Remains of the Day

Sunday Noon

So I find I am having mixed feelings here as I finish SNAPfast.  It's been an unexpectedly intense experience, a holiday from the normal, and little bit of a quest.  Part of me doesn't want to go home to my normal routine.   Another part of me is equally happy that this over.  Its been a lot of work and a mental drain.  Luckily for me I have a choice.

The leftovers?  Two slices of bologna, most of the quart of milk, maybe half of the tomato sauce, and  2 cups of cooked beans.  All things equal, it was pretty close.

What am I going to take from this?  No single insight has been astounding, no one aspect has been life altering, and yet it does feel significant.  I'm really glad to have taken part and I certainly learned some things. 

 I do believe that it is possible to live off $28 per week, but not well.  I'm not talking living high on the hog, I'm talking basic nutrition.  I did get enough calories to sustain me, I didn't suffer deep hunger pains, I didn't have to skip a single meal.   Would I be getting a good, healthy balance of nutrients, to ensure I stayed healthy?   I doubt it.  I will admit that I think it is possible, but not practical.

If this were my budget I would not be able to cook dinner for a few friends.  Maybe I could offer them a bologna sandwich.  I would not be baking cakes.  I would not be preparing the Thanksgiving meal that most of us enjoy.  Not possible.  In fact, all the fellowship and celebrations that we enjoy that include sharing food would probably be darkened knowing that if I did use my budget for birthday candles, pumpkin pie, etc that I might not have anything left by the end of the week.

I have never intended this SNAPfast and the accompanying blog that emerged to be poltical.  I have been going for the experiential.   I hoped to open a window for myself into the daily lives of several million Pennsylvanians for whom food insecurity and nutrition are a struggle, and then I invited you to see what I was seeing.   It was illuminating fore me.

I learned that I like carrots.  I missed diet Coke.  I learned rice and beans could go a long way...a long and boring way.  I learned there are more people around me than I realized that care about these issues, and I am heartened by that.   Thanks all for your comments, your support, and your consideration of what this might mean in the bigger picture.  I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, if any.

Someone asked me if I was going to have a big brunch today to celebrate.   I decided on yogurt and some berries, and I felt really blessed.

Sexy Coffee

Saturday 6:00 AM

I woke up early this morning to the sound of singing…..an ethereal female voice keening something soft and inscrutable, but urgent.  It seemed to be coming from the front part of my apartment, so I stumbled curiously out of bed and to where my breakfast bar separates the living room and the kitchen.  The music became louder, more insistent.  I turned the corner and spied on my counter the most alluring kitchen appliance I have ever seen.  Her curvaceous pot, the proud jut of her water receptacle, and an inviting warmth emanating from her heating element all sent electric waves of desire through me.   My coffee pot was singing its siren song of forbidden and deadly pleasures.  Could I resist?

 

 

No, I couldn’t.

When I started SNAPfast I said I would not brew coffee at home, since I could not afford to buy it on my $28 budget.  Up to now I haven’t, but was always able to grab a cup first thing at work or at church.   Dear reader, I hope you will forgive, but I could not face this morning without a cup.

Today is day seven of SNAPfast.  I’m getting better at planning meals, so breakfast and lunch will be simple affairs of toast, the last of the bologna, and a half a browning banana that has somehow survived the week.  My final dinner will be a feast of the last of the chicken (I’ll have gotten three meals out of one package), some rice, the last potato, and the last of the carrots.   Unfortunately there is nothing green to be had at all, canned or otherwise. 

While I’ll save the retrospective of the week for tomorrow, one of the things I know has been underscored for me this week is the challenge of nutrition.  My belly has not been painfully empty  but it is clear that what I have put into it has not been all that healthy.   Yes, I’ve avoided cheese doodles and soda, but have listed heavily into the land of carbohydrates and starches.  I’ve done okay on fats….maybe slightly under where I should be, despite the bologna.  Sodium is a lost battle, blown beyond all reason, but you probably know that many foods have a lot of sodium lurking in them.   

Where I’ve really missed the boat is vitamins and minerals.   I’m way under where I should be on fruits and vegetables.  The jingle “4-4-3-2” from the Mulligan Stew gang in the 70’s (don’t remember it?  Look it up on You Tube) comes into my head, reminding me of what I learned in the fourth grade….that you need 4 servings of fruits and veggies a day.  I think today that number is up to five per day.  No way I’ve made that this week.   I did put fresh produce on my shopping list, and I purchased some, but they’re expensive.  As we have established the canned varieties have much less nutritive value. 

