AfricanKelli

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Michelle, a girlfriend from my knitting guild, emailed me yesterday with this photo. This is what she was able to purchase yesterday for $16.50 by watching the food ads and using coupons.
All that food for $3 less than what I spent for my weekly diet. Can you believe that? I was so impressed. Here is what she had to say when I asked her for the details:
“It took two different stores, but that is all I spent. You definitely have to use coupons to make this worthwhile and watch the ads for specials, but I saved about $40 today and only spent $16.

2 gallons of milk
Cheerios
Raisin Bran
3 Ragu
3 Country Crock
2 Wishbone dressings
2 Best Food mayo
5 green apples
big bunch of bananas
3 Hamburger/Tuna helpers
1 4 pk of Charmin
6 pk of Ramen
I’m donating the Ragu and Wishbone, nobody in my family likes either brand, but they were free so I couldn’t pass up giving to a good cause.”

She uses CouponSense and a few other coupon web sites to make this work. Again, another reminder of how you can save money on food if you want to. And no, I’m not suggesting most people on food stamps have the time for this sort of thing, but I think it is another interesting side to the food/budget topic. Again, it is putting my $4 morning bagel habit into perspective.

~K

Last night’s dinner: spaghetti squash & sauce.

It’s only day 3 and I’ve spent too much money. I’m slightly hungry and slightly light-headed. So, this is going swimmingly. I think the biggest problem with my planning (other than the aforementioned lack of budgeted caffeine) was I didn’t account for the fact I live a very active lifestyle and I’m only eating 1,000 calories a day.
Really. I entered my little menu into Sparkpeople and it came in at a cool 914 calories. Yikes. Considering yesterday I swam 45 minutes before work and then played ultimate frisbee for 2 hours after work, I’m a bit exhausted today. Truly the only reason this week is manageable and I’m not pulling my hair out (and then possibly looking at it as a snack) is that this is only lasting 5 days. I cannot imagine how people do this every single day, with children, riding a bus to work, working for minimum wage, dealing with unsafe housing, etc. Amanda made a good point that it is essentially a luxurious attitude to say I won’t shop at Wal-Mart. In truth, if I was in a bind financially and had kids, I’d shop wherever I could make my buck stretch the most.

Shelley pointed out another great aspect of hunger. Imagine the stress this causes in any home. I’ve heard this public health story, which very may be an urban legend, that goes something like this. In Phoenix, there is an elementary school in a particularly bad part of town. Parents must come in the school office to check their kids in and return in the afternoon to sign them out. It was decided by school staff that while students weren’t showing signs of starvation, they obviously weren’t getting enough to eat at home. They would come to school very early on Mondays to eat the school breakfast — in all likelihood because they weren’t getting enough to eat during the weekend. The school nurse began making peanut butter sandwiches and handing one to each parent who came in to the school to check his/her child out for the day. Within a year, the neighborhood had dramatically lower rates of domestic violence. When they later interviewed parents about what had changed in their households, many of the moms said they fed the kids the sandwich, or they ate part of it, or they gave it to their husbands. The husband, who was less cranky after getting something to eat, was less likely to hit his wife. The wife, who was less cranky, was less likely to hit the kid. The kid, who now had a snack, was better behaved.
All from a peanut butter sandwich.

~K

Yep. I just had $2 worth of coffee and oh my, was it worth every single drop. I actually thought of licking the cup before throwing it away, I was so sad to be finished with it.
One of many lessons learned during this budget week — $.25 worth of coffee is sold for $2 at most coffee shops. You can make it stretch into two cups with skim milk and Splenda.
Now to figure out how to cut that $2 from my planned food. Or, I very well may just make the caveat that my world without caffeine is an ugly, terrible place. My name is Kelli and I’m a caffeine-aholic. For what it is worth, I am considerably nicer with coffee in my system.

I am surprised by the incredible response from this little experiment. Many of you have either used food stamps at one point in life, or know someone who has. Several of you have suggested ways I could have purchased more food; others have said I’m crazy for trying this. Agreed.

