Tuesday, September 26, 2017

#SNAPchallenge Day 5, Day 6 - We Blew It

Sunday:  SNAP Challenge Day 5 


Sylvan and I made Oatmeal Muffins.

It is a recipe from another of my standby cookbooks. It is a cookbook that I grew up with. My mom had a copy of an earlier edition, and my Oma gave me the one I have. It is the More With Less Cookbook.

To total cost for 12 muffins (we ate 8) was $1.78.
The cost of the coffee share $1.52.
Total cost of $3.27.

Breakfast was late again.

Very Late.

Adam resumed working on the bus and I finished moving around plants, cleaned the kitchen, and started the weekly task of baking bread.

My new favorite bread recipe is the Basic Bread from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jenifer Reese. It involves scooping a bunch of ingredients in a bowl, giving it a stir and dumping it into a loaf pan for a few hours to rise. To cost per loaf, is $0.60.


I also started the process of making Pork Liver Paté. I first experimented with paté, when I purchased a few whole chickens, cut it into pieces, and froze all but the livers. It was delicious. This spring, a friend and I split the cost of a whole hog, and we also requested to get the organs.

Why not try Pork Liver Paté?
Pork Liver ($2.85)
Onion (CSA)
Garlic (CSA)
Sage (from the garden)
Half and Half ($0.09)
Brandy (from an old stash I keep for Christmas Cookies)
Cost $2.94

To be honest, I'm not sure that I like the pork liver paté. Some cuts of pork have this smell that I can not stand, pork chops and some times even roast, and the paté has that same underlying aroma. I put it in the fridge to chill and hope the sage and brandy will dominate that porky, pig smell.

The kids snack on carrots, pears and apples (CSA).

We take an afternoon trip to the library and then head to a coffee shop. The kids split a GIANT macaroon ($2.00) while we read our new books.

I head off to yoga class and leave Adam in charge of kids and dinner.

The kids eat slices of fresh bread.
Adam approves of the paté.

To expedite the remainder of the meal, Adam pulls Costco Pot Stickers out of the freezer and cooks up the remainder of a partial bag.  By the time I return, he is back to working on the bus and the kids have built a giant fort in the front yard.  I think the cost of the Pot Stickers was about $10.00 and this was the third meal from that purchase.  Let's estimate the cost of the meal was $4.00 with the the dipping sauce.


The total food cost for the day, including the daily cost of the CSA, was $14.85


Monday:  SNAP Challenge Day 6


Today, we blew it. 

There was no school.   

I enrolled the kids in a comedy day camp at the Missoula Community Theater.  It cost me $50 per kid. I earned just over that working, today, and I am lucky enough to have a job that pays more than a living hourly wage.  I know the SNAP challenge is about access to food, but we can't ignore the lack of access to affordable quality childcare options in our community.  While we are talking about child care, lets also mention health care and affordable housing.  Not one of these can be considered alone.

These are basic life needs.

For years I wondered what was I doing wrong, or what was wrong with me, that these were things that I couldn't attain and couldn't provide?  I have no student debt, but maybe I just majored in the wrong things? (Yes, things.  I have multiple undergraduate degrees.)  Got the wrong advanced degree? Moved to the wrong town?  Married the wrong person?  Had children at the wrong time? Where was the choice that resulted not being able to afford basic things?  I was sucked into this myth of personal responsibility that keeps us isolated, ashamed, voiceless and un-empowered. 

Last night, the kids packed their own lunches:  left over Mac and Cheese, fresh fruits and veggies, and for an additional snack, the left over muffins from Sunday Breakfast.  Their meals, and our lunches, invisible in our daily food budget.   

Adam and I both run from work to their comedy skit performance at the end of the day and once we are all piled in the car, there is less than an hour until I needed to be at the Monday night city council meeting. 

The kids asked for Taco Sano. 

We relent.  

It was the second time we have eaten there in almost 9? years of living in Missoula.  Our fridge is full of beets and chard and eggplant and there is half a loaf of fresh bread, but sometimes I just don't have the brain space to manage it all - or the time.

For the past two years, I have pretty much keep our family on the same budget we were on while receiving SNAP.  When I initially started working, and I subtracted the SNAP benefit we lost, we netted a $120 a month.  Because, I could fit my work hours into the time my kids were at Head Start and public school, it was a choice that made sense.  

