So, bloggers use the words EPIC and FAIL a lot. I think it is on the blogger handbook. Well, let me tell you, nothing is more
appropriate than those two words for my food stamp challenge. It was a big, fat, epic fail. I did not pull off eating only $15 worth of food in five whole days.
The week started well. I went shopping, bought ethnic foods and generic brands. I purchased bananas and a huge bag of apples on sale. The big container of oatmeal I purchased broke down to 30 cents a serving.
I made Spanish rice. There is absolutely nothing Spanish about this dish except the rice I used was Goya brand. My mom used to make it when I was a kid; brown up some beef (and drain off as much fast as possible) and a few striped of chopped bacon with a two cloves of garlic and onion. Add a diced pepper, a can of stewed tomatoes, a cup of rice, paprika, chill powder and oregano and there you have it…Spanish Rice.
I had pasta a few nights with garlic and loads of broccoli. I was feeling pretty good about myself.
Yet, work totally blew everything to hell. The new head of our office bought me lunch one day; I could not exactly throw it in the trash. Also, we have catered events almost daily. A few nights I took home a bag of salad or sandwiches. I know this is a very unique problem, but when you see platters of food literally about to me tossed in the garbage, it is hard not to take it. I felt conflicted about it for sure, but I just hate to see food go to waste when I know pasta keeps.
I could have lied about how this went, but generally I have a whole honesty thing going on here. I do think some valuable lessons were learned from last week thought; I still ate incredibly cheap breakfasts, snacks, and a handful of really cheap but healthy meals. It reminded me once again that there are pockets of really affordable food hidden in the grocer store. This experiment even brought me back to my childhood with good old Spanish Rice. Weirdly enough, I realized how lucky I am that food is literally crowding my life. I actually felt stress about eating free food. How is that for a first world problem?
So yes, this challenge was a success in many ways, but as a whole…epically unsuccessful.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
In a way you were still pretty economical about the whole thing. Spent wisely when you could and took advantage of free opportunities. So altho the challenge suffered, I smell a win.
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i think it’s great that you even opted to try it. now at least you’re that much more aware of prices and all that jazz.
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I think it was a win for you! YOU only spent $15. Free food shouldn’t be included in the challenge!!
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I sort of agree with Angela here.
Though it is a unique problem in that if someone who was using foodstamps to actually live had a job where they threw away piles of food everyday, they probably wouldn’t be on the foodstamps. But, you can bet your ass, if given the opportunity, they’d take the food.
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“There is absolutely nothing Spanish about this dish except the rice I used was Goya brand.”
I love you.
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The lesson is: it’s really hard to starve in this country.
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You get tons of kudos from me for even trying. After you mentioned it, I started to just LOOK at what I spend on food. I eat at the hospital cafeteria every day because I’m horribly lazy. And I usually don’t even look at the price because I’m swiping my little badge thingy. I was horrified, really. So it’s a win for me, because you made me start even thinking about it and considering my wastefulness.
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i agree free food shouldn’t count. that’s just an added bonus. in my book you passed with flying colors
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Eh, you tried. That’s better than most people. And so for that, you get an epic “Success!” sticker from yours truly!
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What they said about the free food; I figure the challenge is to find out how people can live on food stamps. I figure anyone on food stamps would jump at the free food, cause god knows I do.
It certainly puts you way out of the reach of EPIC FAIL.
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I fucking love Spanish Rice.
That made the entire operation a success in my mind.
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I think your evaluation sounds accurate, and I certainly applaud you for eating food that would otherwise have gone to waste. Maybe you should see if there’s a way to donate some of it if it really is a daily thing for y’all?
It’s always good to get a reality check on your spending. Maybe now you can save some on your grocery bills (more money for shopping!).
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So…would you try it again?
And I love it when our office has free food. Nothing goes to waste around here…except sometimes the extra salad dressing.
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I could never pull it off in a million years. Good for you for attempting.
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OK, confession: I always brag about keeping my groceries to under $30 a week, but I buy lunch. Every. Day. I do the “cash-only” budget, where you take out X amount of cash on Sunday and that’s all you have all week… but I also carry my Visa with me everywhere.
In short, I understand your epic fail, for I experience it every week.
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Oh, free food totally doesn’t count. If you were actually on food stamps your benefits would not be cut if you got a food box or something from a charity. In my mind this was a total win.
p.s. I am totally trying this non-Spanish Spanish rice…I’ve never had it and feel like I should call my mom and complain that she left me in the dark about this culinary genius of a recipe.
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I’m going to flat out contradict Phil, it’s not hard to starve in this country at all. 3 to 5 million children in this country are at threat to go hungry according to the Census bureau and USDA. As a resident of PG county, I can attest that the free lunch program does ROBUST business at my children’s school, and for many of those kids, that will be the only square meal they will eat that day.
It’s not only easy to go hungry in America, it’s also very, very easy to find the resources to eat, but very poorly. Poor eating habits are endemic in poor communities and major contributors to obesity and diabetes. It’s not just bums at soup kitchens: It’s the working poor and middle class families who’ve had a medical emergency or a lay off and are suddenly destitute.
Lem- I admire you attempting to do this, and your failure isn’t really a failure. People that are hungry actually get by doing what you did: Mooching off an office lunch, grabbing a couple of extra bagels from the buffet, taking the leftovers from an event.
FWIW, my grandfather, who grew up desperately poor, mentioned that you eat A LOT of beans when money is tight.
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BH
I’m calling BS on your claim. ‘Threat to go hungry’ does not mean starve. It means that they don’t have more than a day of food in their home. That is an entirely different metric than not eating.
With the free/reduced lunch aspect, I challenge you to show any data indicating that those children do not get meals at home. Poor people know how to cook and understand that kids need to be fed.
I fully accept that financial hardships have brought greater vulnerability to middle class individuals. Recessions do that. But this is also an instance of moving costs from food to utilities, housing, transportation or other expenses. But living off of beans, rice, potatoes, carrots and sundry other items is not expensive, nor low in nutrition. It may not be pleasant, and I’m grateful that I’m not forced onto that kind of diet (my wife moreso than I), but ultimately, we need to live within our means.
On the nutrition side, it is not expensive to eat nutritiously. Beans and rice have all the protein you need. Raw produce (potatoes, tomatoes, apples, oranges, bananas, etc.) are also inexpensive. It’s prepared meals that are expensive, and these are also the prime offenders with high amounts of sugar, salt and fat.
In a nation where the bottom of the income pile is more likely to be overweight than the wealthy, claims that starvation is a problem is hard to take seriously. Poor eating habits, certainly. But that is not starvation.
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I’ll start out with your comments about hunger in America. It’s one of the most persistent, if untalked about problems. 38-ish million people in America are at threat to go hungry. That’s about an 1/8 of the total population. I’ll let people who work specifically on this qoute the data:
http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html
We are one of the wealthiest nation’s on earth. The fact that close to 40 million people struggle to feed themselves properly is well, appalling. Especially given the amount of money our federal government spends on Agriculture subsidies. I’ll grant you that I ventured into hyperbole with “starve”, but hunger in America is not something that can be waived away with a “if they’d just knuckle down and eat beans and rice, they’d be o.k.” The point of the food stamp challenge is show how hard it is to eat healthy on such a small budget. And that’s the problem, a combination of poor eating habits, heavily subsidized (mostly corn based) processed foods, and a lack of education about healthy inexpensive eating tend to compound problems for those who struggle to buy food.
Prince George’s County charges 1.75 for lunch with milk. 1.50 w/o milk.
http://www1.pgcps.org/foodandnutrition/
Because the county website is such a disaster, I can’t find the statistics on how many kids in PGCPS take advantage of free and reduced lunches. But the mere fact that folks can’t afford 7.50 a week or pack a lunch for their children should give you an accurate idea of the type of poverty that brings people to enroll in the free lunch program. Knowing how to cook and knowing your kids are hungry doesn’t mean you have food to feed them.
While I may have overstated the chances of starving in America, I think you ignore the real problem of hunger in America.
A couple of my son’s best friends struggle to eat. I know: I’ve fed them. It’s anecdotal, but still telling.
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Just wanted to chime in and say that eating potatoes and lots of root veg is not healthy…nor is any kind of limited diet. Beans are healthy, yes…but not every day.
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You have a huge conscience, and that’s why you feel guilty. I feel like this exercise can be more about raising awareness than how much you actually spent, and in that way I think it’s a big success.
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Any effort to engage in the dialogue is a success, so bravo for that. On my next trip to DC, we should do another fun budget challenge and come up with some new, inexpensive recipes (as the endless beans and rice suggestions, while well-meant, certainly don’t inspire the kitchen goddesses within).
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Even though you’re in a weird situation, I’d still consider it a success. Although not many people have access to the types of food you do, they may still have access to free food. Right now there’s a cake, honey buns, and crackers sitting on our conference room table. Yea, it’s not delicious, catered salad, but it’s still free.
Now if only someone would bring me a free bloody mary. that’s the job I want.
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One could say that taking the free stuff wherever you can get it might not have be in keeping in the spirit of the project but…it is in keeping with reality. People who don’t have enough will get it from somewhere. And the experience of not having enough, having to get it for free from somewhere by hook or crook, and the emotions (like guilt, demoralization, and inevitably anger and self-righteousness) it causes and the ways it can change a person’s personality is part of the project, I say, if the purpose has anything to do with understanding poverty.
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BH:
‘threat to go hungry’ does not equal hungry, much less starve. They are two entirely different things. ‘threat to go hungry’ is drawn from the stat ‘food insecure’ It is defined as:
“Limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe
foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable
ways.”
This paper discusses food insecurity:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsec/files/fsguide.pdf
Based on the methodology they use, I’ve been food insecure. I haven’t starved, I haven’t gone hungry (involuntarily), and my kids have not suffered nutritionally, but we have been food insecure.
So, I reiterate. Threat to go hungry does not equal hungry, much less starvation.
As far as subsidized school lunches are concerned, I don’t see a connection between starvation and qualification. Income levels are used to determine if a student qualifies for free/reduced lunches, not the level of food in their pantry.
I stay away from anecdotes because they aren’t generalizable. I do know that hunger in America is a complex problem. But, as Phil stated, starving in America is almost impossible.
And Lemmonex, I agree that just eating potatoes isn’t ideal, eating just one type of any food isn’t either. But potatoes are cheap, as are carrots, apples, etc. They are an effective starvation preventive. If you’re looking for optimal health results, that doesn’t come from an impoverished diet.
But even Belarus, which has the highest consumption of potatoes in the world (181 kg/person/year), has a life expectancy of ~70 years. Eating them won’t result in an early grave.
And I apologize for the thread jack. Back to your regular programming.
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