring things to do that are part of life. I feel the same about gardening.
So I get things planted and I get things harvested and I usually get things cleaned out of the garden in the fall, but I don't do much more. My coworker, Anne, calls it "benevolent neglect", this style of gardening, and we both practice it.
Here's a pic of the current state of the "benevolent neglect" of my garden. Its a total mess, I haven't purposefully watered it in probably months. And I am harvesting cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, kale, bell peppers, and herbs out of it almost daily, I've got a big bin full of onions that will last me through December in my basement out of that garden, and I've got beets just about ready to harvest. Earlier in the summer I harvested a lot of radishes and peas too, as well as tons of currants and some black raspberries and black berries. Oh, and two pumpkins. I got all of this out of about 3 or 4 hours of work all season long and about $20 worth of plants, starts, and a few seeds (most anything I grew from seed was grown from seed saved last year.)
Worth it? I have harvested over three dozen meals worth of kale just this season alone (kale is a biannual so this is actually my second year harvesting the same plants) and have a bazillion seeds for next year. I get to throw an organically grown red bell pepper in my dinner whenever I want most of the summer long, and have luscious and pricey fresh snow peas for stir fries for weeks in the spring. And the tomatoes! I'm a huge fan of cherry tomatoes and could never afford the copious amounts I eat if it were not my garden.
So last night I was able to put two whole red bell peppers in our dinner batch of Ramrong Over Noodles as well as a handful of my favorite spice in the world, Thai basil.
My herb bed is a mess, as you can see, but it doesn't matter, I have still harvested many a meal's worth of fabulous flavor from it with no work at all put into these babies other than planting and watering them the first day I got them.
I know not everyone can afford the time and money to put into building a garden of raised beds like our family did a few years back. We used all free, recycled wood from construction waste and pallets, but we did pay to have a truck load of compost brought to us from the recycling center and have to purchase a few garden tools. If it weren't for my partner's love of physical labor and building things, it probably would never have happened at all and I would have continued to garden out of a few recycled construction pails in my back yard. But even out of a few containers you can grow a lot of food for very little effort, its something worth considering when trying to figure out how to eat healthy on a very tight budget or any budget at all.
Those bell peppers and basil turned dinner last night into something very special and very nutritious. I am certain my messy, neglected garden will continue to factor prominently for me into meeting this Challenge.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Day 1 and Feeling Fine
If there are two things I take away from the first day of this challenge, they will be these two things:
- its amazing what having experience and skills in budgeting and meal planning can do!
- the Food For All recipes are truly great tools
If you read my earlier post today, you know this isn't my first brush with eating on a very tight budget. Last time I was brand new to adult responsibility, lacking any skill or experience with cooking or finances, and had few options for help. This time, its voluntary and I am taking it on after 16 years of running family budgets and meal planning as well as years of business budgeting and learning cooking skills in a commercial kitchen for five years. And yes, it is much, much easier and much less frightening. I chose that word intentionally, because I was afraid the first time when it came to food. I was afraid of ruining the little food we could afford with my lack of skills. I was afraid of having to just eat foods I could barely stand and dealing with how that lack of pleasure would wear me down. That's one of those things we are not suppose to care about when we are poor, right? Heck, we can hardly acknowledge that pleasure is necessary for our healthy functioning when we aren't poor. We feel guilty talking about it, but its how humans are wired. Without pleasure we become depressed and angry, life starts lacking the sparkle that makes it worth living. And I'm not talking about the kind of overload we call pleasure or "fun" often these days, I am talking about just eating a meal that taste good, satisfies your hunger fully, and leaves you feeling peaceful. This time I was not afraid, I knew I could make delicious, satisfying meals even if I had to skip favorite ingredients now and then. I had skills and faith in those skills backing me up this time, and that is a huge difference.
Like most of us, I am very uncomfortable saying out loud that anything I've done or been a part of is pretty darn great, so this isn't easy for me to say, but I am so proud of the Food for All recipes. I cannot imagine getting through this challenge without them, where would I have found the time to figure out what I could afford to cook? I work between 45-55 hours a week, my partner works full time, and we are raising an active toddler. I'm also one of those people who is always over committing, using my "spare" time to work on community projects I care about. Oh, and I occasionally, very occasionally, make time to even see a friend for an hour or two. Last week I sick half the week, the week before that I traveled all week for work, this week I have a huge event at work I am working on. I can't imagine where I would have found the time. Luckily, I could just pull out all my Food for All recipe files and just go shopping and plan the week's meals within a short time. I can't wait to design more of these, they feel like one of the best things I've ever put my energy into right now.
