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One realization I have as I try to plan a menu for this week is how much I take for granted the ability to stock up on food. If I could only spend $100/week for my family of 4 there is no way I could buy bulk bags of rice at Costco or 20 pounds of beef at the Farmers Market ($150). Of course buying in bulk saves me money over the course of the year, so being restricted to $100 in food stamps means those who use food stamps end up paying more for their food than those who can wait for sales and buy in bulk. This is a sobering realization to me and something I never thought about until I joined this challenge.
Valerie - September 20, 2008 at 2:01 am
I agree with Valerie. Also, I found that coupons were not much help either because I could not buy the 2 for…, or 3 for…, in order to use the actual coupon.
karen - September 22, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Wow, I have more thoughts! I woke up yesterday AM to the whirring coffee grinder (I am usually oblivious to since I don’t tend to drink coffee) and realized, yikes, I forgot to budget coffee for my husband. He was using from the bag previously opened, but it still felt like cheating.
We (the adults) only eat local meat and usually have chicken, pork or beef every night for dinner. We absolutely could not afford meat this week for the adults. 2 out of the 3 meals we are making include beans instead.
Also, we are relying on starches a lot more than usual, and certainly not as much fruit & veg as usual. I can see why lower income households don’t eat as healthfully, it’s just NOT possible! All the cheap stuff: pasta, ramen noodles, rice, beans, potatoes, are starchy!
I know I will “fail” the challenge since my husband will “cheat” by going out of town on a business trip Thurs-Fri and I will go out to lunch with girlfriends on Friday, but I am so glad I am participating to the best of my ability. I thought I had a handle on this issue, but as I sprinkled $18/lb paremesano reggiano (it was in my fridge already and honest it was just a little sprinkle!) on my pasta and beans last night all I could think was:
A/ Wow, my parmesan cheese is 3/4 of someone’s weekly food stamp allottment and
B/ As I had no wine to enjoy my meal I though, wow, how unfair that you have to have a certain mimimum income to enjoy wine with your meal. What we spend on wine each week is equal to the typical food stamp allottment for one for the week.
Valerie - September 22, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I find I’m having to cook — something I rarely do and am not enjoying much. And right now, I’m dying for something to munch on. I covered my meals okay, but I miss my snacks. And my diet Coke.
We did buy some cheap coffee, and I bought a small jar of dried basil & a bottle of salad dressing because I am using some herbs and things I already have (butter, for example), and I feel stocking these types of things would need to be part of the weekly budget in order to keep them on hand. My daughter would probably be eligible for free lunch at school if we got food stamps, but she has an internship and is not there at lunchtime. So, we decided we would have to include her lunch in the budget. She came home today “starving” because neither her lunch or breakfast seemed like enough food. She has almost finished our bag of pretzels – the one “snack” food, other than fruit, that we bought. I find myself feeling so guilty, and eating smaller portions myself, so she will not be hungry – I think what this must feel like to live this way all the time.
My husband also “cheated” by drinking beer, which is very filling!
Sheri - September 22, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Just thought you’d like to know about the Gazette article that appeared today. It discusses the Food Stamp Challenge.
Hurry up weekend!! We are attending a Bar Mitzvah this Saturday. While I enjoy these milestones, the Oneg and party celebration will definitely have an added meaning. Is that cheating?
karen - September 24, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Karen, I think if we have learned what we were meant to from this challenge then it is not cheating to celebrate Saturday night. I was thinking of breaking the “fast” at sundown on Saturday myself. First thing, a nice glass of wine! But I did think this is something we shoud do periodically, for me something I might try again during a week in Lent, just to keep myself in touch. I don’t know if any of your are in the position to do this, but we are donating what we would have spent on groceries (above our allottment) to Manna. To me, that is what really makes the exercise worthwhile, not just writing a check, but sacrificing as well.
Valerie - September 24, 2008 at 7:24 pm
From: Alice W.