 If I were to not qualify for SNAP (to do so means a family of two cannot make more than 21K per year!) I would be eating out of food pantries, where there is a woeful lack of produce available.  While it is true that the persistent and innovative efforts of some here in Bucks County are changing that by collaborating with local farmers, we still have a long way to go.  In urban centers the problem is much worse.

Long story short:  People who have to subsist on food stamps or food assistance from pantries face a huge challenge in eating healthy.   This vulnerable population, often already with health problems, has an uphill battle to improve or maintain their health.  An inability to do so contributes to their being trapped in a cycle of poverty.    Let’s talk solutions tomorrow!

Thanks a latte!

 

Thursday 10:00 pm

Today I passed by the supermarket across from where I work.  Sometimes for Iunch I get a hoagie, chips and a drink.  It’s a “meal deal” and costs me five bucks.  It got me thinking about the cost of a single meal.  Doing the math and dividing $28.00 by 21 meals in a week, results in a figure of $1.33 per meal, almost one fourth of what I pay for my “deal.”    I also considered this from the other end, by that I mean estimating what I would typically spend on meals.   I figure $2.00 per breakfast is probably fair (although we have established that I am not a big breakfast eater, I do often grab a mid-morning something at WaWa.)   Let’s set lunch at $5.00 per day, and dinner four nights a week, if I cook at home, at $6.00 each and dinner out three nights per week, say 20.00 per outing (although it is sometimes more).   Grand total, if I did the arithmetic right, is $133.00 per week, which is $105.00 more than my SNAPfast week budget.  Bear in mind that this includes no snacks, no splurges, no diet cokes on the road, and no treating friends.  If I did the SNAPfast all year long I would save almost $5500.00.  Yikes!   

Since I am kicking around numbers, here are some other calculations I did:  My $28.00, if used differently, would buy me 8.6 grande lattes at Starbucks.    It would buy about 5 Happy Meals at McDonalds.   $28.00 is about the most I’ll pay for one pair of jeans.  $28.00 would fill my gas tank, but only ¾ full.   Maybe my car gets to eat better than I do.  What's up with that?

Trotting out statistics to dramatize one’s point sometimes seems sanctimonious to me, and that’s not my intent here.  Nor am I trying to inspire guilt.  I am just sharing what I discovered when I did math that I wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for SNAPfast.   It’s all about perspective, and when I am in the routine of my daily life, week in and week out, I think I lose sight of the fact that the way I live my life is not the ONLY way to live a life.   Ok…. I’m getting off the soapbox…for now.

When this week is over I’ll probably still eat at McDonalds some….and probably get a latte from time to time.  But I suspect the memory of this week is going to nag me a little bit.   And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

 

 

Flat Timothy

Flat Timothy


9:00 pm Wednesday

So my brother Andrew shared with his family (which includes a lovely wife and three boys) about this SNAPfast that I am doing and they had good discussion about hunger.  The next day I got this email from him about something my nephew had done: 

After reading the book, Flat Stanley in school, Thaddeus' class has a project to make a "flat sibling". Students take their  " flat friend"  [avatar] on spring break, pose him/her in pictures and write stories about him/her.      Thaddeus has made Flat Timothy.        I can only imagine that Flat Timothy will be revealed to have become flat because he only ate spaghetti, canned vegetables, and bologna sandwiches for a week.


I think I am going to cry.

What did the rice say to the bean?

Wednesday 6:00 pm

So today is day 4 and "steady as she goes."  Based on what I've eaten and what I have left, I think I'm going to make it to Sunday in relatively good condition.  Friends and colleagues have been sweet and solicitous, but it isn't really warranted.  I'm not suffering, but my choices are limited and I have to work harder.  I hope that I am not coming across as a martyr in this blog, because I'm not.

Tonight I am taking the plunge and doing the rice and beans thing.  I had to soak the damn beans overnight and now I have to simmer them for 90 minutes.  After all this, wouldn't it be ironic if they were just nasty tasting?   Did I mention that patience is not my strong suit?   The rice goes in for 45 minutes and then I guess I'll mix them together in a big pot. Sounds bland, so I will scrounge for something in my limited cupboard to liven it up.   I sometimes bluff and say that I am an "intuitve cook," but what that really means is that I don't have a clue what I am doing and I'll throw in anything that is handy.  Just like a gambler, once in a great while I'll hit paydirt--and that's what I remember.  The 95% of the time that it flops I conveniently forget.

So here in the middle of my week I will admit that this mini-journey, this exercise, this participant-observer experiment  has me really humbled.  There is much that I take for granted in my insulated middle-class life.  I suppose if the biggest challenge I faced on a day-to-day basis was eating off 28 bucks a week that I could adapt and do it under my present circumstances.  But, when I add to this, worries about healthcare, not having insurance, working in a brutal minium-wage job, and maintaining affordable housing all while having one or more dependents, I am simply blown away.  I guess what I am getting at is what I think of as the "cascade effect."    Every adversity that a person faces makes them more susceptible to other adversities in an exponential manner.  Those who are facing several at a time have the odds stacked mightily against them. 

