She writes: After buying inexpensive bread, cheddar cheese on sale and a little milk on Monday, I took my son to a headache specialist yesterday and he is now on a 100% diary free for a month to see if it is causing some inflammation of the nerves around his nasal passages and thus causing or helping his headache. So, I noticed last night that the bread had milk in it, as did almost everything else I got yesterday. Who knew there was so much dairy in food!
$21 a week does NOT
work on special diets like gluten-free, dairy free and MSG-free (the three
diets my family members are on right now). Neither do food banks carry
these kinds of food, most likely because they are expensive.
Still trying to figure
out how to live healthy and full (got that teen age boy with the hollow leg) on
this amount of money...Praying for those that don't have an Easter end to their
financial problems.
She is not the first person to make this complaint to me. I hear from people who need to use the food bank, but are on special diets and find little at the food bank that meets their needs. Gluten free is (in my opinion) the worst. You have to really work hard to eat gluten free if you aren't on food stamps. Gluten hides in a variety of things. Imitation Vanilla Extract. Soda and candy. Many lunch meats and processed foods have hidden gluten in them. Instant coffee frequently has gluten in it (don't ask me why, but I suspect that it is the same reason that some soy sauces have gluten--to darken the color).
It is hard to eat healthy while on food stamps. It is harder with a teen aged boy in the house. I have never had to do this.
It is hard enough having a small child when on food stamps. My daughter doesn't remember our days using food stamps (or so she claims), but she does remember eating the same meals over and over and over again. Lots of government cheese (which you can turn into decent soup if you know how to cook).
But if you have to go dairy free, that means cheese--which is high calorie, and therefore a great way to add some much needed fuel to a teen diet--is out.
After reading Allison's email, I do a quick search online, looking for dairy free recipes that might fit into the food stamp budget. Most of what I find is lentils (always a nice choice), beans and such. These are cheap, but teen boys (actually all teens) are not fond of a study diet of these.
I did create a decent gluten free, dairy free, cheap soup this week:
Black Bean Soup for Lenten Dinner
5 cans seasoned black beans (get the gluten free variety if you can--but the regular ones are cheaper!)
1 can whole corn, drained
2 cans chopped tomatoes
Combine in a crock pot and heat through. This soup cost me less than $7 to make 14 servings for our weekly soup and bread dinner. Of course I blew through a lot of my weekly budget doing this, but the soup was healthy, cheap and tasted great! IF you have the money, you can serve a little sour cream and some tortilla chips on the side.
For some reason I have fallen heavily in love with black beans. Black bean tacos, black bean soups (I have created 3 new varieties from my hungry brain), and they are tasty. Healthy. Cheap.
But I still don't see a teen boy surviving on these meals. I have lost weight, because I am (mostly) eating fewer calories than a person of my age and height should. I have enough energy, I think, but when I am tired, I am very tired. I would guess that I am anemic, though I have no easy way of telling.
There is something else. I have skipped some meals. And because of the amount of food that shows up at work, I have not struggled the way some people would on $21 a week for groceries I have traveled to see family twice, and both times there was no way to stay on the food stamp challenge.
There are things I miss:pizza, soda, a hot dog from Costco. For some reason, I am craving meat (and I am not a huge meat eater). I want to be able to walk into Red Robin or the Old Spaghetti Factory and eat whatever I feel like.
But at the same time, I am hopeful. I hope that when I do walk into those places in the future, I will take a moment to think about those who cannot afford to eat out, who struggle to afford to eat at all. And I am contemplating continuing the food stamp challenge through the spring. I feel like the travelling and such has really given me an unfair advantage during the challenge. I feel like there is something I still need to learn or remember.
I did create a decent gluten free, dairy free, cheap soup this week:
Black Bean Soup for Lenten Dinner
5 cans seasoned black beans (get the gluten free variety if you can--but the regular ones are cheaper!)
1 can whole corn, drained
2 cans chopped tomatoes
Combine in a crock pot and heat through. This soup cost me less than $7 to make 14 servings for our weekly soup and bread dinner. Of course I blew through a lot of my weekly budget doing this, but the soup was healthy, cheap and tasted great! IF you have the money, you can serve a little sour cream and some tortilla chips on the side.
For some reason I have fallen heavily in love with black beans. Black bean tacos, black bean soups (I have created 3 new varieties from my hungry brain), and they are tasty. Healthy. Cheap.
But I still don't see a teen boy surviving on these meals. I have lost weight, because I am (mostly) eating fewer calories than a person of my age and height should. I have enough energy, I think, but when I am tired, I am very tired. I would guess that I am anemic, though I have no easy way of telling.
There is something else. I have skipped some meals. And because of the amount of food that shows up at work, I have not struggled the way some people would on $21 a week for groceries I have traveled to see family twice, and both times there was no way to stay on the food stamp challenge.
There are things I miss:pizza, soda, a hot dog from Costco. For some reason, I am craving meat (and I am not a huge meat eater). I want to be able to walk into Red Robin or the Old Spaghetti Factory and eat whatever I feel like.
But at the same time, I am hopeful. I hope that when I do walk into those places in the future, I will take a moment to think about those who cannot afford to eat out, who struggle to afford to eat at all. And I am contemplating continuing the food stamp challenge through the spring. I feel like the travelling and such has really given me an unfair advantage during the challenge. I feel like there is something I still need to learn or remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment