Two-Thirds Done

Long-overdue post. After a couple small shopping trips over the last 1.5 weeks, we have left to spend $51.... about $2.50 per person per day over the next 10 days.  Basically, we po (no, not this, but this).

Although, we should be fine.  We purchased a lot of dry goods, soups, and canned goods at the last two shopping trips.  The only thing we need to replenish imminently is bread. We go through a lot of bread!

Where has all the money gone?
Jan 31: $83 (first shopping trip)
Feb 4: $13 (super bowl trip)
Feb 8: $38 at Schnuck's (second real trip)
Feb 9: $7 - Jeff forgot his lunch and got fast food, hungrily consuming two person's equivalent food budget.
Feb 12: $26 at Trader Joe's
Feb 15: $33 at Trader Joe's
Feb 18: $3 contribution to group mardi gras pizza order

Our goal is not to make another (and our last) shopping trip until much later in the week.

It is certainly difficult to maintain a balanced diet on $4 per day, and this challenge is really bringing home the struggles faced by individuals and families receiving food stamps. One thing I realized today is how challenging it must be to not purchase food in bulk or make fewer, but larger-intake shopping trips.  Living on a limited and defined budget essentially disallows these shopping behaviors that is pretty customary in America. This is a real shame, because buying in bulk at Costco, Sam's, etc, can be more economically efficient.  But, if the money isn't in your EBT account to buy a 3 ton bag of cereal or 40 pounds of crackers, even though this would last for months, you just can't do it.  Perhaps food stamps can be structured in a way that participants can receive one lump sum to last a couple of months? This might encourage more efficient grocery shopping... but, at the same time, some participants might not utilize or prorate the large payment responsibly.

I've never really liked using American Cheese on sandwiches for whatever reason (although, love it on burgers and grilled cheese), so my sandwiches have been pretty boring with just sodium-lovers oscar mayer prepackaged meats. Looking forward to getting some good deli meat and cheese from the counter at Schnuck's.

The challenge's constraining factor to our kitchen is starting to wear on us. St Louis is a city with soo many great restaurants, and we usually dine out once a week or so. I had a pretty great urge to just get up and go to a restaurant today, but it just wasn't in the cards.  So, I assembled a list of St Louis restaurants by neighborhood that we haven't yet visited, which helped things a bit. I've already made plans for March 1: Lunch at Protzel's (my favorite St Louis restaurant), and dinner at Farmhaus, which is supposed to be excellent.

A couple nights ago, we made one of my favorite dinners yet.  I found on sale at Trader Joe's a pack of 6 chicken drumsticks for $2.75!  We also mashed a large potato and used a 69 cent can of corn.

Into Week 2

Yes, I know, it's been a few days since the last post.  Law school and work was busy this week.  This will be a quick post and update.

Last night's <$4 dinner for two:

$1.50 butternut squash
$1.99 bunch of asparagus
$1.00 instant rice (portion of box)

Tonight will be equally, if not more, glamorous: 69 cent box of store-brand macaroni and cheese and hot dogs (no buns).

Spent about $40 on Wednesday at the grocery store - mainly milk, lunch meat, soups, and canned goods. Still with substantial leftovers from our first shopping trip, this should be enough to last us well into next week.

It is difficult not ordering some appetizers or drinks at our Tuesday night trivia or stop for Chinese food.  Such a craving for House of Wong right now. But, the challenge is going well. We're still alive, which is definitely a good thing.  More thoughts and updates in our next post.

Low-cost dinner for two

Roasted cauliflower on a bed of quinoa and spinach leaves, topped with salted yogurt.  Delicious.  One head of cauliflower was $2.00 at was enough food to feed both of us.  Took spinach leaves from our 1/3 pound bag of fresh spinach, and yogurt from one of our giant tubs that we also eat for lunch.  Quinoa, for those who haven't tried it, is an amazingly nutritious and tasty grain that you cook and use like rice.  One 1lb box cost about $3 and easily lasts several weeks.

At this point, we have probably run through half of the food purchased last week, so there will definitely be a trip to the grocery store by the end of the week.  This puts on a pace to meet our monthly budget, especially since the chicken we purchased for our Super Bowl party yesterday will allow us to cook one or two more dinners.

Eating a granola bar for breakfast is getting pretty boring, and I really miss the Health Nut sandwich bread we usually have for our lunches.  Almost one week in, and our biggest challenge is being innovative with low-cost ingredients while staying healthy (although, this is pretty fun) and not being able to eat some of our favorite products.