Kind of. 

We paid $25 for a quick dinner.  Add to that the daily cost of the CSA (with Double SNAP Dollars $2.04) and the cost for breakfast $2.86, which brings the total spent on food today to $29.90.

I wish I could say, that being able to spend $30 on food in a day, and having transitioned off of SNAP benefits makes me feel secure, more certain of a future.  For the past few years I have been struggling to put words to this guttural reaction that I have every time I hear a person, from politician to friend, talk about people in poverty.
There is something wrong.
We are having the wrong conversation.
This isn't about getting a job to get off of food stamps.
This isn't about being smarter with personal finances.
This isn't about gaining access to health care by opting in to your employers health insurance plan.
This isn't really about making better food choices.
These are all small parts of an incomplete and broken whole.

I don't know where to start, except to say: "You are talking about me."



   

Sunday, September 24, 2017

#SNAPchallenge Day 4

I haven't ventured outside or changed clothes since I got up Saturday morning.

Yesterday I went through the annual ritual of cleaning and rearranging the house to accommodate all of the house plants moving back into our living space. By the time I looked at the clock is was 5:30 and I figure I might as well spend the rest of the day in pajamas.


The whole point of these posts and participating in the #SNAPchallenge is to raise money for Double SNAP Dollars, which doubles the purchasing power of SNAP benefits spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.  So please, if you have the resources and value expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables, take a moment to DONATE HERE!  My family has lots of practice cooking on a limited budget, because SNAP used to be our food budget.  These posts might make it seem too easy, but it wasn't.  I am calculating the Double SNAP Program into my daily expenditures, which helps a lot! I also have the benefit of being raised in a family that cooked and gardened, and receiving SNAP  forced me to budget, plan, be creative and look for ways to supplement our "supplemental" benefits. 

For a late weekend breakfast we doubled the Puff Pancakes recipe and served them the options of Plum or Apricot Sauce. Puff pancakes have been a family favorite for years, and I posted the recipe HERE back in 2012.  It has survived the passage of time.
4 eggs (4 x .25 = $1.00)
1 cup flour (0.09)
1 cup milk (0.25)
Plum and Apricot Butters (practically free - lets estimate cost at $0.21 for sugar)
Coffee (daily cost of our coffee share - $1.52)
Total Cost $3.07

In spite of being completely overwhelmed by my day to day, I have been canning a few of my favorite foods.  I'm not sure if that grounds me in my day to day or just adds an extra layer of stress, but fruit sauces are simple and quick.  We opened a jar of Plum and Apricot butter yesterday, and both of these were practically free.  The apricots came from the small tree in our yard and the plums came from a neighbor.  Canned fruit is expensive - organic canned fruit is ridiculous - and so, for years I have picked and canned, dried or frozen summer bounty. 

I halved and dried bags of plums, already made plum butter, and yesterday I canned 7 half pint jars of  Chinese Plum Sauce.  We use it as a dipping sauce for egg rolls or as an ingredient in stir fries for the cost of spices, sugar and half a cup of dried plums.  The plums came from a neighbors tree.  The kids picked them for me. I bought the spices a few days ago..  but I think the total cost of ingredients used came to somewhere around $4.00.


We had such a late breakfast, that lunch turned into snacks.
Milk ($0.50)
Carrots (CSA)
Apples (CSA)
Tortillas ($0.60)
Cheese ($0.64)
Total Cost $1.74

Sylvan requested mac and cheese for dinner.  Made from scratch mac and cheese is one of my favorite, quick recipes that has great left overs.  I have included the recipe in past posts as a good way to use up WIC eligible ingredients.  I left out the Worcestershire Sauce, because we were out, and I was still in pajamas and there was no way I was going to leave the house.
1 lb pasta  ($1.38)
butter ($0.54)
flour ($0.04)
milk  ($0.25)
cheddar cheese ($1.28)
corn (CSA)
salad (CSA daily cost with Double SNAP Dollars $2.04)
pork roast (left over from a weeknight, slow-cooker dinner)
Total Dinner Cost $5.53

Just as I was headed to bed, after folding the most ridiculous pile of laundry, Adam came inside from applying the first cost of finish to most of the school bus floor.  He turned on the burners on the stove for a late night snack.
2 tortillas ($0.30)
left over pork roast and gravy

The total daily cost of our food today, and a little food that is stashed away on the shelf for later: $14.64.

The prickly pots of cacti still need a home.  They usually end up on the only south window sill in the kid's bedroom.  I spent all day organizing the downstairs, and taking those plants upstairs, will start another ripple effect.  Right now, I am promising myself, that I will change clothes and leave the house, prior to my 5:30 yoga class.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

#SNAPchallenge Day 2 and 3

I gave myself permission to delay posting about day 2.

Day 2 was the day of the Northside vs. Westside Softball Challenge with I helped organize. There are still a few banners in the car that need to delivered back to the game's sponsors, but other than that, it is over.  It is a fundraising event for the North-Missoula Community Development Corporation, and I still need to tally up the final expenditures and earnings, but overall it was a success. The Westside won 18 – 9.

Back to the #SNAPcallenge and food related issues.

Breakfast was oatmeal. Oatmeal is a perfect breakfast choice for my family of picky breakfast eaters because it is easily customizable. Adam and I eat it as a savory dish topped with onion, cheese, eggs and greens, while the children opt for brown sugar and cinnamon.


Oatmeal (4 x .043 = $0.172)
Cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32)
Eggs (0.21x 3 = $0.75)
Swiss Chard (CSA)
Brown Sugar (4 tablespoons = $0.096)
Coffee (cost of my coffee share per day is $1.52)
Total cost of breakfast $2.86 for a family of 4.

Adam and I both packed tomato pie for lunch and the kids ate at school.

After school, I gave the kids 5 dollars and sent them to the Missoula Community Food Co-op. “Buy something healthy,” I said, and they came back with a miniature chocolate bar and Annie's Gummy Bunnies. Not quite what I had meant. Snack Cost: $4.00

They also had apples (CSA), so not all of the snacks were forms of sugar wrapped in packaging. And I grabbed a slice of cheese on my way in and out of the door ($0.32).

We ate dinner at the Softball Game... we set up a propane grill and sold hotdogs, cucumber salad, chips and an assortment of drinks and candy to folks who attended the event.
Hot dogs are a totally legit dinner option, and because I did some of the shopping for the event I am going to use the per unit cost of hot dogs and buns rather than the price it would have cost to buy them at the event. Usually, if hot dogs appear on our dinner table, it a special treat, synonymous with lighting a fire in our fire pit.


Dinner was not healthy. Let's not pretend. I was running around like crazy making sure everything was going correctly (and it did) but I let the kids make minor food decisions on their own.

Skittles (I made them share - $1)
Soda (I made them share - $1)
Hotdog Buns (4 x 0.38 = $1.52)
Hotdogs (4 x 0.35 = $1.39)
Potato Chips (4 x 0.16 = $0.62)
Total Dinner Cost $5.53

Total Cost for the Day 2 was $12.71 plus the per day cost of the CSA $14.75.

SNAP Challenge Day 3.

I let the children sleep in, to recuperate from the late night at the game.

Breakfast happened in two shifts. Adam and I ate first and when the kids woke I made them breakfast as well.
3 tortillas (0.15 x 3 = $0.45)
4 eggs (0.25 x 4 = $1.00)
cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32)
Coffee (cost of my coffee share per day $1.52)
Oatmeal (4 x 0.043 = $0.172)
Brown Sugar (4 tablespoons = $0.096)
Total Cost for Breakfast $3.56

Adam took the last piece of Tomato Pie for lunch along with a handful of plums (CSA). I forgot to pack lunch and by the time I came home to meet the kids I was almost shaky. They of course, had lunch at school. It is pretty normal that I run from thing to thing and forget to eat... not the best habit. I ended up with an extra kiddo at my house for a bit and we all needed a snack. Tortillas and cheese it was. I cooked tortilla after tortilla and melted cheese, cut wedges and piled them on the table.

Tortillas (0.15 x 8 = $1.20)
Cheese (0.16 x 4 = $0.64)
Apples (CSA)
Total Snack cost $1.84.

I ran off to meet some friends after Adam came home and left him in charge of dinner.  For Dinner he served the left over slow cooker Potato Leek Soup that I had made a few days before. I will not include the cost of it here, for consistency, but with the exception of a few pieces of bacon and the broth, it was made entirely from CSA ingredients. The soup was served with a side of salad.
Lettuce (CSA)
Tomatoes (CSA)
Carrots (CSA)
Cucumbers (CSA per day cost $2.04 with Double SNAP Dollars).
Total Dinner cost $2.04.

