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 Everyone I know worked opportunities like out of date food at their bagel joint job or leftover donuts in the coffee room.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.