A few comments I’d like to discuss:

~ I didn’t buy my groceries from Wal-Mart because I was recently informed my habit of using my own cloth grocery bags was “slowing them down.” This came from a manager, after the clerk was very rude to me when I wanted to bag my own purchases. Fair enough. I left and haven’t returned. Other groceries are happy to meet my “let me bag my own stuff in my bags” policy with glee. I free up their baggers and they give me a $.05 credit for each bag. I may have spent more money at Fry’s, but I didn’t put more bags in a landfill.

~ This family also did a food stamp challenge. I love what they wrote in their summary after coming in under budget for the week:
Our grandparents knew how to do all this stuff, but there has been a tragic collapse in the transmission of heritage food information across generations in the United States. Classes are needed to help people learn how to plan menus, garden, preserve foods, cook meals from basic ingredients. And people need to talk to elders while they remain with us and conserve as much information as they can. Oral histories are a great way to do this.
So true! I should have called my Grandma Max before starting this. She can stretch a meal like you wouldn’t imagine. Note to self: talk to grandparents about this challenge and hear what they would have done with $20 for the week.

~Another reader mentioned the United Kingdom is now offering a program to trade food stamps for fresh fruit and veggies. Wow! I’m on day two and I have to say, I spent the majority of my budget on fruits and veggies and am still missing my normal dose.

~Want suggestions for how to cut your grocery bill and make more food from scratch? This woman has it down to a science. You’d think some of that giant budget on national security would go toward teaching Americans to cook for themselves. Self-sufficiency is a rather important form of security, don’t you think?

~Yesterday’s food included:
1 packet of instant oatmeal
1 4 ounce container of yogurt
1 hard boiled egg
1 string cheese
1 apple
1/2 cup of brown rice
1/2 cup of stewed lentils
1 cup of steamed spaghetti squash
1/2 cup of red kidney beans
1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce

I’m not hungry, but I am seriously missing my caffeine. I am about to leave for a meeting at a coffee shop and I’m pretty darn sure today’s budget is going to be wildly thrown off course while I swim blissfully in a large cafe Americano.

In Arizona, a single person earning less than $16,000 per year qualifies for $95.40 per month in food stamps. This does not include the additional 25% they are supposed to include out of their own budget to pay for groceries. The equivalent for this 5-day experiment is $19.88.

With that in mind, I headed to the grocery store yesterday. In typical fashion, I did not have any coupons. I’m lazy, although I suspect if I was living on food stamps, I might find the time to cut them out. Then again, if I was living on food stamps, I probably couldn’t have afforded the two hours I spent at the grocery, with pen, pad and calculator in hand.

As many of you suggested, buying bulk seems the cheapest. Buying healthy food is certainly expensive. A few examples: a regular baking potato — $.45. A more nutritious yam — $.92. (And that is a scrawny one. I only bought one.) White tortillas or corn tortillas are far cheaper than the whole grain ones I love. One whole grain tortilla is $.23. They didn’t make the cut. Neither did my soy milk, cottage cheese, wine or gingersnaps. Instead, I purchased:
6 eggs — $.69
1 package of string cheese — $3.99
1 can of chicken broth — $.50
1 bag of lentils — $.89
1 bag of brown rice — $1.59
1 yam — $.92
1 can of green beans — $.50
1 can of kidney beans — $.50
1 bag of carrots — $.79
5 gala apples — $1.97
1 spaghetti squash — $4.51
1 jar of spaghetti sauce — $1.27
6 containers of yogurt — $1.98
1 box of instant oatmeal — $1.87

Grand total: $21.97 Over budget: $2.09
To counter the fact I’m over budget, I’m only eating half of the rice, lentils and oatmeal I purchased. Food preparation for the week included hard boiling the eggs, steaming the rice and stewing the veggies and lentils. I’ll cook the spaghetti squash tonight. I’m already two meals into this plan and in case you are wondering, I’m not hungry. I am obsessing and wondering what I’ve gotten myself into (brown rice and lentils for lunch all week?), but I will survive.

Have you ever worked in a food bank? Volunteered at a food line for the hungry? Have you seen hunger in your community?

Off to find my apple for the day,
~K