When Rep Tim Ryan took the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge, he was caught eating a pork chop.

Today I too fell off the wagon by partaking in the food at the Michigan Policy Summit.

Before I get to how I’ll make this up and the deeper lessons I draw from this, let me make on thing clear.

It was not worth it.

The Summit was at the Lansing Center, which was billed as having an “award winning kitchen.” The kitchen might be great, but the food was awful.

So I had rice with bland veggies for lunch and meatballs at the post-conference reception. And a cookie and some coffee (okay, the cookie might have been worth it).

I’m not a greedy man, so I figure this takes out 1/4 pound of rice and 1/4 bag of frozen veggies for the lunch; my remaining eggs and cheese for the meatballs; and one of my remaining 2 dollars for the cookie.  It’s not a perfect substitution, but it’s close. Besides, now that I’m out of eggs and cheese, I’m going to need more beans to get any protein in the next 2 days.

Now, for the deeper lesson: being poor is isolating.

We are a species that bond over food–what does that mean when you can’t afford it?

What does it mean when you can’t afford top go out for a bite to eat with friends? What does it mean when you can’t afford to send snacks to school with your children?

What does it say about our society that some parents have to go hungry so their kids can have a birthday cake?

The rule that you can’t accept free food is one of the more artificial ones.  If we were really on food stamps, we’d accept all the free food we could get.

But as a middle-class professional, I get more free food than I need. I would have made a pig of myself, but I probably could have made it through this week on $5 and free food, largely because I’m a middle-class professional and look the part. I get fed at professional events, and I could crash other professional events without arousing suspicion.

I never could have done that when I was working at the lumber mill in Stoughton or the bait shop in Crandon.

We live in a  society where those who don’t need free food get plenty of it and there’ s not enough for those who do. Don’t believe me? Look at how many samples are out at the Whole Foods. If you an afford to pay Whole Foods prices, you can afford to buy your own cheese cube.

I see this post is becoming less a confession and more a rambling about all the thoughts I’ve been brooding over for the last five days.

It must be the meatballs.

Dinner tonight was collards with the remaining bacon and rice flavored with a bouillon cube (the cheap ones from Dos Hermanos). It was good.

But…now things are going awry. We have used up the ground meat we bought on yesterday’s spaghetti (and took some down as burgers to a Labor Day cookout). The upside is, it’s gone–so it’s either meatless chili tomorrow, or I switch over to the later’s day menu of baked chicken legs and rice.

We’re also out of spaghetti noodles, since we bought only 1 lb., which was enough for the usual dinner and next-day lunches, but which now won’t make the 2nd spaghetti dinner we planned.

I’m not sure what the last 2 or 3 days’ dinners will be at this point. Pretty bland and boring–if I can contrive anything at all with what we bought.

I also find myself forswearing second helpings. I looked in the pot after getting one serving of rice, and there was just enough for 2 lunches, so, though I would have liked more, I stopped.

Thank goodness for the garden collards today. Perhaps I can scavenge some late-season produce from the garden for those last couple of now-question-marked dinners.

At any rate, it was an eye-opener to see how close to the line of not eating at all, or not eating well, we are at $42 if anything unexpected happens.

Several people have sent me copies of their shopping carts–you can see what their buying on Flickr.

Day 2 was definitely better than day 1–I actually brought enough food to get through the workday. Yay beans and rice.

But I’m worried about Day 3. How will I fit in time for food?

I start the day with a 7:30 a.m. Better World Breakfast, only I won’t be eating breakfast. Then I’m in meetings solid until 1:30 (including the “show and tell” brown bag lunch).

Here’s where things get cramped. I won’t have much time in the morning for oatmeal, so it will probably be PB&J for me, and we don’t have much in the lines of leftovers from tonight’s pasta and sauce, so I might be looking at PB&J for lunch too.

Not exactly a balanced meal.

And I don’t think we have enough bread to get through with making multiple sandwiches each day.

In the scope of things, it’s a minor complaint. Still, it makes me realize how much harder working life is when you can’t just hit the coffee shop, vending machine, or restaurant to tide you over when you need to dash from one thing to another.

We’re now 1 day into the Michigan Food Stamp Challenge–how is it going? How has your first day been? How are you feeling? Has anything surprised you?