I just sampled a bean from the pot.......and it tastes nasty.

I'm in love with....carrots

I’m in love with ….. carrots.

Tuesday 10:00 pm

I am tired.  Quite a long day and I just put the last dish into the dishwasher and cranked that puppy up.  I realize that feeling tired at the end of a workday is normal for most of us, but I am particularly wiped tonight.  One thing that I have noticed in the last three days is that planning and preparing meals, especially with an eye toward a modicum of nutrition and on a strict budget, requires a lot of mental energy.  This is a little bit of a stretch, so bear with me.   I am experiencing it a little like learning to speak a new language.   I remember being in Italy as a college student and spending days speaking only Italian and how totally drained I would feel at the end of a day.  Something that was normally effortless (communicating) suddenly became an effortful process.  For me so far the experience of obtaining and preparing meals during this SANPfast has been very effortful.   I am used to pulling into to the nearest fast food joint or convenience store at the first pang of hunger and filling myself mindlessly with whatever was handy.  No thought involved in that at all.   In the last three days I have been thinking about meals in advance, trying to figure out how to ensure I get some nutrients, making sure I am pacing my consumption of my supplies, and then finally considering whether I might actually like what I am eating.   This is exhausting!

Another note about consumption of my supplies:   I did experience a touch of anxiety today about whether I might run out of food before the week was over.  Would I gut it out if I did, or just chalk it up as a failure and allow myself an out?   I know that the consequences to me of “failing” here are academic, because I can just always run down the street and fill my grocery cart, but what about people for whom the stakes are real and for whom this is not an exercise? 

On a lighter note, I told my wonderfully supportive boyfriend Robert tonight that I had discovered something unexpected this week….that I actually like carrots!  Where have they been all my life???

Day Two, Meal Two

Day two, meal two

Monday 12:00 pm

Right on time, at 12:01 my stomach growls.  No, I never ate the mid-morning snack, so I haven’t had anything since 7:30 pm last night.  I probably should get out of the habit of going 16 hours without eating.  Looking forward to my tuna fish sandwich now.  Forgot whether to check if it was packed in water or oil. 

So it was tuna in vegetable oil, not the tastiest, but a good source of protein and surprisingly some vitamins too.   The can made one and a half sandwiches.  I was full after one sandwich, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to transport half a can of tuna home, so I finished it off….waste not, want not.   I had a nice golden delicious apple too.  Definitely ahead of where I was yesterday from a nutritional perspective.

Delayed Gratification

Monday 9:47 pm

Long day at work, but productive.  Instead of coming straight home I stopped off to sit in on a friend’s rehearsal and ended up getting home at 8:30, tired, grumpy and hungry.   I went right to work, grabbing things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter for inspection.  Checking on the rice and beans, I grimaced (ok..cursed) seeing that the rice would take 45 minutes to cook.  Patience with food has NEVER been my strong suit, hence I have always bought Minute Rice.   Tonight, tired and hungry as I was, 45 minutes seemed like an eternity.  Plan B.  I sliced a large white potato in half, skinned a large carrot, and broke apart one small head of broccoli.  I usually discard the woody stalk, but recalled that if it is cooked longer, it can become tender and not bad, so I kept it.  For a protein I decided to go for broke and pulled out the pack of chicken.  There were probably six “tenders” in the package, but it seemed like two would be an adequate serving.  Four different items require four different pots, pans, or steaming implements.  In the past when I was cooking for two I used to laugh that I could whip up a basic meal  (meat, starch, and veg) in 20 minutes flat.  Tonight I went for four, and got it done in about 25.  I browned the chicken, using a little butter and black pepper.   Okay, so I know browning chicken in butter is not the best way to live a long, heart healthy life, but I did not buy any oil and I am trying to do this thing by the books.  Talking to my mother this afternoon about the project, she encouraged me to allow myself some basics like seasonings and such, but my stubborn Irish came out…thus chicken a la butter.   Hey, don’t laugh…it worked.  

The carrot was tender, the potato hefty, the broccoli was tasty, and the chicken was really quite good.  By 9:20 I was really satisfied and feeling pretty good about the outcome.  Of course, the dishes are still in the sink and, curiously enough, the dishwasher hasn’t emptied itself.   It’s now 10:00 pm and I have to be in the office by 7:00 am.  What are the chances I’m cleaning up tonight?