SNAP Challenge day 3 total is $7.44.

The low day to day expenditures on food require that most of our meals are made from scratch or almost from scratch.  Over the years I have acquired a few cookbooks I return to again and again.  I also heavily rely on googling combinations of food that are found in my fridge at a given time.  The main thing that keeps me going: an over inflated sense of confidence that I can make something for nothing.  It has gotten my this far.

Some of my favorite cook books:
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter
Dinner: A Love Story
Betty Crockers Cookbook: Bridal Edition
Good and Cheap (which is what the pictures in the post are) 
Canning for a New Generation

Please consider donating to my Double SNAP Dollars Fundraiser by clicking HERE!!!

Thursday, September 21, 2017

#SNAPchallenge Day 1

We got up a little earlier than usual.

Today was ONE LESS CAR DAY in Missoula and rode my bike down to the end of the street to walk back through the neighborhood and scoop up kids along the way.  I wore cloth shoes and it rained, but the rain has finally cleared the wildfire smoke from the air, and everyone was in good spirits. 

Breakfast was quick.
4 tortillas (0.15 x 4 = $0.60)
5 eggs (0.25 x 5 = $1.25)
2 ounces of cheddar cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32)
Coffee (cost of my coffee share per day $1.52)
Cherry Tomatoes (FREE – no really – I have been saving these seeds for 5 years now.  These were tomatoes that volunteered in my yard when we moved to our house and I have replanted them every year since.  I grow them for the cost of water, except I have a flat rate water bill that doesn’t change based on use…  so we will just call them FREE!)
Total Breakfast Cost: $3.69 for a family of 4

Wet shoes and all, I walked to the Clay Studio to get a few hours of work in before heading to my Wednesday City Council Committee Meetings.  I am working on a custom order of mugs that are forcing me to branch out from my usual shapes and patterns.  It is fun and challenging.


Lunch was equally quick and poor planning on my part.  I should have just packed a lunch last night and saved myself a commuting trip.
1 tortilla (0.15)
Left over pulled pork (from Adam’s staff party)
Salsa (0.12)
Total Lunch Cost: $0.27 (for myself – Adam packed left overs)

For tracking purposes, I will track the cost of food when I prepare it.  We often eat/pack left overs for lunch and their costs will be recorded the first time a meal is served.   

Both of our kids are now in school and it is a Title 1 school.  An overwhelming percentage of our student body is low income and therefore all students have the option of a free school lunch.  Both of my kids often choose to participate in the lunch program.  Direct effect on my food budget = $0. 

I did purchase a coffee during the city council meetings – for transparency I am mentioning it – but am not tracking it as a food purchase.  Why do you ask?  During the time that received SNAP benefits.  I had a separate, very modest monthly budget for coffee purchases at coffee shops.  Unlike coffee, the ingredient, purchased at a grocery store, coffee purchased at a coffee shop is not an eligible SNAP expense.  I allowed myself the small luxury of guilt free coffee shop purchases, because I realized that I needed a mental health break during my week.  So, so many blog posts on this blog were written in that setting and the kids and I were all so much better off for that small expense. 

Snack
Popcorn (0.15) 
Popped from bulk kernels.  

Dinner was a summer favorite.  Tomato Pie.  The basic recipe can be found here, but I omitted sour cream and sugar, and reduced the milk to half a cup. 
Tomatoes (CSA share)
Basil (CSA share)
Onion (CSA share – I purchased a CSA share this spring.  The price I paid for the averages out to a daily cost during the season of $4.07, but I purchased it from a vendor that participates in the Double SNAP Program.  This would reduce the per day cost of fresh fruits and vegetables delivered each week to $2.04 per day.  That is amazing.  I just used Tomato, Basil and Onions in a pie for a total cost of $2.04.  My next CSA delivery is tomorrow and I still have beets, carrots, and chard from last week.)
Milk (0.07)
Cheddar Cheese (4 ounces x .15 per ounce = 0.60)
Egg (0.50)
Flour (0.09)
Butter (0.7)
Total Cost for Dinner: $3.65 for a family of 4 with leftovers

Total for the Day: $7.76

Quick note on price calculations:  If they are items I purchased recently I am using receipts to calculate per item cost.  For pantry items (flour etc..) I am googling the costs based on volume used.