Another participant in the Challenge mentioned the practice of gleaning which reminded me of this really remarkable video I saw several years ago. “Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse” came out in 2000 and on it’s most basic level it is a documentary about how people still feed themselves through gleaning despite the difficulties imposed by industrialized agriculture and the contemporary administered world in general. (The video is also about the process of creating art, of gleaning images from where ever they present themselves. The “film”-maker sets off with her hand-held video camera seeking contemporary examples of Millais’ painting “The Gleaners.”) It’s available through Netflix if nowhere else.

That wasn’t what I expected at all.

I didn’t anticipate how stressful our Food Stamp Challenge shopping trip would be.

Usually, shopping for us is a team effort. My wife Nancy and I write up our shopping lists before we head out, then when we get to the store we each take a list and go. It’s efficient. It’s cooperative. It can even be fun.

Not so today. Since we had to watch every penny and scrutinize every choice, we couldn’t just head out each with our own list. We had to do everything together, which often meant Nancy just stood around bored while I totaled up how much we had spent so far. And of course I felt more pressure knowing that she was standing there bored.

So, what normally takes us 30 minutes this time took us over an hour.

But in the end, we succeeded.

Here’s what we got:

First thing to notice is that there’s not a lot of produce there. We’ve got onions, carrots, garlic, a plantain, and a bag of apples. You know those leafy greens the health experts say you should be eating more of? Well, not this week.

Before I lay out the meal plan, let me explain the wrinkle. Nancy will be out of town for 3 days of the challenge, so her share is just $12 (4 days at $3 a day), so our total budget is $33.

Now, on to the plan:

Breakfast: oatmeal with raisins.

Oatmeal: 1.59

Raisin: 1.99

Lunch: Some lunches will be leftovers, some will be a good old PB&J.

We bought the so-called “wheat” bread, but you don’t get true whole wheat until the 3rd ingredient. It’s 30 cents more than white bread, and I guess we’re paying for the illusion of whole wheat.

For the peanut butter and jelly, we’re using the “Yipes! Stripes” strawberry jelly and peanut butter mixed together. To be honest, this stuff kind of scares me. There are no trans fats, but beyond that I think I’m better off not reading the label.

We made a mistake here, though. Initially we had planned to buy separate peanut butter and jelly. It’s cheaper in the long run, but we are maximizing short term returns here. Our mistake, we forgot to put the peanut butter and jelly back on the shelf.

Oops.

So, the PB&J will go in the box of donations for SOS Community Services.

Dinner plans, we’ve got four meals together. One of those will be split pea soup (thank you Ypsidixit for the recommendation), two will be beans and rice, and one will be pasta and sauce.

As for my meals after Nancy goes off on her trip, I’ll be bachloring it. Noodles, frozen veggies, some cheese, and whatever else is left by the end of the week.

I did give in to my caffeine habit here and bought a can of coffee on clearance for $2.09.

At the end of the trip, we spent 32.79. Because of the mistake with the peanut butter and jelly, we had to put a bag of beans and a bottle of hot sauce back.

After we subtract out the PB&J cost, the total comes to $29.91.

I plan on using some of the sugar, salt, pepper and hot sauce we already have, and maybe a pinch of cumin, probably fifty cents worth in all. We also have a half-dozen eggs to use up, another fifty cents, so let’s add a dollar to the total and round it up to $31. That gives me $2 breathing space in case I run out of food–or I might grab some popcorn with it so I’ve got something for a snack.

I feel like I’ve got my calories covered, but not necessarily my nutrition, or flavor. Also, I’m very lucky to have the time to cook beans and rice and split peas from scratch. That’s not a luxury that most low-income working families have.

Right now I’ve got nine hours before the challenge starts. Time for some wine and chocolate and fresh tomatoes–three things I won’t be getting for the next week.

Update: Just for the record, our grocery basket usually looks like this:

And what’s more, we get a share of produce from the Community Farm of Ann Arbor, so you can add this in too:

I’m looking forward to getting back.

My partner and I can’t be the only ones who are a bit… concerned, shall we say about coffee consumption during the Challenge. We’re hardly caffeine-fiends but we’re also not prepared to go cold-turkey. We’ve decided to address this portion of the Challenge with a spirit of celebration rather than privation. This week, we dusted off the old stove-top espresso pot we picked up at the Kiwanis a couple years ago. (Not the fancy electric kind with the milk-froth attachment, it’s the kind an Italian grandmother would have.) Our experiments indicate that we can make a shot of espresso for both of us in this pot. When the cup is filled with warm milk, maybe a spoonful of sugar, the result is… YUM! We may never go back to plain coffee.

