Thu 16 Apr 2009 1:51 pm
Financially, food has always been my great luxury. My kitchen table came free from a friend and my 15-year-old couch was a gift from my grandmother; I get my clothes at consignment shops and most of my books at libraries… and yet I also jumped last week at the chance to order two jars of wonderful $14 marmalade.
I’ve also always known I need to spend less on food, and I certainly know ways to eat frugally and still eat well. So I was glad at the invitation to join United Way of King County’s ”Hunger Challenge,” asking participants to eat for five days on $7 per day, the maximum food stamp benefit for an individual. The challenge starts April 20, and individuals are encouraged to sign up here and share your experiences on the United Way blog. Several other bloggers will be joining in and sharing stories, including Cook and Eat, Family Friendly Food, Foodista, and GastroGnome.
Food is an uncomfortable locus for me in this way because I eat so often from desire instead of need. Food is my vocation as well as my avocation, it’s a universal necessity that — for those who can afford it — also easily tips into extravagance, and it’s also an area where cheap often means unhealthy. I don’t want to be a voyeur in the challenge, pretending I know what it’s like to be truly hungry — but I also, like so many others who have been laid off or lost a reliable paycheck this year, need to seriously cut my budget. United Way says the challenge “is really an exercise of empathy—to live in someone else’s shoes for one week and learn how you can help fight hunger in our community.” I’m up for that, even if I’m still lucky (or foolish) enough to have bought a bunch of fresh spring asparagus yesterday without thinking too hard about it.
I have some vague thoughts for recipes, mostly involving my favorite bulk bin dishes, stews like this ultra-cheap and ultra-good Spareribs With Daikon, perhaps fresh pasta, and scoring my vegetables from Ranch 99 or HT Market, where they always run cheaper. But I think I’ll start by seeing how many of my ideals I can hold onto, seeing if it’s possible to keep the things I’m least willing to give up. I want to keep buying Fresh Breeze milk for my kids. I won’t compromise on getting cage-free eggs, and I’d sure like them to be Certified Humane if they’re not from a farm I trust. I don’t always buy organic, but I do when it comes to potatoes and “dirty dozen” fruits like strawberries. Tune in Monday to see how I do, and feel free to share recipes and tips — or to join in yourself.
Thanks so much for the post and for your support Rebekeh!
I think food bloggers are a great group to take this challenge, because like you said, food for you is a great luxury that you don’t mind spending money on.
I’m excited to see how next week goes and you can bet I’ll be reading all about it :)
I hope your other readers decide to take the challenge as well to raise awareness around this important cause :D
Rebekah,
Thanks for writing a story about this challenge, otherwise I would have never known about it. After reading, I took a deep breath, followed your links, read a little more and signed up.
For me, the most challenging part of the posted rules for the $7 a day challenge is to “not eat anything you already have” - but it makes sense. Currently I have enough canned food, food in the freezer, kale and other overwintered produce in the garden to easily get through 5 days. Obviously, to really feel the impact of having only $5 a day to spend on food, I need to start from scratch. My strategy will be to write up a five day menu plan (menu planning is something I never do, I buy whatever I am in the mood for when the mood strikes me), allot $30 for one grocery run to buy the ingredients for the five days, and keep $5 set aside for emergency funds. I have a feeling I will be buying small portions of various foods from the bulk bins, yet even with that, I know I will eat a lot of the same food for five days. I hope other folks post menu plans on their blogs before Sunday so I can steal a few strategies!
Thanks again, Rebekah, this should prove as humbling as it is challenging. I always said I wasn’t smart or clever enough to survive being poor, and this 5 day challenge will undoubtedly serve to put an exclamation point on that understanding.
Jane, thank you so much. I hope you’ll share your menus too. I agree on the difficulty of passing over the garden/freezer supplies, and now I’m wondering — what about Costco? I can buy cheaply there, but it took an up-front investment that cost more than the challenge’s entire food budget to become a member. And my husband asks, what about the pricey kitchen equipment we own — is that cheating? Pasta is cheap, but pasta machines are not (ours was a wedding gift, but still.) How about my most treasured appliance, the KitchenAid (housewarming gift, ditto)? Figuring out the spirit of this might be as hard as the letter. Glad you’ll be there with me.
Hm, just a quick comment — sorry for misspelling your name!
I think that each individual will be choosing how they decide to follow the rules for the challenge.
The most important part is really just to raise awareness around the issue. Ultimately, we want people to come away from the week with a better understanding and hopefully an urge to give time or money for the cause.
Thanks again for your post (and your tweet!)!
Vegetarian pasta dinners are great cheap meals. Here’s my favorite: Angel hair pasta tossed with chopped tomatoes, fresh basil, lots of garlic, olive oil, salt-pepper and some kind of cheese (feta, goat cheese or fresh mozzarella). Serve with cheap but flavorful red wine.
