So, this week I did something I have not done in a while: used the food bank.

I am not out of work, but my work is not economically rewarding.  And a major car repair earlier in the month, plus a major family expense means I am a bit tight on money.

But in a way it is good.  I work day in and out with people a LOT worse off than me, who use food stamps and food banks on a daily basis.  They have to rely on this food to help them make ends meet all the time.  

My food bank  (which is part of the FISH Food Bank system in Pierce County) is pretty good.  I got a nice variety of food. Oatmeal (which I will use for baking--I don't do cooked oatmeal cereal); rice; good multigrain bread.  Chicken legs.  Mushrooms.  Canned pumpkin.  Juice.  Potatoes.  Avocados.  Hamburger helper.  Canned tomatoes, canned corn, and cold cereal.  I already had some milk, and I have my garden (kale, collards, zucchini, beans, lettuce and an acorn squash), and so I bought some turkey to go on a salad and a pound of hamburger, which will provide three to four meals.

A pound of good hamburger isn't as cheap as it used to be.  Meal one is tonights dinner:  One Hamburger Patty (1/4 pound) baked with two potatoes  washed and chunked up, and a bit of onion.  Mash part of an avocodo to top the burger.  Nummy.  Normally I would throw in some carrot, but I am out.

1/2 pound will go into the hamburger helper dinner (they call for a pound, but I will use some of the mushrooms instead, which is a great way to stretch meat).  The remaining 1/4 pound is already shaped like a burger patty and in the freezer for a late in the week meal.

This is actually fairly healthy also.  And the clean up is easy.  Added benefit--if you have kids, they can help assemble the meal.  I put it all in foil and threw it in the oven in about 2 minutes.  

I have decided to start a separate blog for my Food Stamp Challenge musings.  You can find it at  http://21dollarsaweekforone.blogspot.com

Meantime, I will keep this blog as a separate spot to talk about other issues and do some creative writing that I want to share.  I hope you will follow both blogs and give me some encouragement.  I find writing is enjoyable for me.  I can only hope that some people enjoy reading what I write.

Here we go again . . .

It has been a month since I ended the first round of the Food Stamp Challenge.

I am committed to giving it another go around, starting Monday, in part because I want to see if I can eat better on my Food Stamp Budget now that the farmers markets are open.  I am also going to grow some of my food in my garden plot at church (if it ever gets dry enough to plant!)

Seeds and seedlings that provide food are things you can purchase with food stamps.  Of course, seedlings are not cheap, and either way the cost will bite into my food budget, but I am hoping that come, say, July, I have fresh produce that helps me eat healthier on my limited budget.

So, if you are new to this, we are talking about a food budget of $21 a week.  And I am curious (please post below), how much do you typically spend on groceries each week?  For how many people?  And what is a typical menu like at your house?

Please share your thoughts with me!

A return to the Food Stamp Challenge. For now.

So today I am returning to my Food Stamp Challenge.  Why?

Well, there are several reasons.  The first is obvious--you cannot really understand in 40 days what people got through for months and sometimes years.  And second, (and this may seem odd) I need the discipline and quite frankly, the financial savings. 

I don't know how long I will continue.  But the average length of time a person is on food stamps is 8-10 months.   

But also, I want to see if there are ways I can draw more attention to those in this country who are hungry, and what their real needs are.  I want to bust open some myths about people on food stamps and help bring reality back to the conversation.  I have an idea on how to do this, but I have to check some things out to see if it is workable.  If it is, I will share it with you (and hopefully a lot of other people).

And I want to see if there are resources out there that I have not previously found or talked about.

So we will play it by ear.  This will continue while it continues.

Spent $14.15 on groceries so far this week.  Black bean tacos are on the menu.  Stir-fried spinach is on the menu.  Oddly, Cream of Wheat is on the menu (there will be cinnamon and brown sugar in it).  

One thing I want to check is if any of the local farmers markets take food stamps.  Produce, when in season, can be very cheap there.  But while I love the farmers markets, I have never really paid attention to this . . . so I will be looking into that.

The Food Stamp Challenge, one week after

So, Easter has come, Easter has gone, and for a week I have been eating whatever I please.

What did I miss the most?  

Mindless eating.  I could survive on food stamps if I had to, but I  spent a lot more time planning my shopping and cooking than I have in years.  This week I have eaten chocolate, drank soda, and generally ate a ton of unhealthy crap.

I was better off when I had to plan.

I am grouchy, bloated, and I spent more on groceries and food than I had any good reason to spend.

And what did I learn?

That you CAN survive on food stamps, given the right conditions.  I have no teenagers living with me, which made it easier.  For someone like Allison, a teen boy on a special diet made this challenge much more difficult. I was willing to eat the same foods over and over, and that was okay too.  But it took a couple of hours a week to plan my meals and do the shopping.  And when produce went bad--as happened a couple of times--it wreaked havoc in my plans.

But there was never a week that I didn't struggle, particularly toward the end of the week.  And the purchase of a staple that I had run out of--such as olive oil--put a whole in my budget.  And I still don't know how people who live gluten free or dairy free (or worse, both) manage to eat something resembling healthy on $21 a week.