Our calculations as to the cost, roughly 25 cents a cup, makes it a tolerable luxury:

- 1/2 oz of coffee makes 2 cups of espresso; the cheapest coffee at the Food Co-op (where the Justice is already roasted in the bean) is roughly $6.99/pound and this would make 64 servings or roughly 11 cents per cup for the coffee;

- 1/2 cup milk for each cup; a gallon holds 16 cups; a gallon of skimmed milk costs roughly $3.20 or roughly 10 cents for the milk;

- Since math isn’t my native language, I’m not going to figure out the exact cost per tablespoon of sugar but I really hope it’s not more than 4 cents.

WE’RE PARTICIPATING in the Sept. 4-10 Michigan Food Stamp Challenge, which asks people to live on $21 dollars a week (like food stamp participants), to raise awareness of the challenges faced by food stamp participants in light of proposed cuts to the food stamp program.

OK. Here’s what we bought for the coming week, with prices:

2 lbs. chicken legs, Dos Hermanos: $2.49
2.89 lbs. ground beef, $11.36
12 oz. bacon, $2.59
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes, $.99
1 bag curry powder, $.99
1 bag cayenne, $.99
1 box chicken bouillon, $.89
1 1-lb. box spaghetti, $.89
1 1-lb. bag split peas, $.89
1 2-lb. bag brown rice, $.99
1 1-lb. bag black beans, $.89
1 1-lb. bag lentils, $.89

Total: $24.95 thus far. We planned on not spending the total $42 so that there would be some cash for extra food expenditures. So right now, we have $17.05 for extras. So far, so good. Looking forward to the Food Stamp Challenge (thankfully, it’s AFTER the bratwurst-o-thon my family and I are planning for Labor Day!

Next week’s menu:

1. Split pea soup with a little bacon, bread (no butter!) on the side (start with a bang!–I love split pea soup)

2. Spaghetti with tomato sauce (mostly from garden)and a touch of ground beef

3. Collard greens (from garden) cooked with a little bacon, lentil-brown rice mixture flavored with a bouillon cube on the side

4. Chili with beans and remaining ground beef–cayenne to purchase

5. Curried (curry to purchase) lentil sauce with carrots (from garden) over brown rice with tomatoes on the side (from garden)

6. Baked chicken legs with rice flavored with drippin’s

7. Rest of package of spaghetti with sauce and, if any is left, meat.

Six people comprise our household. Two of us are consciously participating in the challenge; one is specifically NOT participating and the others are sort of passive participants. We’ve had to modify the “Rules” a bit to fit our household.

My partner and I are the enthusiastic participants. We’ve always been rather frugal but I’m especially curious if we can really live within the limitations set by the food stamp program. I’m over six foot tall and over 300 pounds and I work a job that isn’t entirely done sitting at a desk. I also know that I eat when I’m tired or when I’m lonely. The phrase “comfort food” to me is redundant. So it’ll be a real test. Normally at this time of year, we’d be eating mostly out of our garden: basil for pesto, tomatoes for sauce and salad, eggplant for mousaka and babaganoush and parmesana, summer squash for pan sauteeing, hot peppers to add life to everything, etc. We consider our “kitchen garden” to be a political-spiritual practice that reminds us that food is not essentially merchandise. We have decided to eat from our garden during challenge week but to keep a tally of what we consume.

The three “passive participants” are our daughter, our son and his fiancé who share daily meals with us but who haven’t specifically agreed to participate. Their participation in the challenge is that the meals we serve will fit within the $1/meal guidelines, but if they’re still hungry or aren’t interested in what’s served, they will have free access to a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, or for that matter any of the items in our cupboard or pantry. Seems fair. These are the ground rules of our dinner table already because my partner and I tend to eat a slightly more radical diet than what our children prefer. (Our attempts to convert to pure vegetarianism, for instance, have been greeted with near mutiny.) Accounting for this kind of participation during the Challenge is a trouble, though. We need to budget as if they are full participants, that is, to spend $1 for each of their meals, but if they choose not to eat what we’ve made, we’ll either end up with leftovers or portions that don’t truly reflect the restrictions imposed by food stamps. It’s another thing we’ll have to keep an eye on.

The one member of our household who is specifically NOT participating is our grand-daughter. She is on formula and though we use as many coupons as we can scavenge, there is no way that she can eat for $1/ meal and we feel it would be immoral to try. I also realize that if our household actually did qualify for food stamps, that our grand daughter would likely qualify for WIC coverage, but that program isn’t in jeopardy at this point.

A week isn’t TOO long. We shouldn’t have much of a mutiny.