I’m on foodstamps and I think this challenge is interesting. I don’t agree with two of their rules:
“Don’t use food you already own.
Don’t accept food from family, friends, coworkers and others. Not even the free samples from Costco!”
When I went on foodstamps, I did have basics in the house. I understand the restriction for the reasons listed by commenters (don’t use that 20 pounds of frozen chicken), but it’s a little unrealistic to not allow oils, spices, flour, sugar, etc.
I understand the purity of not taking food from anyone for this exercise, but fyi: people on foodstamps are very happy to take food. And yes, I hit the samples at the stores any time they’re available. It’s called “appetizers”.
I do agree with some of the thoughts at the bottom of the United Way page. I’m lucky, I know how to cook, I have a car. I can hunt down bargains and know how to prepare foods from scratch. How do people who don’t know how to cook deal with this? What about people who live in areas with crappy stores, whose best choice may actually be the more expensive, less nutritious packaged foods?
One other comment I’ve seen on this and Nancy’s blog - people are asking about food from Costco. They’re also talking about Asian markets. I’d like to propose that if you really want to do this challenge, only shop at places that actually accept food stamps. That means most mainstream supermarkets, not the farmer’s markets, small Asian markets, and (I’m not sure about this), but perhaps not Costco. I mean, if you’re going to do the challenge, it seems a bit of a cheat to shop where food stamp users can’t, doesn’t it?
And as for contemplating using your fancy kitchen equipment - that goes to an errant supposition that only poor people without fancy kitchen equipment are on food stamps. Wrong! There are people of all (former) income levels using food banks and food stamps. It isn’t just the traditionally poor any more. Make your own decision about using your kitchen tools, but please don’t assume anything about today’s food stamp users. I use my Kitchen Aid, Le Creuset and Sabatier knives to make my cheap meals. Again, I’m fortunate to have that equipment, and it reminds me of the pleasure I get from cooking. Just because there’s lentils instead of lamb in the pot doesn’t make it less fun to stir.
kw, good points, especially on stores that don’t take food stamps. I also wish the challenge let us use food that we grow — gardens can be expensive, but a lot of the cost is up-front, and I didn’t pay anything for the rhubarb and sorrel and herbs I have in the yard right now. On equipment, I was thinking of cost basis more than stereotypes– if the idea is not to use any food we already own, is it fair to use an expensive appliance we already own? — but, yeah, it seems sort of silly. Thank you.
Rebekah, I agree on the use of produce from your garden. I’ve started veggies from seed, and have herbs that I overwintered outside. I love to step out onto the porch and nip off some bay leaves and rosemary to make that lentil soup more savory.
Maybe an accomodation is to check to see if what you grow is available in a store and use that store-bought cost in your calculations. Why waste good homegrown food? As long as you utilize the store-bought cost, don’t you think you’d still be in the spirit of the exercise?
As for the equipment - I say go for it! You can represent for the upper management folk who have lost their jobs - a growing sector of food stamp and food pantry users. I’ll be curious to see what you make. What great homemade pasta can you make for a dollar a portion?
Rebekah,
What an interesting challenge. I also just finished reading your article on the Wooly Pig — definitely not something that goes with this challenge. A great article! Did you get to try some?
I share many of your points of views about food. Even when I was a student working 3 jobs I always bought good food, and too much of it. I’m going to participate in the challenge believing I can do it, although my current lifestyle might be different than those relying on stamps. I know I’m lucky I can afford good food. In a way I also buy the healthier, better, more expensive food to support the people who make the extra effort producing it, and wanting to believe that the more people buy the good stuff it might cost less in the future and more people will be able to buy organic, local, etc as well. Am I naive?
The challenge hasn’t even started yet and I am already learning what I suspected would be true - living in poverty is a lot of work and having variety in one’s diet is expensive. I decided to go to my local (Rainier Beach) Safeway this morning to see what was on sale and ended up spending about half of my $35 budget. I found myself doing all kinds of strange things in the grocery store, starting with counting (COUNTING!) the slices of bread in a loaf to see if I had enough slices to make sandwiches to take with me to work for lunch for five days. Since the cheaper loaves of bread were brands unfamiliar to me, I read the ingredient listings - and was sad but not surprised to see high fructose corn syrup in every loaf, in one loaf making up the third weightiest ingredient. I found myself contemplating purchases I would have never considered. “Total” cereal was $1.50 a box, and even though I don’t usually eat cold cereal, skim milk was also on sale, so it seemed like a box would suffice for a week of cheap, vitamin fortified breakfast with a sliced banana. I bought a sack of (non-organic) carrots, 2 potatoes, 2 sweet onions, and 6 bananas. Normally I would buy organic carrots, onions and potatoes at the Farmer’s Market, but I knew I couldn’t beat the price of 69 cents for a sack of carrots and 59 cents a pound for sweet onions, 60 cents for potatoes, and 60 cents a pound for bananas. I think Trader Joe’s is my next stop for some bulk coffee beans, unless people have ideas for a cheaper source.
