Every time I talk about the Food Stamp Challenge, somebody asks me for the exceptions. What about their garden? What about their spice rack? What about coffee hour at their congregation.
These “what ifs” are a great chance to consider what it’s like for people on food stamps. So, rather than lay down a strict law about what is allowed and what is not, I’d rather you consider for yourself what’s appropriate and what isn’t and how that impacts your decision.
Here are some ways people are adapting the Challenge:
- Put a value on the food you already have in the house. If you have a few bananas around on Sept. 4, you don’t have to let them go bad. You can figure out what they would cost and put that into your budget.
- Find Free Food. I know the rules say you shouldn’t do this, but in truth many people on food stamps depend on finding ways to get some free food, whether that’s refreshments after church or samples at the super market.
- Use your garden. If you have a garden, that can be a source of some goodies, and some people on food stamps have access to a garden.
- Consider what it means when you bend the rules. If you have to bend the rules, take a moment to consider what that means. If it’s too hard for you for one week, what does that mean for people who face this every day? What ways do you have access to resources that people on food stamps don’t?
These are a few ideas. Feel free to share your thought about what’s appropriate–and what isn’t, as you take the Challenge.
15 comments ↓
For me, I plan to be strict about this. No food from my garden. I’ll buy my spices for the week. I’ll donate my weekly shipment of produce from to SOS Community Service.
I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
I want to suggest a simpler version of the Food Stamp Chalenge
Instead of one week $3 per day, (what most people won’t even try to do)
I think many more will try my version of it:
Try spending as low as you can per day (including food that you bought
before) and see
1. how close you can get to the $3 and
2. how many days the $21 last for you.
This is more doable, and still very convincing.
Tamar
Pardon me as I mount my soapbox, but my household and I will PROUDLY be eating from our garden during challenge week, no sense of “cheating” at all. I consider a backyard vegetable garden to be a political practice.
But for those without backyards, what about sprouting some beans in a Mason jar. They cost pennies, should be ready to eat by the end of Challenge week and they taste great in a salad or Egg Foo Yung… We’ve keep a row of several jars in different stages by our sink and rinse them in water every time we think about it.
Great idea, Tamar. I for one am looking forward to a strict week at $21 and then a big feast at the end. I look forward to hearing how your plan goes.
I would be interested in exactly what people will be eating for the week.
Low cost, healthy menus would be a help to everyone. The money we save could go towards all our special causes.
Great Idea, Toni, I’ve heard others have that same interest.
I’ll start a thread just about recipe sharing and I’ll encourage folks to add their recipes to it.
In the meantime, another challenge-take, Jim Leach, recommended this website as a source of recipes.
http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/
I tried to lessen the blow and persuade my son to do this by telling him that we could supplement our week’s groceries with prizes that I’ve won from cooking contests, such as rice or couscous or sausages. Very astutely — being 16, he is 1000 times smarter than mom and would be the first to say so! — he told me that anyone on a food stamp budget wouldn’t have the expendable income to tinker with recipes and win those things, so he was ready to participate and adamant that any winnings are forbidden! I’m very proud, and have already started researching how to maximize the dollars; impulse buying is a luxury that will not be an option, and every penny will have to be carefully allotted. With no garden space, we will be doing a strict $21/person … an amount that the average 16-year-old boy can normally eat in 2 days!
I’m impressed, Mary, with both your son’s insistence on a clean challenge AND on you and your son’s willingness to try this with a 16-year-old boy in the house.
When I started talking about the challenge with Joan Doughty of the Community Action Network, she talked about how hard summer is for families on food stamps because there are no more school lunches–all the more so when those school lunches would have fed teenage boys!
I’ve found some very inexpensive recipes on the Vegweb site, http://www.vegweb.com, by doing a search for “cheap”, and/or “student”, and I’ll have to post them.
Since deciding to sign up for this, when I’ve gone to the grocery store, I’ve really started to think about what I’ll have for that week, and what will fit into the budget and what kinds of trade-offs I’ll have to make. For example, do I really need to spend around $3 on a can of coffee, and if I do, what other item will get squeezed out?
I do have a question about how to figure out what costs to include. If I purchase a container of quick cooking oats for $1, and eat one serving of that each morning for the 7 days, do I include the whole $1 in the $21 limit, or do I figure what proportion of the container I’ve eaten? For example, for the $1 container, I think it provides 13 servings of 1/2 cup each. So, do I take $1 and divide by 13 and then multiply by 7? If this is the case, the proportion that I’ve eaten would be 54 cents. Is it acceptable to do it this way, or is this considered a way of bending the rules? Is this my inner “Excel junkie” working overtime?
Ahh, yes, this is a common question. I think it’s perfectly OK to plan out how much you will actually eat in a week
So to simplify your oatmeal question, if you plant to eat half a box of oatmeal, I think it’s fine to just charge yourself for that.
Of course, one of the challenges that low-income families face is that they don’t always have money to stock up. So, while it might be cheaper to buy the super-big size, they might only have enough in their wallet for the single-serving size. It’s more expensive to be poor that rich.
What a great discussion, and the project hasn’t even started! I think the gentleman who suggested bean sprouts had a great idea. Nutritious fresh veggies sprouted on your kitchen counter.
I am planning a raw food diet, so I figure on relying heavily on sprouting. But I’m thinking I won’t be able to
afford any juice. I would usually do that.
Juice and other beverages, other than water, are out, here, too. Haven’t decided what to do about coffee, though; it would be a big chunk of $42. Might do tea for a week.
Is there a plan for a bunch of us to go grocery shopping together in order to buy the week’s worth of food while reporters tag along to see exactly how LITTLE one can buy with $21? It think it could generate some great press coverage. If so, let us know where and when to meet.
Ypsidixit, in regards to tea, I don’t know if it’s still on sale, but last week, Kroger’s had 100ct boxes of green tea for $2.50. Since we’re allowed to figure the cost on what we actually consume, (rather than an entire package, etc), I’ll allocate about 15 cents a day to tea, since I usually drink about 6 cups a day.
When I think about whether I want to spend any of my $21 on coffee, I’m really torn. On the one hand, with such limited funds, I really want to focus on nutritional necessities (fruits, veggies, grains, legumes). I know I can do fine without desserts/sugar, no problem there. However, when it comes to doing without coffee, that could be really quite ugly. Coffee technically is not a necessity, but I’m just so used to it for normal functioning, so I’ll probably have to squeeze it into the budget somehow. If I just stick to oatmeal & orange juice for breakfast, there should be some wiggle room, because I’ve calculated the cost of 1 serving of orange juice & 1 serving of oatmeal comes out to about 35 cents (the orange juice accounts for most of that cost).
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