Even I am surprised by the daily amount spent! 

The low amount of funds spent on meals is LARGELY the result from the ability purchase a CSA share through the Double SNAP Dollars program.  The cost of tomatoes alone starts at $3 per pound, onions often range around $1 per pound, and basil is pricy… and I multiple pounds tomatoes, a giant onion, and a liberal handful of basil…  Suddenly one tomato pie hoovers in the $10 - $13 range.  That is a huge difference if the daily food budget is a total of $20.   

SUPPORT DOUBLE SNAP DOLLARS BY CLICKING HERE 


End of SNAP Challenge Day 1!


Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Lets Add to the Insanity of the 2KL4SKL Bus Project: The SNAP Challenge

So, we bought a school bus.
I'm hoping its not the worst decision we have ever made.



Adam has slowly, much too slowly been morphing it into, what hopefully will be a living space. 


 And I have been trying to pack up our house, sew a million curtains, and keep life normal.  We have successfully (what is success anymore??) been navigation the line somewhere between a mess and a disaster.

Some days I drop both of the kids off at the bus stop, other days I drop off one at the bus stop while the other would rather hold my hand the whole way, since I walk past the school on my way to work anyway. We always arrive just at the front just as the buses pull up to the back.

I spend more than I ever imagined staring at a computer screen, navigating an entirely new and foreign world of a federally funded affordable housing project. Damn, that shit is complicated.

Late August, I received an email about participating in the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition's SNAP Challenge to raise funds for the Double SNAP Dollars program that, true to it's name, doubles the value of SNAP benefits spent on fresh fruits and vegetables at participating locations. So, SNAP is the snazzy acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formally known as Food Stamps), and the challenge is to have folks to pledge to live on a limited food budget for a week. The guidelines are to spend $5 per person per day. For my family of four my budget is that is $20 per day. Which now, as I'm putting it in writing sounds a little wrong - pledge a week to eat like a poor person – a strange kind of class appropriation, except for years I didn't eat like a poor person, I was a poor person.

I started this blog, in part, to indirectly talk about poverty in America.

So of course, I'm in.

First thing first:

SNAP. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The program is miss-named. For many, including my family, this SNAP wasn't a supplement to an existing food budget. It is the food budget.

Second thing second:

SNAP can be spent on FOOD PLANTS! This is a less widely promoted benefit of the SNAP. I was unaware for the first year or two, but as soon as I figured it out, I planted entire gardens using SNAP benefits to purchase seeds and starts.

Third and best of all:

Participating locations in Missoula (farmers markets, a few CSAs, and the Food Coop) will DOUBLE SNAP benefits.
 Wow.
 What?
 So cool.
 Every summer, I would turn my SNAP benefits into wooden tokens, spend those devoted to fruits and vegetables, and hoard a few tokens into a small stockpile (and an accounting nightmare for those who track the tokens) until I had set aside to buy a bulk purchase of pork from the Farm to Market Pork vendor.
Why?
Because it was a way to budget and bulk purchases are cheaper.  When you buy more than 20 lbs of meat there is a discount. Buying in bulk is not always an option when the daily budget is $5 per person per day. But, when SNAP benefits spent on Fruits and Vegetables, go twice as far it opens the remainder of the supplement up to so many creative possibilities. In addition to bulk pork purchases, there are the cases seconds tomatoes and peaches that I canned and lined my kitchen with and lasted far beyond the summer season.  


These days, I work one just over half time job, hold an elected office that has a stipend and provides health insurance for Adam and I, sell my pottery, and Adam works full time. We no longer receive SNAP, but our food budget and habits haven't changed much since those days, and I am still regularly drowning in the anxiety of my day to day.


Our SNAP challenge starts, the 20th and ends the 27th.
I will try to post along the way.... you can follow along... 
And you can have a positive impact on people's lives by increasing access to healthy food choices.. 
It can be found here:

My Double SNAP Dollars Fundraiser


My goal is to raise $1000. (My secret goal is to raise twice that.. but shhh... )
The overall goal is to raise $16,000, which results in a purchasing power worth $32,000 to be spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.  

Lets talk about food, food access, and poverty.    

Oh, and lets also talk about how cool are vanity plates are that arrived for the school bus today: 2KL4SKL! 

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