I made up a Monday through Friday breakfast, lunch and dinner calendar. I’m planning on having cereal, bananas and milk for every breakfast and sandwiches for every lunch. I haven’t figured out what’s going in the sandwiches, or what’s for dinner each night. I need to do more planning before I buy protein for the week. I am thinking about getting a small tub of peanut butter from the co-op, a whole chicken and six eggs. I am not able to eat dried beans or lentils, darn it, or I would buy those for soups and stews. Pasta will figure into my dinner plans somewhere, maybe a polenta dish since I can buy both of those carbs in small quantities from the co-op. I also need to figure out how to buy some oil, possibly canned tomatoes, and perhaps a fat that can be spread like yogurt or mayo if I am going to have anything except PB&J sandwiches. It’s adding up….
Rebekah, I hope you share your ideas…
Jane, you’re already ahead of me. I’m leaving too much of the planning day-by-day. For breakfast, I’m lucky in that we already eat oatmeal, so I’m just planning to continue that, but to buy the bulk supplies instead of the packaged Bob’s Red Mill. I’m planning to bake bread — the recipe I ran for “Robin’s Bread” in the no-knead post should work, if I leave out the sunflower seeds, and it makes three loaves and lasts well. But, of course, I better do that tomorrow if I want bread for Monday. Trader Joe’s has good deals on vegetables. They’re not always the freshest, but the bags of cleaned and cut collard greens always last me a whle, and I have a good recipe that uses them with rice and beans. Lunches will be tough: I’m most likely going for peanut butter sandwiches too. I usually send my husband to work with a turkey sandwich, but I don’t see any way to make that one work.
For oil, I have been assuming I could amortize the cost and still be in the rules — that is, I could account for the 25 cents worth of oil I’m using, not the $8 the entire bottle cost. If not, back to the bulk bins.
Trader Joe’s is a Godsend with their prices about 30% less than regular stores. You can get your peanut butter for under $2.00/jar, many veggies for cheap, and the sliced ham for sandwiches is about $2.50 for an 8 oz package. Good cheddar is as low as $6.00/pound. Pasta is around a dollar a package, and pasta sauce is about $3.00/jar. Eggs are cheaper than a regular store - $2.00 for a dozen jumbo, and their regular whole wheat bread is $3.00/loaf.
All their dairy items are less than regular stores - yogurt, sour cream, milk, as is their butter….. I used TJ’s before I went on foodstamps, and they’re saving my life now that I’m on this budget. I always shop their first, then fill in meats and veggies at other stores.
Wow, there’s a lot of great comments about the Hunger Challenge!
Speaking as someone from United Way of King County, I recognize that the Hunger Challenge is not perfect. It’s not here to emulate exactly what it’s like to live on a limited food budget because that would be impossible.
As Rebekah writes on her post, it’s an exercise in empathy. We want the community to talk about the problem that is hunger and ways that we can come together and fix it. We want people to realize that life is tough if you don’t have freedom to eat whatever you like.
I highly encourage everyone to take the Hunger Challenge or visit our website to see ways you can engage in Hunger Action Week.
The whole point is to raise awareness and bring the community together. How you decide to interpret the rules or take the challenge is up to you!
Again, good luck Rebekah!
Day One/Meal One of the Hunger Challenge is, well, under my belt. The impact of the Hunger Challenge is already kicking in with the very low level feeling of panic I had this morning. As planned, it was a bowl of cold, inexpensive “on sale” cereal (not my preferred organic brand), milk and a sliced banana. What was the impact? I don’t usually even EAT breakfast, but I found mayself wondering if a bowl of cereal would be enough to fill me up until lunch time, and if the planned single PB&J sandwich would be enough food to last me until dinner time.
I grew up in a family where food was abundant, and it is amazing how quickly the Hunger Challenge is helping me better understand why my partner (who grew up without plentiful food in his childhood years) gets so miffed if food spoils before we eat it. It’s dawning on me that he spent his formative years knowing that if food goes to waste, a family member may go hungry. An unexpected benefit to taking the Hunger Challenge is better understanding for my beloved man. Before this morning, I could never really understand why my easy going guy would get so perturbed over a half empty tub of spoiled cottage cheese.
It turns out that the shopping trip to Safeway on Saturday was all the planning I did for the week. I never did figure out how to manage this week’s dinners - that will have to happen after work today. I do wonder if I have what it takes to get through 5 days of this challenge. I chose to spend all day Sunday readying our new Pea Patch plot for planting, and did not spend the time I needed to clip coupons and shop for protein for the week. I don’t wanna spend the time needed to plan and cook so carefully on such a small budget she said whining. Gee,ya think? As if anyone wants to spend their time that way!