So, what did I eat today? Here's the list and the cost:
Breakfast -
organic rolled oats with peanut butter, honey, sliced banana, and a few chocolate chips, $0.63
Lunch -
2 cups spicy black bean soup made at home, 1 slice whole wheat bread, $1.36
Snack -
1 small local apple and 2T raw almonds, $0.72
Dinner -
Ramrong Over Noodles (Food for All recipe), $1.82
TOTAL for the day: $4.51 (goal of $4.50)
Oats are such a satisfying and filling meal, I may actually have to work to resist having this oatmeal bowl for breakfast and dinner some days, its so easy and delicious! But I am aiming to have a varied diet so I don't miss too many vitamins, so I'll try not to give into the urge. Seriously, I like it that much, it might as well be dessert.
By the time I got to lunch I was hungry, but that made an otherwise ho-hum lunch rather delicious, I so appreciated the food. I do usually eat a mid-morning snack of fruit or nuts, so it was a bit challenging to skip it, but no big deal. Yet. But by the time I got to mid-afternoon I was glad I had planned to spend my whole snack budget then because I was starving and getting sleepy. The snack gave me the pick me up I needed.
By the time I got to cooking dinner I was once again quite hungry, not starving, but certainly wanting my food. When I portioned out the cooked food I almost clapped for joy to see how big the portion was, take a look!
Trust me, that looked like heaven to me, I was so happy to know I was going to leave the dinner table with a happy and full belly.
All day I noticed a side effect I had not expected - I was so excited about food! I would have just enough food in my belly to power me to my next meal and by the time I got to that meal I was truly delighted with the sight and smell of my food from the second I began heating or cooking it and felt like a gleeful child when I got to the meal itself, ready to dig into that first bite. I had forgotten this feeling and how it was how I felt about food all the time as a kid (except when mom made stuff I didn't like, of course. Poor mom!) I feel almost weird admitting this, it sounds like I am saying living on a food stamp budget is some kind of party and that's not what I want to convey at all. I am not under the kind of stress someone on food stamps is under and that makes all the difference. This is not about walking the razor edge of hunger for me but instead an intellectual and emotional exercise. The stakes are not the same, they could never be compared. That said, this is an unlooked for but welcome blessing from participating in this challenge, I am truly bowled over by it and wonder if it will continue or if it will turn into irritation. Right now, it is bringing me mindfulness of my food and of my good fortune, and I am grateful.
- its amazing what having experience and skills in budgeting and meal planning can do!
- the Food For All recipes are truly great tools
If you read my earlier post today, you know this isn't my first brush with eating on a very tight budget. Last time I was brand new to adult responsibility, lacking any skill or experience with cooking or finances, and had few options for help. This time, its voluntary and I am taking it on after 16 years of running family budgets and meal planning as well as years of business budgeting and learning cooking skills in a commercial kitchen for five years. And yes, it is much, much easier and much less frightening. I chose that word intentionally, because I was afraid the first time when it came to food. I was afraid of ruining the little food we could afford with my lack of skills. I was afraid of having to just eat foods I could barely stand and dealing with how that lack of pleasure would wear me down. That's one of those things we are not suppose to care about when we are poor, right? Heck, we can hardly acknowledge that pleasure is necessary for our healthy functioning when we aren't poor. We feel guilty talking about it, but its how humans are wired. Without pleasure we become depressed and angry, life starts lacking the sparkle that makes it worth living. And I'm not talking about the kind of overload we call pleasure or "fun" often these days, I am talking about just eating a meal that taste good, satisfies your hunger fully, and leaves you feeling peaceful. This time I was not afraid, I knew I could make delicious, satisfying meals even if I had to skip favorite ingredients now and then. I had skills and faith in those skills backing me up this time, and that is a huge difference.
Like most of us, I am very uncomfortable saying out loud that anything I've done or been a part of is pretty darn great, so this isn't easy for me to say, but I am so proud of the Food for All recipes. I cannot imagine getting through this challenge without them, where would I have found the time to figure out what I could afford to cook? I work between 45-55 hours a week, my partner works full time, and we are raising an active toddler. I'm also one of those people who is always over committing, using my "spare" time to work on community projects I care about. Oh, and I occasionally, very occasionally, make time to even see a friend for an hour or two. Last week I sick half the week, the week before that I traveled all week for work, this week I have a huge event at work I am working on. I can't imagine where I would have found the time. Luckily, I could just pull out all my Food for All recipe files and just go shopping and plan the week's meals within a short time. I can't wait to design more of these, they feel like one of the best things I've ever put my energy into right now.
So, what did I eat today? Here's the list and the cost:
Breakfast -
organic rolled oats with peanut butter, honey, sliced banana, and a few chocolate chips, $0.63
Lunch -
2 cups spicy black bean soup made at home, 1 slice whole wheat bread, $1.36
Snack -
1 small local apple and 2T raw almonds, $0.72
Dinner -
Ramrong Over Noodles (Food for All recipe), $1.82
TOTAL for the day: $4.51 (goal of $4.50)
Oats are such a satisfying and filling meal, I may actually have to work to resist having this oatmeal bowl for breakfast and dinner some days, its so easy and delicious! But I am aiming to have a varied diet so I don't miss too many vitamins, so I'll try not to give into the urge. Seriously, I like it that much, it might as well be dessert.