Day Six

Yesterday, we had friends over for a small Super Bowl party.  Every guest brought food, and also wanted to contribute something, while, of course, staying within our monthly food budget.  We decided that homemade buffalo wings would be a good, low-cost food that could serve many. The buffalo wings at the grocery store's buffet had an expensive per-unit price, and the night before the Super Bowl was sold out of frozen wings.  We saw a large bag of frozen, boneless chicken pieces for $9.00 and decided to improvise.  The bag was so large, we were able to use half the bag to serve 6 people and can use the other half for dinners throughout the week!  The only other ingredient we purchased was a bottle of hot sauce for $1.00. We had flour, butter, and spices at home. After having a similar dip at a friend's place, we made a dip out of cottage cheese and a bit of blue cheese dressing mixed in. At first, it sounded pretty gross to me, but it is actually quite good.

Several people have asked us our thoughts on eating "provided food."  These are legitimate concerns that initially we did not think would affect our challenge.  Further, Jeff and I are quite popular and routinely attend events with provided food. Nevertheless, we feel that it is in keeping with the spirit of the challenge to significantly minimize eating food provided by others.

Others have asked how we are incorporating food that was in apartment before our SNAP challenge began. Honestly, we didn't have much food: a couple of cans of soda, some condiments, box of frozen waffles, chips, flour, sugar, and a collection of spices -- nothing that could provide a whole meal. As everyone has some sort of legacy food products, we feel okay about consuming these small products throughout the month, especially since none of it could comprise a whole meal.

Day One

Today's breakfast: Quaker Oats chewy granola bar and a small glass of orange juice.  Normally, my breakfast would either be a TLC bar or Balance Bar (amazing, but pricey at $1.00 each), large glass of orange juice, or a bagel and egg sandwich.


For lunch, Jason and Jeff both made sandwiches of Oscar Mayer ham (expiration date: late March! gross.) with no cheese, on the cheapest white bread at Schnucks, and store-brand yogurt.  Normally, lunch consists of low-sodium Boar's Head deli roast beef and lacy swiss cheese on the healthiest, whole-grain, HFCS-free, best-tasting bread ever and organic pro-biotic yogurt with fresh berries. 


Dinner: This was a great success.  What we did make isn't too foreign from what we might normally cook. Key difference was mostly quality of ingredients. Did we notice a difference in taste? Not really. 

Ingredients: 
-Two chicken breasts from our giant 3-pound, $9.99 bag, cooked in a mustard and soy sauce marinade. 
-Instant white rice (not bad, but normally we cook natural brown or wild rice)
-Two corns on the cob.


We didn't really buy any snack foods at our last shopping trip, and at 10:45pm, my stomach is very much regretting this decision. Normally, I would be eating some chips and hummus right now. Getting pretty hungry. 

Proportionally, my best estimate puts today's meals at a cost of $4.25 for the each of us.  I really wanted to shoot for $3.50, but mostly for other reasons.  As February has 29 days, $127.05 per month allows us to spend $4.38 per day. 


Reflection: We ate pretty well today and essentially maxed out our daily cap. As we just went shopping yesterday, any challenging decisions we did face were encountered at the grocery store.  I imagine that as the month progresses, we will tire of the lack of culinary variety surely accompanying this challenge.  We feel fortunate that we have a small household comprised of two individuals eligible for separate benefits under current SNAP policies (see previous post for more info).  If we were a larger household size with kids, we would probably face challenging decisions both at the grocery store and more frequently in the home. If we extrapolate our first day's consumption to the rest of the month, it is unlikely that we will have enough funds for the occasional treat, let alone dining out. 

Jeff's other love

Those of you who know Jeff know that he is quite fond of the drink, or, as he calls it, grandpa's old cough medicine.  Should we take his wine consumption habits into account with his $127.05 monthly allotment?  Of course, Jeff thought these should be "exempt purchases," without any supporting logic, and I opposed, arguing that his alcohol budget should be included in his allotment.  Well, folks, our crack research team has discovered that the SNAP program does not cover alcohol purchases. I suppose this is good for policy reasons, although a libertarian freedom of choice argument can be made on the contrary.  So, folks, Jason was wrong. Don't count on it happening again.  Also notable, we discovered that food stamps do not cover basic household necessities, like laundry detergent, diapers, paper products, or hygiene products. We had assumed that food stamps could be used to purchase any supermarket product.  This is not so.  Household products can add a substantial amount to a family's supermarket bill. Many food stamp recipients also qualify under other welfare programs, like TANF, which would cover some of these purchases. Just one day in, and we have already learned quite a bit about various social safety net programs.  Oh, those poor folk, covered and provided for so benevolently by our government. 


Still, we continued discussing the alcohol issue, and determined that it would be in keeping in spirit with our challenge's goals to reduce, if not eliminate, other frivolous food and beverage consumption during the month. Sorry, Jeff, but your two bottles of wine per week will now have to last the entire month. 

First shopping trip

We went to Schnuck's for our first shopping trip. Many items will be able to last us well into the month. We purchased many of the same type of food that we would otherwise purchase - but, now, bought the fatter, frozen, or cheaper version.