With the effects of The Sequester starting to trickle into the economy, I am grateful that congress in its wisdom did not include the food stamp program in the Sequester.  It is enough of a struggle to get by on food stamps without having even less to purchase food with.

You want to help kids learn, improve test scores and stay healthy?  Ensure they have enough to eat.  Keep funding for food stamps.  

I feel like there is more I need to know.  So starting Monday (because I have lunch plans today and tomorrow) I am going to go back on the food stamp challenge.  I want dig deeper, learn more, and see where and how I can help create change.  Stay tuned.  

Food Stamp Challenge and a Facebook Meme

Okay, so you HAVE to love how people read the meme's that others post on facebook and never stop to question them.

Making the rounds today . . . an internet meme thanking Florida, Kentucky and Missouri for forcing food stamp recipients to get drug testing.  It reads (in part) "It's okay to test people who work for their money, but not for those who don't?"

So let us talk about the 39 million people in this country who get food stamps but are not on TANF (cash benefits).  You know WHY they are not getting cash benefits?  Because they fall into one of three groups:

1.  Low income seniors.

2.  Children

3.  Low wage employed.

Yep, these people largely are retired, or working for a living.  And the largest employer of people who work for a living and get food stamps?  That would be WalMart.  Got to love those low, low prices.

Why do people buy into the stereotypes of the poor?  Florida tried this, and found that less than 2% of the people they tested had drugs in their system.  Several studies suggest that it is the lower middle class that have the most access to illicit drugs. And a federal study showed that the largest group of people using drugs--that would be the full time employed.  

Why, why, WHY do we continue to demonize the poor?  And why, when it happens does not one cry "class warfare"?  Suggest the rich should pay more taxes and the conservatives cry class warfare.  Suggest the poor pee in a cup to get $21 a week to buy groceries with, and it is just and fair. 

Many of my Christian friends are, like me, living through Holy Week, and I just came from one of my two favorite services of the entire year:  Easter Vigil.  And we walk through the history of God and his people, from the beauty of the Creation Story, to the terror and ugliness of the Crucifiction.

As Christians we have no right to judge (though everyone, including me, does so all the time)  But I would suggest that a Christian who is familiar with the Bible would know that God doesn't demand a drug test to offer food.  Look at Jesus and the feeding of the 5000. He didn't listen to those who told him it was crazy to try to feed so many people--he just DID it.

And honestly, it isn't like Jesus was drastically changing what God had put before us from the start . . . 

“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God.’”." Leviticus 23:22

"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land."  Deutoronomy 15:11

  

"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the Lord’s; on them he has set the world." 1 Samuel 2:8

“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will protect them from those who malign them.” Psalm 12:5

More thoughts on this after Easter Dinner.  Which, thankfully, I am not cooking.  

Good Friday and the Food Stamp Challenge

Most of my friends know that the community center I work at shares a building with a food bank.  In fact, the building was specifically built with the food bank in mind; the community center was planned, but with a less solid idea about what it would do.

This afternoon I went downstairs to the put some stuff in storage.  Our store rooms are right off the food bank, and I know many of the volunteers, so I started chatting with Barb.  Now, don't get me wrong.  ALL donations are gratefully received, and people use them.  But what is up with the tubs (like, ten of them) that are full of bubble gum?  And there is green tea--more than I could drink in a year.

The shelves of food are not bare, but they are missing some essentials.  Like tuna.

Oddly enough on the food stamp challenge, I have only used tuna a couple of times.  I like tuna, I just got hooked on black bean tacos and stir fried spinach, and so tuna moved down my list of things to eat.  

Schools hold massive food drives for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as do many other organizations.  But something happens after January.  Donations start to falter a little.  We remember the hungry during the holidays, but the rest of the year . . . well, not so much.

I went back up to my computer and used facebook to invite everyone to bring tuna to church on Easter Sunday.  I called it Loaves and Fishes day. And already four or five people have said they will help out.  Which is a start.  But the reality of it, according to Barb, is that they need 300 cans of tuna fish every time they open the doors to serve.  They go through it fast.  

First off, it's a shelf stable protein.  And you can do a lot of things with it: make a sandwich, make tuna noodle casserole or tuna with rice.  Peanut butter is the other common shelf stable protein, but most people just use it to make PB&J sandwiches.  Tuna is a bit more versatile, and fewer people are allergic to it.  Canned chicken is good for the same reasons.

But 300 cans?  Tuna used to be cheap, but the price has gone up in recent years.  In the long run this is probably good.  Tuna fishing often catches other fish, and hurts endangered populations.

But still . . . I wonder if we can get anywhere NEAR 300 cans of tuna on one Sunday?  It seems unlikely, if for no other reason than this was a spur of the moment ask--and I have no idea how many people will bring tuna.

Next week will be hard for a lot of low income families, as their kids will be on spring break and miss that free or reduced cost hot lunch.  It makes it harder for the dollars to stretch.  So please, pick up a can or ten of tuna and take it to your local food bank or church collection site.

Because kids should not have to go hungry just because school is on break.