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:07 AM
I was ready to accept the challenge because I had read about such a challenge that was done in Montreal some years ago. It was found there that meat and potatoes families could not make it through the week (the husbands in particular) but that the one family who was content was the family eating a bean and rice type diet, like in India. I know by now that we will make it through and even maybe have a surplus of the food I bought (and grew) for the challenge. However, some of the reason is that the meat we are eating was all “special” or on sale. My mother used to sigh and say, “You have to have money to save money.” I think that is true here.
–If I can buy in bulk;
–if I can pick and choose the stores I purchase in (perhaps driving past the “nearest” supermarket);
–if I have the storage capacity to keep food before after and to reuse something afterwards;
–if I can afford the utilities to cook and store this food;
–if I have enough sun and land to grow some of my own food;
–if I can freeze and can some of the food I buy or grow in bulk;
–if I have the time to prepare the raw foods I must purchase (because it is the prepared boxes and bags of foods that really add lots to a food bill);
–if I don’t want to get fat and thus forego desserts,
then I can live on $25 per week.
The plus is that one must eat healthy to follow my regimen and purchase/grow lots of veggies. My this week’s purchase coup was $5.99 for a huge pumpkin that, pureed, will last me far beyond this week, frozen in my freezer.
But I wager that most welfare Moms don’t have such luxuries. I have, for example, a food processor to do the pureeing for me as well as the time since I am retired.
My husband and I decided to take the food stamp challenge because we have been fortunate and should walk the path that so many people are forced to take. I had the luxury of searching the food ads and planning ahead. Working full-time did not make food preparation easy but we are managing. Both my husband and I have been delighted to note that, although our Weight Watchers regimen has been disrupted, we have not gained weight. I do miss our huge salads as we cannot afford it on this week’s budget. Foods and meals will follow.
Char - September 26, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I agree that buying in bulk, checking for sales and buying at various stores, growing vegetables, and spending more time preparing food would make the budget stretch farther. However, since I work with many people on limited incomes and who use food stamps, I am aware that few are able to do any of these things. They live in apartments, don’t have cars, have small children, and work long hours in addition to spending a lot of time commuting by bus. I do think I would get better at budgeting my allotment over time, and since food stamps are distributed monthly, it would be possible to buy some items, such as flour, sugar, butter, in order to do some baking later in the month, which would save a lot. I do think we will “make it” through the week, but we are mostly subsisting on starches now – pasta, rice, bread. We have completely run out of vegetables and salad ingredients, and have just a few apples left. Beans are a great, inexpensive protein that we ate a lot of this week, but my husband has acid reflux and cannot eat them, and he is also struggling with the pasta sauce, which is tomato-based. People with medical concerns have an added difficulty. This week’s diet was definitely less healthy, and I lost 2 lbs (which I was not trying to do).
Sheri - September 26, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Alice is corrrect in noting you have to have money to save money. You also have to have time (to grocery shop several stores, to garden, to search the circulars for sales, etc) to save money. Many mothers (and fathers) work two or more jobs and still cannot make ends meet, let alone have the time.
Every year we roast and freeze 40+ lbs of tomatoes for the winter in addition to purchasing 1/2 a pig and 40 lbs of local beef bought in bulk, strawberry and cherry picking (20 lbs and 30 lbs respectively) and freezing them. All this takes so much time, it might as well be our second job!
I plan on making sweet and sour cabbage with half the cabbage (cabbage, 1 onion, 1 apple, some vinegar and sugar), beet salad with 2 of the beets (boil beets, shred them, chop a bunch of Israeli pickles – ~$2 a can, add mayo to taste), borscht with the other half a cabbage and the other beets (~1 lb of stew meat = $5, 1 can tomatoes = $1), pumpkin soup (split, cleaned, and roasted pumpkin, leftover chicken broth – can use buillion here – ginger, nutmeg, milk – 1/2 gal milk = ~$3), possibly pumpkin bread/muffins with eggs from last week and flour and sugar from the pantry. So far, I’m at $48. All this can be supplemented with warm lentil salad (cook and drain a bag of lentils – <$1 -; sautee onion, garlic, carrot, celery; dump the sautee into lentils and mix. Put some in a bowl, squeeze a good deal of lime/lemon over it, add a whole lot of fresh chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and you’re good to go.