Normally, where we would buy something like Amy's organic canned soups for $3.50 each, we instead bought 4 Healthy Choice cans for $5 bucks.  Not a bad deal, and honestly the difference in quality will be close to negligible. 


Fresh veggies and fruit purchased: 1/3 pound of spinach leaves and one head of empty-calorie iceberg lettuce to make salads (instead of getting the organic girl bagged stuff, which we highly recommend); head of cauliflower; 2 large butternut squash; 1 pound of asparagus; and a bunch of bananas (non-fair trade, which bothered me). Future trips will be made to get some apples and oranges (better deals and higher quality at Trader Joe's). 


Our typical cereal: 

We instead bought something strongly resembling dog food for the nearly the same price.  This stuff is going to suck. 

Other notable items purchased were lots of slices of american cheese to make grilled-cheese sandwiches, a lot of dried pasta, a large tub of natural peanut butter, two tubs of yogurt, a giant 3 pound bag of frozen chicken for $9.99 (normally, we would purchase free-range organic chicken breasts at TJ's, where 3 single breasts would be about the same price). Instead of organic health nut bread, we got the cheapest plain white bread in the store.  I'm somewhat disappointed by this choice, as normal white bread isn't very nutritious, but the bread we purchased cost 1/2 as much as our normal bread. I am pretty okay compromising on the chicken, as most chickens raised for slaughter aren't kept in terrible conditions, and the price differential was substantial.  The one item that I will not compromise on quality are eggs -- we will always purchase eggs from cage-free chickens, and at some stores like Trader Joe's, the difference in price between cage-free and non-cage free eggs is pretty small. 


Other notable things entirely eliminated from our usual shopping list: Pizzas, soda, pomegranate juice, fresh deli meats and cheeses, fish, and some sort of beef or steak. I am happy that we did not purchase any frozen dinner entrees. 


Our total grocery bill was $80.27.  We expect that this shopping trip provided enough food for 10 days. Given that we have $254.10 to spend between the both of us, we feel confident that continuing to make similar consumption choices at the grocery store will put us under budget.

Introduction

Inspired by discussions in the current political climate of reducing welfare benefits to our country's neediest families, we (Jason and Jeff) have decided to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program challenge for February, 2012. We will chronicle our goals, struggles, and food consumption on this blog.

In 2010, approximately 46 million Americans, or 15% of our population, of all ages received government assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP... formerly called the "food stamp" program, a term we will still use throughout this blog).  Perhaps most shocking and grossly underreported in our media, fully 1/2 of all participants are under the age of 17, representing approximately 30% of all American children.  From Fall 2010-2011, the SNAP program has added 10% more individuals to its rolls. While some contenders for higher political office spin this into a destructive label of us having a "food stamp President," such comments conveniently ignore the recession-induced expansion of unemployment in our working class (irony?).

Determining eligibility for food stamps is complicated, dependent on a complex interaction of factors like household size, saved resources, income level, age, and medical needs.  As Jeff and I are not, and cannot be, considered a "household" in the eyes of Missouri or the federal government, we are considering ourselves to be independents individually eligible for benefits. Ironically, such laws allow us to receive more benefits under SNAP as individuals. Hooray for logic in public policy.  Thus, for simplicity reasons, we will each constrain ourselves to the average amount of benefits to a Missouri resident in 2011... a whopping:

$127.05 per person.

Pretty sure we have gone out to restaurants where this was the cost of one meal. Excellent. This should be fun.

Throughout the month, we attempt, at least in part, to identify with the weighty struggles faced by food stamp recipients.  Longer-term, we hope to internalize whatever lessons learned this month as they affect our dining choices, broader conceptions of conspicuous consumption, and views on America's social safety nets.

This will be difficult.  Jeff and I enjoy eating well, dining out with some frequency, and purchasing a healthy amount of healthier foods (pun intended).  We are curious how drastic the adjustment to living on $127.05 will be. We want to continue to purchase a substantial amount of fresh fruit and vegetables and "organic" foods and stay away from, whenever possible, frozen and processed foods.  My biggest doubt is being able to continue eating in this manner too long into the month.  Dining out will clearly be a rarity, and when it happens, will probably be the death for a buck menu dollar menu at McDonald's.

Check back for (hopefully) daily updates, photos, and snarky comments.

If we run out of money too early, luckily we have some food stored for emergencies, i.e. our pet hermit crab Ruth Bader Crabsburg.

Note: There exists much debate on the amount of benefits an individual should receive under SNAP; in other words, what portion of a person's food consumption should be covered? All nutritional needs? Just enough to get by? Enough for the "basics"? A substantial part? Perhaps the name of the program: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides some clues.  We, however, believe that it is in keeping in spirit with the goals of our challenge for the $127.05 to be our entire food budget.