By the time I got to lunch I was hungry, but that made an otherwise ho-hum lunch rather delicious, I so appreciated the food. I do usually eat a mid-morning snack of fruit or nuts, so it was a bit challenging to skip it, but no big deal. Yet. But by the time I got to mid-afternoon I was glad I had planned to spend my whole snack budget then because I was starving and getting sleepy. The snack gave me the pick me up I needed.
By the time I got to cooking dinner I was once again quite hungry, not starving, but certainly wanting my food. When I portioned out the cooked food I almost clapped for joy to see how big the portion was, take a look!
Trust me, that looked like heaven to me, I was so happy to know I was going to leave the dinner table with a happy and full belly.
All day I noticed a side effect I had not expected - I was so excited about food! I would have just enough food in my belly to power me to my next meal and by the time I got to that meal I was truly delighted with the sight and smell of my food from the second I began heating or cooking it and felt like a gleeful child when I got to the meal itself, ready to dig into that first bite. I had forgotten this feeling and how it was how I felt about food all the time as a kid (except when mom made stuff I didn't like, of course. Poor mom!) I feel almost weird admitting this, it sounds like I am saying living on a food stamp budget is some kind of party and that's not what I want to convey at all. I am not under the kind of stress someone on food stamps is under and that makes all the difference. This is not about walking the razor edge of hunger for me but instead an intellectual and emotional exercise. The stakes are not the same, they could never be compared. That said, this is an unlooked for but welcome blessing from participating in this challenge, I am truly bowled over by it and wonder if it will continue or if it will turn into irritation. Right now, it is bringing me mindfulness of my food and of my good fortune, and I am grateful.
Everyone's Got a Story
The folks heading up the Illinois hunger challenge sent out a message today quoting from an e-mail they received saying this of the SNAP challenge:
"Poverty is not the result of a lack of morality or moral clarity; it is about economic inequity. And no writer who can spend her day running about from farmer's market to Whole Foods to work to home to cook for 2 hours is going to change that. We need real change; this will only come from Americans seeing that it is necessary. The SNAP Hunger Challenge denigrates the poor, and the challenges some folks have to deal with JUST to eat. Anything."
Wow, there's some serious rage here. And poverty will definitely bring out the rage in you when you are living with it, ask the folks who attempted to live on $1 a day how it affected their moods and their marriage. Like many of you I am sure, I would know, because I lived a decent number of my adult years under or not far above the poverty line.
Today, the poverty line for a family of two in the U.S. is a little over $14K. When I was 20, it was more like $12K. My first husband and I got married at 19 and 20 and we didn't know a damned thing about how to make a budget, what food and rent really cost, or what the adult world was truly like. We found out real quick, though, when we moved out on our own just before our wedding and suddenly our full time retail job paychecks weren't spending money, they were all we had to live on. Things got quickly further complicated by illness. I live with an immune system disorder called endometriosis that is linked with the female reproductive system and hormones. It has different symptoms for different women. For some it leads to infertility. For some it leads to pain and illness so intense they can hardly ever function out of bed. I was somewhere in between at that age. I had no health insurance at all so could afford none of the expensive treatments that were available in the early 1990s (which often did not work anyway) but was blessedly symptom free for all but 5-6 days of the month. When those 5-6 days came, always all in a row at an almost-regular point in the roller coaster ride that was my 20-some day hormone cycle, I would be in so much pain that if you touched my bed I would cry, when my cats jumped on my bed I felt it as an anguishing pain in my gut. Sometimes I'd get so nauseous with the pain I would vomit or faint. I could barely move enough to care for myself and my poor young husband would have to leave me home, alone, often softly crying and writhing with the pain. Because of this, despite being a hard worker who was great with customers and had an ability for managing people, I lost job after job as boss after boss gave up dealing with the chaos my absences caused in their schedule. They would ask me to go see a doctor because I was missing too much work. But how? They offered no health benefits to me and most treatments, as I said, were expensive and a crap shoot at best. I was full of hopelessness and rage and both my partner and I were depressed. What were we going to do? Who was going to help us?