Lentils are the food to eat when you’re broke. They are ridiculously versatile and dirt cheap, loaded full of fiber and protein, and they take up whatever flavors you put on them. Make them in the above form (cooked with sauteed flavoring components) into burgers with egg, bread crumbs, and whatever spices you like. Chipotle en adobo is fantastic. I store them in a ziplock gallon bag, taking what I need for warm lentil salad, lentil burgers, etc. from the bag.
So, I can also do baked potatoes, topped with some sweet and sour cabbage and a bit of butter for a hot tasty lunch with warm lentil salad on the side… Then there’s pumpkin soup with a side of cold beet salad. And borscht. I’m not a huge traditional breakfast kind of person, so plums/pears with a slice of pumpkin bread or even a bowl of soup works for me.
But then, I purchased most of my ingredients NOT in Maryland. I would say that the problem of expensive food is local. M&M farms is located in a very developed suburb of NYC, and Rockland Bakery ships all over, supplying NYC delis and everyone else in the area. I’ve lived in MD for 3 years, and I can’t figure out why food here is so much more expensive. Peaches that are shipped literally 45 minutes from the farm to Bethesda are over a dollar a pound. There’s no reason for that. I just got these beautiful dark skinned Italian prune plums for $0.99 a pound (which I’m eating raw because they taste so good). Ridiculously priced food is an endemic problem. It’s idiotic that we live so close to so many farms, and yet the farmer’s market produce is just barely underselling that which we get in supermarkets.
But yeah, it is possible to eat very healthily on a nonexistant budget. It takes some thought, some adaptation of the palate, and some creativity, but to all the doubters out there, it’s possible. And we should all read Michael Pollan.
One realization I have as I try to plan a menu for this week is how much I take for granted the ability to stock up on food. If I could only spend $100/week for my family of 4 there is no way I could buy bulk bags of rice at Costco or 20 pounds of beef at the Farmers Market ($150). Of course buying in bulk saves me money over the course of the year, so being restricted to $100 in food stamps means those who use food stamps end up paying more for their food than those who can wait for sales and buy in bulk. This is a sobering realization to me and something I never thought about until I joined this challenge.
I agree with Valerie. Also, I found that coupons were not much help either because I could not buy the 2 for…, or 3 for…, in order to use the actual coupon.
Wow, I have more thoughts! I woke up yesterday AM to the whirring coffee grinder (I am usually oblivious to since I don’t tend to drink coffee) and realized, yikes, I forgot to budget coffee for my husband. He was using from the bag previously opened, but it still felt like cheating.
We (the adults) only eat local meat and usually have chicken, pork or beef every night for dinner. We absolutely could not afford meat this week for the adults. 2 out of the 3 meals we are making include beans instead.
Also, we are relying on starches a lot more than usual, and certainly not as much fruit & veg as usual. I can see why lower income households don’t eat as healthfully, it’s just NOT possible! All the cheap stuff: pasta, ramen noodles, rice, beans, potatoes, are starchy!
I know I will “fail” the challenge since my husband will “cheat” by going out of town on a business trip Thurs-Fri and I will go out to lunch with girlfriends on Friday, but I am so glad I am participating to the best of my ability. I thought I had a handle on this issue, but as I sprinkled $18/lb paremesano reggiano (it was in my fridge already and honest it was just a little sprinkle!) on my pasta and beans last night all I could think was:
A/ Wow, my parmesan cheese is 3/4 of someone’s weekly food stamp allottment and
B/ As I had no wine to enjoy my meal I though, wow, how unfair that you have to have a certain mimimum income to enjoy wine with your meal. What we spend on wine each week is equal to the typical food stamp allottment for one for the week.
I find I’m having to cook — something I rarely do and am not enjoying much. And right now, I’m dying for something to munch on. I covered my meals okay, but I miss my snacks. And my diet Coke.
