That’s what they did for us, and they also told us the “within 10 days” rule. If I have a sudden uptick in my income I’ll certainly let them know. I would be thrilled to be making too much to qualify for this program.
Income wise we could have qualified earlier this year, but we had too much in savings/assets so it wasn’t until we spent those that we qualified for the program.
I don’t think WIC has gotten any more simplified. I know Nevada uses EBT/Debit cards for the state social services but a few weeks ago I recall a shopper being handed 2 8oz blocks of cheese and being told they weren’t on the list but 1 16oz block of cheese was. I’ve never been involved in WIC but it seems like it is more of shopping list to follow then a freeform “food money” program like food stamps. Sort of like a food pantry that doesn’t rely on donations or even a distribution site.
Sam’s Club accepts EBT as well. It’s a huge help.
Funny they are still called food stamps. There was a time that they were stamps in different denominations. Now it is a credit card.
It’s like saying “your phone is ringing” when it’s really playing a fully orchestrated MP3 of Beethoven’s Fifth - language is funny that way.
Off topic, but do you have an online portfolio?
These sorts of people have never known what it’s like to be poor. They’re the same assholes who believe that if you don’t have a steady job, then you should never be allowed to treat yourself, even if treating yourself only means buying $2 VHS tapes at the thrift store or buying an occasional six pack of cheap beer.
No, I did that work 20 years ago. Some of the backgrounds in the first Punisher graphic novel are mine, but I took money over official credit for the work. Some of my background work appeared in First Comics Badger, Grimjack, and Tailgunner Jo. For Marvel I worked as an assistant to the main colorist on the Punisher during the latter half of her first pregnancy and during some of the first years after that (a young child can make working at home difficult, especially at the toddler stage in a home with lots of pretty art supplies to get into). It pretty much predated the Internet as we currently know it. I also did some work on one of the Buck Godot graphic novels. Phil Foglio wrote and drew the books, but other artists did work on the project, particularly the coloring and lettering.
After awhile I moved on to other things
I remember one of these threads in which a poster said he disagreed with food stamps going to EBT cards because he thought the “embarassment” of using paper stamps was a better incentive for people to get off of them. Ridiculous, but unfortunately a lot of people share this attitude.
Personally, I don’t think it’s anyone’s business what people on food stamps buy. I kinda doubt that most buying junk food are really doing it because they’ve bought healthy all month and are giving themselves a treat, but it wouldn’t occur to me to think I know better what other families should be eating. And this is one reason why I think the EBT card is a wonderful substitute for the old food stamps. No one has to know how you are paying unless you tell them.
I hope things get better for you and your family. Until then, don’t let anyone make you feel bad about being on those benefits. That’s what they are there for.
Oh, I don’t feel bad at all. We’ve eaten better this month than we have for nearly a year. What we were eating before was nutritious enough, but now we have variety we didn’t before, especially in regards to fruit.
Today while shopping a cashier actually mis-entered into her machine, thinking I was using a debit card (probably remembered me, a regular, using that form of payment in the past). Well, yes, it’s that unnoticeable I guess.
Both that lady and the lady at the butcher shop where I buy most of my meat remarked to me that they’re seeing more and more people using those cards in my area. Seems they always see an increase during the winter because of some people having seasonal work, but it’s still more than usual. The owners of local shops have no problem with EBT users - people with an EBT card sometimes start buying more food than before, such as myself, which is good for their business. Or they buy more than just ground beef at the butcher (I bought a round steak - that will be a couple stir fry dinners - bacon and sausage instead of just ground beef) which also helps the bottom line.
Pretty much done with shopping for this month, but I still have $30 left over in the account. Guess I’m not one of those greedy, junk-food slurping welfare queens after all! 
My pantry is fully stocked, meals are planned for the week… I’m not going to simply buy food because I can, I’ll buy what I’ll use and if there’s money left over so what.
No questions, just best wishes for a better 2010.