The answer to the later questions was "no one." No one at all. The answer to the first question became accepting that I could not work, moving in with friends to share a small apartment, and learning to budget every penny. I didn't know anything about food stamps back then and, again, no one was offering to educate or help us in any way, so I didn't apply for them. My husband's income for 1994, working full time, was a little over $11K. And he was struggling to keep that job, because of how often I was unable to care for myself and there was no one else to help, so he'd have to come home from work to clean up puke, or get me my pain pills, or just keep his terrified young wife company while she talked about wishing she could die. During the good times, when I wasn't in pain, I started to teach myself how to budget. I'd go to Aldi and take copious notes about what each and every item cost and plan how to get enough food to get through the week and pay the rent. I felt guilty budgeting $1.54 a week for 7 cans of generic orange soda but I would do it, because it was my husband's favorite and he was working so hard for both of us. I felt guilty at age 20 for spending $1.54 a week so my partner could come home to a single can of soda each day? Yes, because we had so little and when you are poor, you are told day in and day out by the media, society, and the societal imprint in your brain that it is your fault, that you are doing something wrong. That you never deserve a treat no matter how small, you should be doing something responsible with every penny.
I didn't know a think about cooking back then nor about nutrition, but I'd checkout cookbooks from the library with titles like "cheap and easy meals" and I learned to cook a few basic things, like vegetarian chili and lentil soup. Of course, it was cheaper to get the Chunky-Soup-esque Aldi knock off for $0.50 a can filled with whatever D grade horse meat they put in it than to cook even a basic chili, and we often went for that cheaper choice. The "whole wheat" bread we could get from Aldi's was smooshy and tinted brown, tasted just like white bread, and probably was white bread with a browning agent in it. I was trying to get healthy food for us, but hadn't a clue nor any resources. It was a hellish time in our lives in many, many ways. We didn't know how to get out of our poverty, had no more than high school educations, and a crippling health issue that was getting worse that we had no health insurance for. Round and round it went, for many years.
Eventually, we found a way out of the situation. I found a doctor willing to give me the heavy pain pills necessary to cut my bed ridden days down to three a month and an employer who saw my worth even though I was missing three days a month and a zombie on three others. I didn't make much, but it was enough to pull us up and out into the category of "lower middle class." We still had no insurance and struggled to get by at times, but I didn't cringe while buying my husband's soda pop anymore, I even bought him the name brand occasionally. I finally got a job with health insurance in my late 20s and found a nurse practitioner that worked with me to find an affordable and effective treatment for my illness. My life was transformed from that day forward, I give thanks for that nurse and the job that made going to her possible.
Today is the first day of my SNAP challenge and rationing and planning each bite I eat is taking me viscerally back to those early years of my marriage. What I remember most is the hopelessness and the rage. The weight of so much judgement on my back while I struggled with terrifying pain and a sense that no one in the world thought my partner and I worthy of help or of even taking up space on the planet at times was crushing and I wanted to lash out. I said nasty, snarky things about "rich" people all the time and the self centered things they spent their money on. It was a way to try to feel better about myself and to try to vent all the fear and shame. I saw middle class families as wildly well off and was bewildered and angry that they could live in such safety and comfort while I suffered and my partner and I floundered on the endless shores of the barely-making-it. The rage wasn't unfounded, and I wasn't anywhere near wrong about the inequities between the rich and the poor. And I think my rage served a purpose in keeping me sane, kept me from 100% believing the messages that I deserved to be judged for every little thing I did and that it was all my own fault that I was poor.
Does the SNAP Challenge denigrate the poor? I think I see the author of that comment's fear, that by middle class folks working their tails off for one week and finding a way to eat fabulously or at least well on $4.50 a day they will actually strengthen the chorus of voices that say, "see, the amount of food stamps is generous!" or "see, obesity and poor health isn't caused by poverty, poverty is caused by laziness and bad choices, they could be eating this great food too!" I hear that, as well as the author's rage that feels honest and personal. That said, I do not think that is what the SNAP Challenge is doing. Sure, a few people are going to use it to "prove" their pet theories that are some version of the "its their own fault for being poor." Those people would find a way to believe that and "prove" it regardless. But hundreds more are taking this challenge out of sincere curiosity, concern, and desire to understand. Some of us have never been poor and some of us haven't been poor in quite a while and have forgotten what it is like. The experience of just trying to eat on a food stamp budget brings home the types of challenges those that are poor are facing. The experience of eating on a food stamp budget brings home how very hard it is to eat nutritiously when you are struggling financially and how it is that people end up feeding their kids off-brand sugar-laden cheerios for dinner. People are taking the challenge for all different reasons and from all different perspectives, and it is stimulating conversation that is powerful. Its going to take talking about difficult things and thinking together to address hunger and poverty. And we need everyone doing it - we need the working class folks just holding themselves above poverty from paycheck to paycheck, we need the comfortably middle class, we need the very rich, and we need the poor thinking and talking about this problem.