Amy
We did buy some cheap coffee, and I bought a small jar of dried basil & a bottle of salad dressing because I am using some herbs and things I already have (butter, for example), and I feel stocking these types of things would need to be part of the weekly budget in order to keep them on hand. My daughter would probably be eligible for free lunch at school if we got food stamps, but she has an internship and is not there at lunchtime. So, we decided we would have to include her lunch in the budget. She came home today “starving” because neither her lunch or breakfast seemed like enough food. She has almost finished our bag of pretzels – the one “snack” food, other than fruit, that we bought. I find myself feeling so guilty, and eating smaller portions myself, so she will not be hungry – I think what this must feel like to live this way all the time.
My husband also “cheated” by drinking beer, which is very filling!
Just thought you’d like to know about the Gazette article that appeared today. It discusses the Food Stamp Challenge.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/09242008/montnew184229_32526.shtml
Hurry up weekend!! We are attending a Bar Mitzvah this Saturday. While I enjoy these milestones, the Oneg and party celebration will definitely have an added meaning. Is that cheating?
Karen, I think if we have learned what we were meant to from this challenge then it is not cheating to celebrate Saturday night. I was thinking of breaking the “fast” at sundown on Saturday myself. First thing, a nice glass of wine! But I did think this is something we shoud do periodically, for me something I might try again during a week in Lent, just to keep myself in touch. I don’t know if any of your are in the position to do this, but we are donating what we would have spent on groceries (above our allottment) to Manna. To me, that is what really makes the exercise worthwhile, not just writing a check, but sacrificing as well.
From: Alice W.
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:07 AM
I was ready to accept the challenge because I had read about such a challenge that was done in Montreal some years ago. It was found there that meat and potatoes families could not make it through the week (the husbands in particular) but that the one family who was content was the family eating a bean and rice type diet, like in India. I know by now that we will make it through and even maybe have a surplus of the food I bought (and grew) for the challenge. However, some of the reason is that the meat we are eating was all “special” or on sale. My mother used to sigh and say, “You have to have money to save money.” I think that is true here.
–If I can buy in bulk;
–if I can pick and choose the stores I purchase in (perhaps driving past the “nearest” supermarket);
–if I have the storage capacity to keep food before after and to reuse something afterwards;
–if I can afford the utilities to cook and store this food;
–if I have enough sun and land to grow some of my own food;
–if I can freeze and can some of the food I buy or grow in bulk;
–if I have the time to prepare the raw foods I must purchase (because it is the prepared boxes and bags of foods that really add lots to a food bill);
–if I don’t want to get fat and thus forego desserts,
then I can live on $25 per week.
The plus is that one must eat healthy to follow my regimen and purchase/grow lots of veggies. My this week’s purchase coup was $5.99 for a huge pumpkin that, pureed, will last me far beyond this week, frozen in my freezer.
But I wager that most welfare Moms don’t have such luxuries. I have, for example, a food processor to do the pureeing for me as well as the time since I am retired.
Alice W.
My husband and I decided to take the food stamp challenge because we have been fortunate and should walk the path that so many people are forced to take. I had the luxury of searching the food ads and planning ahead. Working full-time did not make food preparation easy but we are managing. Both my husband and I have been delighted to note that, although our Weight Watchers regimen has been disrupted, we have not gained weight. I do miss our huge salads as we cannot afford it on this week’s budget. Foods and meals will follow.
I agree that buying in bulk, checking for sales and buying at various stores, growing vegetables, and spending more time preparing food would make the budget stretch farther. However, since I work with many people on limited incomes and who use food stamps, I am aware that few are able to do any of these things. They live in apartments, don’t have cars, have small children, and work long hours in addition to spending a lot of time commuting by bus. I do think I would get better at budgeting my allotment over time, and since food stamps are distributed monthly, it would be possible to buy some items, such as flour, sugar, butter, in order to do some baking later in the month, which would save a lot. I do think we will “make it” through the week, but we are mostly subsisting on starches now – pasta, rice, bread. We have completely run out of vegetables and salad ingredients, and have just a few apples left. Beans are a great, inexpensive protein that we ate a lot of this week, but my husband has acid reflux and cannot eat them, and he is also struggling with the pasta sauce, which is tomato-based. People with medical concerns have an added difficulty. This week’s diet was definitely less healthy, and I lost 2 lbs (which I was not trying to do).
