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.
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I thought the point of the SNAP Challenge was to raise awareness of how hard it is to eat on $4.50/person/day. I think your posts reflect how challenging it is and I appreciate your sharing this with us. If people are angry about the issue they should be calling our Congressman's office and asking why we are not doing a better job helping lower income folks get enough to eat, not yelling at the folks trying to raise awareness of the issue. For heaven's sake!
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Cynthia, and agree. But that said, its what often happens, people find pressure points where they actually can have a voice, like the co-op, and do their venting there instead of where it needs to go. In a way, its a testament to how well we do our job at the co-op that folks know they will be listened to and respected when they bring their concerns to us when they chose us as the target of their venting. I'm not saying its fun, nor am I saying its effective to yell at the people who are trying to do something about it, but I think its human. People feel their reps don't listen to them and often what we're searching for is just to feel heard. At the co-op, you at least get heard, you feel like your voice matters.
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