I understand the rage and sympathize, but cannot agree about with their views about this Challenge. Anything that gets people considering what it is like to walk in another's shoes humanizes and stimulates a desire to make a difference. That is something very, very worth doing and if it comes with a little privilege attached or provides fuel for the hateful theories of a few misguided minds, so what? Are we worse off than when the Challenge began, would that be a new state of affairs? No. But what might be new is that your neighbors are talking about what it is like to be hungry, your temple is reinvigorated to do more to help in their community, a few young adults just entering into the work world think about how they can put their working lives toward addressing poverty or nutrition or workers rights. And if the best that comes of it is that a handful of people learn to budget for food better and cook a few more healthy meals, even that is a worthy thing that makes the world a little better than it was yesterday.
"Poverty is not the result of a lack of morality or moral clarity; it is about economic inequity. And no writer who can spend her day running about from farmer's market to Whole Foods to work to home to cook for 2 hours is going to change that. We need real change; this will only come from Americans seeing that it is necessary. The SNAP Hunger Challenge denigrates the poor, and the challenges some folks have to deal with JUST to eat. Anything."
Wow, there's some serious rage here. And poverty will definitely bring out the rage in you when you are living with it, ask the folks who attempted to live on $1 a day how it affected their moods and their marriage. Like many of you I am sure, I would know, because I lived a decent number of my adult years under or not far above the poverty line.
Today, the poverty line for a family of two in the U.S. is a little over $14K. When I was 20, it was more like $12K. My first husband and I got married at 19 and 20 and we didn't know a damned thing about how to make a budget, what food and rent really cost, or what the adult world was truly like. We found out real quick, though, when we moved out on our own just before our wedding and suddenly our full time retail job paychecks weren't spending money, they were all we had to live on. Things got quickly further complicated by illness. I live with an immune system disorder called endometriosis that is linked with the female reproductive system and hormones. It has different symptoms for different women. For some it leads to infertility. For some it leads to pain and illness so intense they can hardly ever function out of bed. I was somewhere in between at that age. I had no health insurance at all so could afford none of the expensive treatments that were available in the early 1990s (which often did not work anyway) but was blessedly symptom free for all but 5-6 days of the month. When those 5-6 days came, always all in a row at an almost-regular point in the roller coaster ride that was my 20-some day hormone cycle, I would be in so much pain that if you touched my bed I would cry, when my cats jumped on my bed I felt it as an anguishing pain in my gut. Sometimes I'd get so nauseous with the pain I would vomit or faint. I could barely move enough to care for myself and my poor young husband would have to leave me home, alone, often softly crying and writhing with the pain. Because of this, despite being a hard worker who was great with customers and had an ability for managing people, I lost job after job as boss after boss gave up dealing with the chaos my absences caused in their schedule. They would ask me to go see a doctor because I was missing too much work. But how? They offered no health benefits to me and most treatments, as I said, were expensive and a crap shoot at best. I was full of hopelessness and rage and both my partner and I were depressed. What were we going to do? Who was going to help us?
The answer to the later questions was "no one." No one at all. The answer to the first question became accepting that I could not work, moving in with friends to share a small apartment, and learning to budget every penny. I didn't know anything about food stamps back then and, again, no one was offering to educate or help us in any way, so I didn't apply for them. My husband's income for 1994, working full time, was a little over $11K. And he was struggling to keep that job, because of how often I was unable to care for myself and there was no one else to help, so he'd have to come home from work to clean up puke, or get me my pain pills, or just keep his terrified young wife company while she talked about wishing she could die. During the good times, when I wasn't in pain, I started to teach myself how to budget. I'd go to Aldi and take copious notes about what each and every item cost and plan how to get enough food to get through the week and pay the rent. I felt guilty budgeting $1.54 a week for 7 cans of generic orange soda but I would do it, because it was my husband's favorite and he was working so hard for both of us. I felt guilty at age 20 for spending $1.54 a week so my partner could come home to a single can of soda each day? Yes, because we had so little and when you are poor, you are told day in and day out by the media, society, and the societal imprint in your brain that it is your fault, that you are doing something wrong. That you never deserve a treat no matter how small, you should be doing something responsible with every penny.
I didn't know a think about cooking back then nor about nutrition, but I'd checkout cookbooks from the library with titles like "cheap and easy meals" and I learned to cook a few basic things, like vegetarian chili and lentil soup. Of course, it was cheaper to get the Chunky-Soup-esque Aldi knock off for $0.50 a can filled with whatever D grade horse meat they put in it than to cook even a basic chili, and we often went for that cheaper choice. The "whole wheat" bread we could get from Aldi's was smooshy and tinted brown, tasted just like white bread, and probably was white bread with a browning agent in it. I was trying to get healthy food for us, but hadn't a clue nor any resources. It was a hellish time in our lives in many, many ways. We didn't know how to get out of our poverty, had no more than high school educations, and a crippling health issue that was getting worse that we had no health insurance for. Round and round it went, for many years.
