Sept. 4-10, 2007, A Project of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice

Your efforts are getting attention and raising awareness about this issue!  Today we had an excellent article in the Ann Arbor News and the Detroit News. We’ve been on Michigan Radio, WCBN Radio, and on Friday at noon we’ll be on the Lynn Rivers’ Show on WEMU. We’ve also had press inquiries or interviews from Channel 5 in Saginaw, WWJ News Radio in Detroit, the Jackson Citizen-Patriot, and the Manchester Enterprise. Thank you for making all this happen!

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.

With reference to the Food Stamp Challenge, the Washtenaw County MSU Extension Family Nutrition Program works with low-income county residents on a daily basis to assist them in building knowledge and skills with nutrition and food preparation. The challenge of course, is to teach them to maintain a healthy diet on a very restricted budget. As many are about to discover this is no easy task.

We would like to offer our support for this effort including assistance with educational materials that will help those participating to understand the challenge low-income residents face each day as they make choices for themselves and their families.

For assistance please contact:

Joan Miller, Extension Educator

Washtenaw County MSU Extension Food, Nutrition, and Health and Family Nutrition Program

705 N. Zeeb Road

Ann Arbor, MI 48103

734-222-3956

mill1108@msu.edu

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?

People in many religious traditions say a prayer before meals and I’m curious if any of us are modifying our table prayers especially for this week. I can see how it might be appropriate since we’re “raising our consciousness” about how poverty and public policy collide on a very personal and practical level (I mean, what’s more personal than what’s in your belly?) I don’t want to start a religious debate here but heck, we’re sharing recipes, why shouldn’t we also be sharing our prayers?

Since I’m a protestant follower of Christ, I believe that the church is the body of Christ at least until Christ’s return. This means that it’s up to believers to express and establish the peace and the love and justice of the Christ. So I think I’m going to say something like “Help us remember those whose hunger is not satisfied when we leave this table and help us to work your loving presence throughout Creation on their behalf.”

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.