Just as a comment, in my area, Eastern Market worked a deal where the market management can accept EBT funds, and will give people tokens in exchange. Many (but not all) of the independent vendors at the market then accept the tokens in lieu of cash for their food. So all the equipment for funds transfer is handled in one place and the farmers just have to cash in their tokens occasionally–everybody wins.
Eastern Market vendors are a mix of local farmers and resellers who purchase produce wholesale and peddle it in the market, so you can get both ultra-fresh food (usually at somewhat higher prices) and produce at rock-bottom price (although you’ve got to be somewhat choosy). So unlike farmers-only markets where good deals are hard to find, Eastern Market is actually a pretty good place to stretch food purchases.
I realize all that’s pretty irrelevant to Broomstick, but to seems to me like a system that works well, albeit one that is, as she says, based in a large municipality.
What do you eat, on a regular day? What are your usual breakfasts, lunches, dinners? What were they before food stamps, and how have you changed things up now?
It is especially wonderful since Detroit proper does not have a major supermarket. Eastern Market is a produce option for many people who would not otherwise have access to healthy veggies/fruits at reasonable prices.
Similarly, in NYC the markets are centralized, and very few EBT recipients have any way to grow their own food, so taking EBT makes a lot of sense. There is also an inititative to get small scale fruit vendors into poor areas underserved by markets, and some of these take EBT cards as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/nyregion/11carts.html
BTW… what I’m getting at with my question is, “what kind of food have you found to be most budget-conscious while still being nutritious”, and then, “what are you treating yourself with now”. You’ve given some examples in this thread, I’m just interested in hearing more.
What do you think of people like Sean Callebs who try to live on a food-stamp food budget for a period of time? Do you think it’s a useful way to raise awareness that everybody should try at least once, a cheap publicity stunt, or somewhere in between those two? What do you think about people who try to eat organic or local food on a food-stamp budget?
Do you find yourself thinking differently about grocery shopping, the way he says he did? Do you find yourself doing a lot of math in your head at the supermarket? Do you find it “exhausting” and “draining” to get the budget to work, as he did?
Are there any restaurants or foods that are too expensive for your food budget that you particularly miss now?
**Broomstick **- fascinating thread. I’m really hoping that things look up for you, right soon.
And you’re right about farmer’s markets often being more expensive than your grocery store. At least they are around here. Yes, the produce is higher quality for certain, but I’ve never found it to be much of a bargain. And you’ve already got the higher quality produce thing going on anyway.
Has this changed how you think about food stamp programs, or people who use food stamps?
Breakfast… well, for the past (oh gosh) 35 years or so I have usually had a cheese sandwhich and a cup of tea for breakfast. Sometimes I shake it up with a bagel and cream cheese, or cheese and crackers, but it’s almost always some variant. And that never changed. I did, however, go from drinking very, very nice loose leaf tea to housebrand tea bags (sigh). My husband either eats an omelet or leftovers from last night’s dinner or a sandwhich if there were no leftovers. That never changed much either.
Pre-foodstamps:
Lunch was typically a sandwhich or a bowl of soup for either of us. I have a person I work with who, when we work a full day together, has been in the habit of buying me lunch, usually something like McDonald’s. As I order the smaller burgers/fries and I do manual labor much of the time that hasn’t had a bad impact on my waistline. We have eaten a LOT of soup/stew over the past two years for dinners. The other common dinner has been stir fry of one sort or another (I own two woks. I’ve been doing stir frys for decades regardless of income).
Vegetables were either whatever was cheapest, or what I could grow in the backyard, or both.
Fruit was whatever was cheapest.
Post-foodstamps:
Lunch is still a sandwhich, but instead of sticking with just bolonga or whatever filling was on sale that week (or making my own, in the case of tuna salad, which we’ve also eaten a lot of) we can now pick what we want. For example, this week I got a half pound of roast beef from the deli. We haven’t had roast beef slices for over six months. I’m also putting a little more meat in the sandwhiches than I used to. We also eat salads for lunch. Now, during the summer that was fine, because I had 7 varieties of lettuce going in the backyard along with radishes and cucumbers so they were pretty good salads. However, post-harvest they’d gotten to be rather uninspired, mostly just lettuce and maybe some sliced peppers. Now, I’m buying radishes (we ate everything from the garden) and olives for the salads, feta cheese for a topping, and also ham for a topping so there’s more protein in the salads. Since I’m also cooking larger amounts for dinner we’re getting more leftovers for breakfasts/lunches.