Eventually, we found a way out of the situation. I found a doctor willing to give me the heavy pain pills necessary to cut my bed ridden days down to three a month and an employer who saw my worth even though I was missing three days a month and a zombie on three others. I didn't make much, but it was enough to pull us up and out into the category of "lower middle class." We still had no insurance and struggled to get by at times, but I didn't cringe while buying my husband's soda pop anymore, I even bought him the name brand occasionally. I finally got a job with health insurance in my late 20s and found a nurse practitioner that worked with me to find an affordable and effective treatment for my illness. My life was transformed from that day forward, I give thanks for that nurse and the job that made going to her possible.
Today is the first day of my SNAP challenge and rationing and planning each bite I eat is taking me viscerally back to those early years of my marriage. What I remember most is the hopelessness and the rage. The weight of so much judgement on my back while I struggled with terrifying pain and a sense that no one in the world thought my partner and I worthy of help or of even taking up space on the planet at times was crushing and I wanted to lash out. I said nasty, snarky things about "rich" people all the time and the self centered things they spent their money on. It was a way to try to feel better about myself and to try to vent all the fear and shame. I saw middle class families as wildly well off and was bewildered and angry that they could live in such safety and comfort while I suffered and my partner and I floundered on the endless shores of the barely-making-it. The rage wasn't unfounded, and I wasn't anywhere near wrong about the inequities between the rich and the poor. And I think my rage served a purpose in keeping me sane, kept me from 100% believing the messages that I deserved to be judged for every little thing I did and that it was all my own fault that I was poor.
Does the SNAP Challenge denigrate the poor? I think I see the author of that comment's fear, that by middle class folks working their tails off for one week and finding a way to eat fabulously or at least well on $4.50 a day they will actually strengthen the chorus of voices that say, "see, the amount of food stamps is generous!" or "see, obesity and poor health isn't caused by poverty, poverty is caused by laziness and bad choices, they could be eating this great food too!" I hear that, as well as the author's rage that feels honest and personal. That said, I do not think that is what the SNAP Challenge is doing. Sure, a few people are going to use it to "prove" their pet theories that are some version of the "its their own fault for being poor." Those people would find a way to believe that and "prove" it regardless. But hundreds more are taking this challenge out of sincere curiosity, concern, and desire to understand. Some of us have never been poor and some of us haven't been poor in quite a while and have forgotten what it is like. The experience of just trying to eat on a food stamp budget brings home the types of challenges those that are poor are facing. The experience of eating on a food stamp budget brings home how very hard it is to eat nutritiously when you are struggling financially and how it is that people end up feeding their kids off-brand sugar-laden cheerios for dinner. People are taking the challenge for all different reasons and from all different perspectives, and it is stimulating conversation that is powerful. Its going to take talking about difficult things and thinking together to address hunger and poverty. And we need everyone doing it - we need the working class folks just holding themselves above poverty from paycheck to paycheck, we need the comfortably middle class, we need the very rich, and we need the poor thinking and talking about this problem.
I understand the rage and sympathize, but cannot agree about with their views about this Challenge. Anything that gets people considering what it is like to walk in another's shoes humanizes and stimulates a desire to make a difference. That is something very, very worth doing and if it comes with a little privilege attached or provides fuel for the hateful theories of a few misguided minds, so what? Are we worse off than when the Challenge began, would that be a new state of affairs? No. But what might be new is that your neighbors are talking about what it is like to be hungry, your temple is reinvigorated to do more to help in their community, a few young adults just entering into the work world think about how they can put their working lives toward addressing poverty or nutrition or workers rights. And if the best that comes of it is that a handful of people learn to budget for food better and cook a few more healthy meals, even that is a worthy thing that makes the world a little better than it was yesterday.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Why take this challenge?
I am finally 90% well and ready to do the cooking I needed to get done before starting the challenge, which I am now planning to start Friday, hurray!
I was contacted by a reporter asking for me to answer some questions about the co-op's involvement in the SNAP Challenge today and they were such great questions (from which only a few quotes are going to be pulled as part of a larger article) that I decided I wanted to share my answers here with you as well. As always, I love dialog, please share your thoughts!
___________________
Common Ground has been working on the issue of making healthy food available to people of all income levels since its inception in 1974 and created the Food for All program at the co-op in January of 2009. The Food for All program has five parts, and the one being most actively utilized for the Feeding Illinois challenge are our Food for All recipe cards. When the economic crisis hit just after our move to downtown Urbana in August of 2008, there were a lot of ads on the radio all of the sudden pushing fast food "value" meals that were suddenly $5 or $4 and promoting them as a real steal, a boon to families grappling with shrinking incomes. We decided to challenge ourselves to create recipes from our own experience feeding our own families that could be made with organic and local ingredients for a family of four for the cost of one of those "value" meals. The result was 15 terrific recipes for everything from wild mushroom and chard pasta to tamale pie you could make for only $1 to $2 per serving that are now available every day in our co-op. The recipes are wildly popular and we're constantly having to print more, especially since the Feeding Illinois challenge began, many people are finding them to be a great help in taking this challenge where you are trying to find nutritious meals to fit into a budget of only $4.50 or less a day.
