Thoughts on the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge

(I've had food on the brain, lately, haven't I? So long as I don't start confusing brains for food, I guess it's all good!

Have you heard about this? A group of four Congresspeople --- Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, Tim Ryan from Ohio, Jan Schakowsky from Illinois, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts --- are among a number of public servants from around the country (some governors and some large cities' councilpeople have gotten in on the act too) who have decided to eat for a week on $21 a week --- the average amount a food stamp recipient gets towards groceries --- in order to publicize the difficulty of maintaining a balanced diet on such a restricted budget.

Worldchanging had an interesting post today about a blogger who's taking a different tack: eating entirely organic, or as much as humanly possible, on the USDA's "thrifty allowance," which is what food stamps are intended to bring one's grocery budget up to. I was pretty surprised to see that the "thrifty allowance" for two adults and a toddler is less than our weekly average grocery budget (it's about the same when you account for our CSA), and that includes toiletries (which are generally free with coupons anyhow), over-the-counter medicine, what-have-you. It doesn't include meals out, but those are rare these days for us (we did an eating-out-less April and have pretty much kept it up into May, though I've gone to lunch with a friend once and eaten with Nora at Whole Foods another time).

We have a few things going for us, however:

• Some weeks we're under budget by $30 or more. (Even under the rock-bottom thrifty allowance budget. These are usually weeks when the Grocery Game database has informed us that oranges, say, are five for a dollar at are local Mega Mart and we therefore buy thirty of them. Having orange skin is trendy. Don't let anyone tell you differently. (The best weeks, actually, are the ones when gigantic bags of potatoes are buy one, get one free, because then I get the staff of life several times over the course of a few weeks). Conversely, about an equal amount of the time, we're over by $30 or so. This is usually when we are out of diapers and olive oil at the same time, and no, those two things are never related, you sickos. Point is, because we're lucky enough not to be hand to mouth, we can absorb fluctuations. If we were depending on food stamps, we wouldn't, necessarily, unless we had the discipline to save our "expected contribution" from the grocery budget the weeks we went under budget and the extreme luck not to really need that money elsewhere. (Which is unlikely, given the asset eligibility limits for food stamp eligibility).


• We have the luxury of being able to shop a number of different places based on what we need and like and what the best deals are. We hit a local co-op to restock our bulk grains (millet, brown rice, oat bran, quinoa, polenta, etc.) and dried beans whenever we start running low, once every two or three months; Trader Joe's for cheap plain Greek yogurt, rice pasta, big bags of lemons and limes, and Thai noodle bowls for Phil's lunches once a month or so; Giant Eagle for Grocery Game stuff and regular shopping, and Whole Foods if we're buying meat or if we need gluten-free products we can't get elsewhere. This is an option because a.) we have a car and b.) I'm freelance, although the shopping pretty much gets done on the weekends. It would be doable but difficult if one of those were false and well nigh impossible without one or the other.
  


• Animal protein is really effing expensive. That's certainly, to me, one of the big takeaway lessons from the Congressmen's blogs. A bag of brown rice ($2.85 for a two-pound bag per NetGrocer), a couple pounds of dried beans ($1.15 for a one-pound bag, again per NetGrocer), some cornmeal ($1.43 on the Congressmen's receipts), some oatmeal ($1.85 for a 12-pack of instant oatmeal per NetGrocer), and perhaps some eggs ($1.99 on Congressman McGovern's receipt) would provide satisfying protein for a week for a total of $10.42, with a lot of other useful nutrients thrown in. Add a couple sweet potatoes (extremely nutritious, and usually very cheap), a bag of citrus fruit if it's a good deal, bananas, greens, and whatever's on super-sale in the produce department and while it's not paradise, it's sufficient nutrition. Perhaps a loaf of bread if that's your thing. There'd be no worry about whether the food would last a week, certainly. If you were doing it on a regular basis, you'd need to stockpile on a very limited scale when things were at their cheapest --- pick up two of the ten-pound bags of potatoes when they're buy one, get one free (I do so love that deal) and store them properly so that they'll last a good six weeks. And you'd need to budget a couple bucks a week for items you run out of rarely --- oil, flour, etc. This works, theoretically at least, if one-quarter to one-third of your budget isn't going to meat**. No matter how cheap a cut you buy, and no matter how well you stretch it out over a week, $10 worth of meat, unless you dig it out of the dumpster, isn't going to feed you for an entire week***. $10 worth of vegetable protein can quite possibly feed you for two.

** I have no agenda in trying to convince folks to become vegetarians. I feel that keeping one's meat consumption minimal is better for land-use reasons, and quite possibly better for one's health, but this is not a position I feel comfortable pushing, per se. There aren't many things I feel comfortable pushing people to do, actually, but this wouldn't even come close.

It would be pretty hypocritical of me, anyhow. True story: when I found out I was pregnant with Nora, I was a vegetarian, as I have been on-and-off for a while. (Since my reasons for it were never that I felt it was absolutely wrong to raise animals for food, it was pretty easy to slip back and forth). All was well for a week or so after I found out I was pregnant. Then I started to get a little queasy. Then I started to get a lot queasy. And within a few days I was hospitalized with hyperemesis gravidarum, which I had through the entire pregnancy (we figured out a way to control it about five-and-a-half months in).

There were exactly two foods I could stomach, ever, the entire time the hyperemesis was uncontrolled. Being a vegetarian with a geeky interest in nutrition at the time I got pregnant, it's only logical that those two foods were the Platonic opposite of health food and the Platonic opposite of vegetables. (Appropriately, the reason I didn't link to the obvious page on that last one is because I didn't think you'd want cheerleaders yelling "GO MEAT! GO MEAT! LET'S GO MEAT!" at you if you were at work). Ever since having Nora I find my body craves a certain amount of meat. But once a week, or twice every three weeks, is enough.

*** I can think of two potential exception: ham right after Christmas or Easter, or turkey right after Thanksgiving or Easter (or even right before, if you watch the ads). Prices can get ridiculously low on these, and turkey, especially, does freeze well.