Alice is corrrect in noting you have to have money to save money. You also have to have time (to grocery shop several stores, to garden, to search the circulars for sales, etc) to save money. Many mothers (and fathers) work two or more jobs and still cannot make ends meet, let alone have the time.
Every year we roast and freeze 40+ lbs of tomatoes for the winter in addition to purchasing 1/2 a pig and 40 lbs of local beef bought in bulk, strawberry and cherry picking (20 lbs and 30 lbs respectively) and freezing them. All this takes so much time, it might as well be our second job!
I have a lot to say about this, albeit late.
So, this is fascinating…
I visited my parents over the weekend in NY. There’s a small produce store right near their house, M&M Farms (here’s where they’re located: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=0IX&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=m%26m+farms+new+city+ny&fb=1&view=text&latlng=12675877987801561813# ). I got several pounds of plums, 4 Bosc pears, a red cabbage, onions, 4 heads of garlic, several pounds of potatoes, 2 medium pie pumpkins, parsley, a couple bell peppers, a few pounds of beets, 2 lbs of carrots, and 5 limes for $30. Then I went to Rockland Bakery (http://www.rocklandbakery.com/), and got exceptional bread, enough for over a week for ~$7.
I plan on making sweet and sour cabbage with half the cabbage (cabbage, 1 onion, 1 apple, some vinegar and sugar), beet salad with 2 of the beets (boil beets, shred them, chop a bunch of Israeli pickles – ~$2 a can, add mayo to taste), borscht with the other half a cabbage and the other beets (~1 lb of stew meat = $5, 1 can tomatoes = $1), pumpkin soup (split, cleaned, and roasted pumpkin, leftover chicken broth – can use buillion here – ginger, nutmeg, milk – 1/2 gal milk = ~$3), possibly pumpkin bread/muffins with eggs from last week and flour and sugar from the pantry. So far, I’m at $48. All this can be supplemented with warm lentil salad (cook and drain a bag of lentils – <$1 -; sautee onion, garlic, carrot, celery; dump the sautee into lentils and mix. Put some in a bowl, squeeze a good deal of lime/lemon over it, add a whole lot of fresh chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and you’re good to go.
Lentils are the food to eat when you’re broke. They are ridiculously versatile and dirt cheap, loaded full of fiber and protein, and they take up whatever flavors you put on them. Make them in the above form (cooked with sauteed flavoring components) into burgers with egg, bread crumbs, and whatever spices you like. Chipotle en adobo is fantastic. I store them in a ziplock gallon bag, taking what I need for warm lentil salad, lentil burgers, etc. from the bag.
So, I can also do baked potatoes, topped with some sweet and sour cabbage and a bit of butter for a hot tasty lunch with warm lentil salad on the side… Then there’s pumpkin soup with a side of cold beet salad. And borscht. I’m not a huge traditional breakfast kind of person, so plums/pears with a slice of pumpkin bread or even a bowl of soup works for me.
But then, I purchased most of my ingredients NOT in Maryland. I would say that the problem of expensive food is local. M&M farms is located in a very developed suburb of NYC, and Rockland Bakery ships all over, supplying NYC delis and everyone else in the area. I’ve lived in MD for 3 years, and I can’t figure out why food here is so much more expensive. Peaches that are shipped literally 45 minutes from the farm to Bethesda are over a dollar a pound. There’s no reason for that. I just got these beautiful dark skinned Italian prune plums for $0.99 a pound (which I’m eating raw because they taste so good). Ridiculously priced food is an endemic problem. It’s idiotic that we live so close to so many farms, and yet the farmer’s market produce is just barely underselling that which we get in supermarkets.
But yeah, it is possible to eat very healthily on a nonexistant budget. It takes some thought, some adaptation of the palate, and some creativity, but to all the doubters out there, it’s possible. And we should all read Michael Pollan.