On a more personal level, I decided to take the challenge myself because I wanted to see if it was possible to eat only organic and local food on a food stamp budget. There is this perception that organic and local food is very expensive and out of reach for many of us, but I know this is not true after years of personal experience and years of watching staff and customers of the co-op alike shop at the co-op on very little yet be able to eat almost exclusively organic and local food. What it takes is reviving the vital skills of cooking and meal planning, which I teach in my free, monthly "Healthy Eating on a Budget" class. So I wanted to take this challenge with that unique angle, as part of my continuing self-education, and as an opportunity to talk about how to eat healthfully and organically when on a tight budget.
This challenge has already been effective, I have been amazed at the number of terrific conversations it has started! I've been talking about it on my Facebook page and gotten a terrific response from Common Ground owners who read my page, many have even chosen to take the challenge after reading about it on there. Its also started great conversations within the co-op staff, honest ones about the cost of food and the need to share food skills. And, above all, its started great conversations on the community level between businesses, media, and Eastern Illinois Foodbank that are going to stir up real energy for change. I am proud to be taking part in this challenge.
Its easy for so many of us to think of hunger as something that doesn't really exist in our communities because it doesn't manifest as emaciated children begging for food in the streets, that's what we're told hunger looks like. But in the U.S., hunger often looks like an overweight child who can't focus in his or her classes because they are filled with whatever processed, sugar-laden was on sale super cheap, because that is what is super cheap. Because these are the foods that are subsidized, this is where all that subsidized corn and soy is going, into that super cheap processed food with negative nutritional value, not into fresh fruits and vegetables. These aren't foods lacking nutritional value, these are foods that actually have a negative impact on nutrition, they don't just lack vitamins and minerals, they are actually harming young bodies. Hunger these days is not emaciated children in our country, it is children with diabetes, adults in the prime of their life who already have high blood pressure and heart issues. The face is hunger in our country is malnourishment right in our midst, and we all see it every day. It is alive and well through out our county and through out our country. How do we truly begin to address that? Common Ground does it through our Food for All program, EIFB does it through great efforts like this Feeding Illinois challenge and many others. We have to start talking about the reality of what kind of food the poorest in our country are having to live on and how that can change, this challenge is a great start.
- Jacqueline
I was contacted by a reporter asking for me to answer some questions about the co-op's involvement in the SNAP Challenge today and they were such great questions (from which only a few quotes are going to be pulled as part of a larger article) that I decided I wanted to share my answers here with you as well. As always, I love dialog, please share your thoughts!
___________________
Common Ground has been working on the issue of making healthy food available to people of all income levels since its inception in 1974 and created the Food for All program at the co-op in January of 2009. The Food for All program has five parts, and the one being most actively utilized for the Feeding Illinois challenge are our Food for All recipe cards. When the economic crisis hit just after our move to downtown Urbana in August of 2008, there were a lot of ads on the radio all of the sudden pushing fast food "value" meals that were suddenly $5 or $4 and promoting them as a real steal, a boon to families grappling with shrinking incomes. We decided to challenge ourselves to create recipes from our own experience feeding our own families that could be made with organic and local ingredients for a family of four for the cost of one of those "value" meals. The result was 15 terrific recipes for everything from wild mushroom and chard pasta to tamale pie you could make for only $1 to $2 per serving that are now available every day in our co-op. The recipes are wildly popular and we're constantly having to print more, especially since the Feeding Illinois challenge began, many people are finding them to be a great help in taking this challenge where you are trying to find nutritious meals to fit into a budget of only $4.50 or less a day.
On a more personal level, I decided to take the challenge myself because I wanted to see if it was possible to eat only organic and local food on a food stamp budget. There is this perception that organic and local food is very expensive and out of reach for many of us, but I know this is not true after years of personal experience and years of watching staff and customers of the co-op alike shop at the co-op on very little yet be able to eat almost exclusively organic and local food. What it takes is reviving the vital skills of cooking and meal planning, which I teach in my free, monthly "Healthy Eating on a Budget" class. So I wanted to take this challenge with that unique angle, as part of my continuing self-education, and as an opportunity to talk about how to eat healthfully and organically when on a tight budget.
This challenge has already been effective, I have been amazed at the number of terrific conversations it has started! I've been talking about it on my Facebook page and gotten a terrific response from Common Ground owners who read my page, many have even chosen to take the challenge after reading about it on there. Its also started great conversations within the co-op staff, honest ones about the cost of food and the need to share food skills. And, above all, its started great conversations on the community level between businesses, media, and Eastern Illinois Foodbank that are going to stir up real energy for change. I am proud to be taking part in this challenge.