Rebekah and KW, I want to thank you for your many helpful suggestions - you can bet I’ll head for Trader Joe’s for a jar of peanut butter, eggs and a whole chicken, and I like the idea of amortizing the cost of oil instead of buying a small quantity.
I am hopeful you nad others will continue to post on “Eat All About It” as the week progresses.
Jane, I so appreciate your thoughts and perspective. I also grew up in a family where food was not only abundant but a sign of love — when I was younger, it was my mother’s home cooking, and when I was a teenager I think I got my bad/enjoyable habit of habitually eating at restaurants because I so often met my father for dinner at one of the casual restaurants near his office at UC Berkeley, before he went back to work late and I went back to my after-school job or to homework. I don’t remember ever having to worry about how much my food cost.
One thing I’ve noticed since the P-I shut down is that I am suddenly more careful with saving leftovers and not wasting food –e.g., instead of giving the kids full glasses of milk to be ignored or knocked over; I’m giving them a half or quarter-glass at a time, and refilling if needed. I’m also reading an advance copy of Michael Perry’s book “Coop” right now, and am struck by his discussion of how his mother managed to feed a house full of kids on a tight budget without letting them realize how tough they had it. He talked about a weekly “treat” of popcorn for dinner, and of his mom’s habit of spooning spilled milk back into cups!
I think you’re off to a great start. I’ll post on my day tonight, but I will say that I tripped myself up twice already — once by not making bread in time, and staying up until 1 a.m. to get a loaf out of the oven, and the next time by finding an egg that didn’t look right to me and tossing a batch of scrambled eggs (a batch I hadn’t planned on making in the first place.)
Please keep posting, and I hope you share those comments on the United Way blog too.
Rebekah,
First of all, you rock for making bread! Up until 1am baking bread? Did it remind you of being up with a baby you couldn’t quite get to go to sleep yet? I have visions of making a simple herb focaccia, but it hasn’t happened yet. The week is still young I tell myself…
In fact, day one is over, and I am astounded how much I’ve learned in 24 hours:
#1) I am suddenly able to empathize with my partner’s perspective on spoiled and wasted food. Up until now, I thought he was being uncharacteristically and needlessly cranky whenever we found a science project in the fridge, or left some of the garden produce hanging on the vine. Yes, the purpose of this challenge is to gain empathy - but I had no idea that meant within my own household. I am as humbled and chagrined as I am surprised.
#2) Second shock of the day? I ate a significantly healthier diet today than I typically do. How can that be? For starters - I ate breakfast and I ate lunch. Usually I skip breakfast, but this morning I ate a bowl of cheerios with sliced bananas and skim milk. I also ate lunch. I often skip lunch, too, because I get busy at work and don’t notice I am hungry, then I (unhealthily) make up for not eating all day by eating at night - the worst time of day to eat a day’s worth of calories. Before I left home this morning I packed two PB&J sandwiches on wheat bread and a little bag of cut up carrots and celery sticks, with a thermos 2/3rds full of ice water and 1/3 full of lemonade. Not very creative, but darn tasty. I ate one sandwich a little before noon and another just before 3pm. It felt like being on a picnic all day…and the planning was obviously inspired by knowing I had a limited amount of food to eat so I best spread the portions over the whole day.
3) I had a late meeting tonight and got home a little beore 8pm. Dinner was super easy. Slices roast chicken, “mashed potatoes” (a boiled russet potato smashed up with cottage cheese since I didn’t buy any butter, cream or sour cream for the week), and a big helping of cooked frozen petite peas (the potatoes, cottage cheese and peas were all on sale). I saved the water from cooking the potatoes and peas to make soup later in the week. For dessert - a gigantic mug of hot lemonade - same ratio as before - 2/3rds water, 1/3 lemonade.
4) Other new experience of the day? I finally ventured into the SAARS grocery store that took over the building that the QFC used to occupy at Henderson and Rainier. It was quite an experience - it was way better than I had imagined it would be - far better than the Grocery Outlet at MLK and Union. I found some great sale items in there - and other items were just as expensive as any other grocery store. Very few organic items, lots of aisles of ethnic foods. I wish I could find Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea on sale somewhere…
That’s it for today. I am taking this day by day, but with Day One done, 20% of the challenge behind me, and feeling much better than I usually do at 10pm, I am up for another day of it. I may not post tomorrow - we are going to the Seattle Arts and Lecture Poetry Series tomorrow night, but I will be back later in the week. I fully expect to “fall of the wagon” at some point during the week…but maybe I will ride it all the way through. We’ll see.
I’m looking forward to your posts, Rebekah, and others! Do tell me how you are managing and what’s cooking at your house!