Its easy for so many of us to think of hunger as something that doesn't really exist in our communities because it doesn't manifest as emaciated children begging for food in the streets, that's what we're told hunger looks like. But in the U.S., hunger often looks like an overweight child who can't focus in his or her classes because they are filled with whatever processed, sugar-laden was on sale super cheap, because that is what is super cheap. Because these are the foods that are subsidized, this is where all that subsidized corn and soy is going, into that super cheap processed food with negative nutritional value, not into fresh fruits and vegetables. These aren't foods lacking nutritional value, these are foods that actually have a negative impact on nutrition, they don't just lack vitamins and minerals, they are actually harming young bodies. Hunger these days is not emaciated children in our country, it is children with diabetes, adults in the prime of their life who already have high blood pressure and heart issues. The face is hunger in our country is malnourishment right in our midst, and we all see it every day. It is alive and well through out our county and through out our country. How do we truly begin to address that? Common Ground does it through our Food for All program, EIFB does it through great efforts like this Feeding Illinois challenge and many others. We have to start talking about the reality of what kind of food the poorest in our country are having to live on and how that can change, this challenge is a great start.
- Jacqueline
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Day 2 = Day 0
Hello all! Today is the official day 2 of the SNAP Challenge, I'd love to hear from any of you that are taking it as well. If today is day 2, why have you heard nothing from me at all about what I am eating and how it is going? Good question.
The answer is that I had set aside Sunday to make food and finish up planning my food for the Challenge. And then the stomach flu knocked me over and landed me in bed by noon. Everything besides keeping fluids down has been erased from my agenda for the last 36 hours. I'm now about 50% recovered and hope, barring someone else in my family coming down with the bug (which they don't show signs of as of yet, hurray!)to be getting started on my SNAP Challenge week in the next few days, after getting my life back to a sense of normalcy.
And that's a luxury, make no mistake about it. Getting to say, "hey, time out, I've been sick so I'll start on this $4 a day for food thing in a few days," is a luxury a family subsisting on just food stamps for food would not have. Now, I could say I started my challenge Sunday and actually be ahead of the game as I ate 72 cents worth of oatmeal that morning and nothing but a 22 cent banana since, that would be two days and only 94 cents spent. And since I am the only one in my household taking the challenge I could technically do that, but what happens when the mom of house is sick? Not always, but in many cases, the family food budget goes right out the window because it becomes all about convenience food for the rest of the family while the main mean maker and food budget maven of the home is out for the count. And such has been the case in my house, its been several nights of my partner and son fending for themselves with bottled tomato sauce and whole wheat pasta and other such expensive, prepackaged delicacies while my partner has tried to balance caring for our son solo, working his full time job, and caring for me. Now imagine if the SNAP Challenge hadn't been an educational experiment these last two days. Just those two convenience meals of pasta and sauce with a few veggies thrown in would have knocked out $12 out of our $90 of weekly food stamps for a family of three.
My day 1 is yet to begin, servings of meals costing $0.50 - $2.00 each coming soon!
The answer is that I had set aside Sunday to make food and finish up planning my food for the Challenge. And then the stomach flu knocked me over and landed me in bed by noon. Everything besides keeping fluids down has been erased from my agenda for the last 36 hours. I'm now about 50% recovered and hope, barring someone else in my family coming down with the bug (which they don't show signs of as of yet, hurray!)to be getting started on my SNAP Challenge week in the next few days, after getting my life back to a sense of normalcy.
And that's a luxury, make no mistake about it. Getting to say, "hey, time out, I've been sick so I'll start on this $4 a day for food thing in a few days," is a luxury a family subsisting on just food stamps for food would not have. Now, I could say I started my challenge Sunday and actually be ahead of the game as I ate 72 cents worth of oatmeal that morning and nothing but a 22 cent banana since, that would be two days and only 94 cents spent. And since I am the only one in my household taking the challenge I could technically do that, but what happens when the mom of house is sick? Not always, but in many cases, the family food budget goes right out the window because it becomes all about convenience food for the rest of the family while the main mean maker and food budget maven of the home is out for the count. And such has been the case in my house, its been several nights of my partner and son fending for themselves with bottled tomato sauce and whole wheat pasta and other such expensive, prepackaged delicacies while my partner has tried to balance caring for our son solo, working his full time job, and caring for me. Now imagine if the SNAP Challenge hadn't been an educational experiment these last two days. Just those two convenience meals of pasta and sauce with a few veggies thrown in would have knocked out $12 out of our $90 of weekly food stamps for a family of three.
My day 1 is yet to begin, servings of meals costing $0.50 - $2.00 each coming soon!
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