Dinners are getting more interesting. I’m much more inclined to experiement when a cooking disaster doesn’t mean we have to skip a meal, or choke down said disaster. We’ve had broccoli on the table again - haven’t seen that for nearly a year. We have cucumbers again - after we ate all the ones from the garden I didn’t buy any until this month. I can buy the vegetables I want, rather than what’s cheapest or what we have leftover from summer. I’ve been buying bell peppers for my husband all along, since they’re his favorites, but I no longer have to ration it out to make them last the week, now he can eat all he wants as often as he wants and we’ll still have enough to cook with.
Fruit: I can buy citrus, pomogranate, starfruit… all sorts of things we haven’t seen for a long, long time. Nothing wrong with apples, plums, and bananas but it’s good to have variety.
Next month: We’re going to start eating couscous again. And brown rice. And I can start cooking bread with rye and whole wheat flours instead of just buying what’s cheapest.
We definitely cut waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back on protein. This was actually a bit of an issue last year, when I was still recovering from a debilitating illness and sudden weight loss that also resulted in lost muscle for me - at a time I start doing physical work for a living. Protein, aside from some exotic fruits/vegetables, invariably seems the most expensive portion of the diet.
Beans and rice, or more generally, legumes and grains, are staples for the poor worldwide, but present complications for us as my husband is diabetic and thus needs to be careful about loading up on starches and I am allergic to many legumes, making quite a few beans/lentils/peas outright dangerous for me to eat. My husband has been eating beans when, for example, we have tacos so there is more meat left for me. Now he can have both beans and beef (he likes both). I buy the less expensive cuts of beef, chicken parts that cost less than fancy boneless breasts, and sometimes fish. As I mentioned, I do a lot of stir fry cooking, and budget 4 ounces or less of meat per person when doing so. I’ve done a lot of tuna salad and the like, and likewise budget 4 ounces or less of meat per person per serving. This is a LOT less meat than most Americans are accustomed to eating, but it’s not so noticable in a stir fry. I also mentioned cooking a lot of stew. I use broth/gravy and again relatively little meat, and again it’s not so noticable in stews.
The cheap but nutritious food is beans/starches, lesser cuts of meat that are stretched by various means, and whatever vegatables and fruits are cheapest/in season/grown on your own.
I think done properly it can be an eye-opening experience for people and yes, I think people should give it an honest try at least once.
I think the’re setting themselves up for failure except in highly unusual circumstances.
Um… not really. To begin with, this isn’t the first time I’ve been poor. I had to relearn some things, but it’s not entirely new to me. We tend to be frugal by nature, and I’ve always looked for ways to save money on food (which isn’t to say we never splurged). Since I have some practice at this no, I don’t have to do a lot of math in my head and it’s not exhausting in the way he describes. Like everything else, it gets easier with practice. That said, having to pass on a pile of lucious looking grapefruit or watermelon because it’s not on the budget is a blow to morale. I haven’t had watermelon for nearly 2 years because around here it’s more expensive than other fruits (either because I have to buy far too large a melon for our own needs, or because the pre-cut portions I can finish before they go bad are expensive compared to other fruits avaiable). Having to always go to the cheapest option grinds away at you. Food is one of the pleasures of life, having to constantly moderate that pleasure and never being able to indulge the sense of taste and smell due to financial pressures is discouraging and demoralizing. I suspect this is part of the attraction of junk food in these circumstances.
Prior to being laid off my husband and I had plans to visit Outback for our anniversary dinner. I had already planned to have steak and salmon, the onion appetizer, a baked potato with lots of butter on top, that black bread they serve and some Black Opal Shiraz. (And a doggie bag - couldn’t possibly finish all that!) We’ve been having that sort of feast to celebrate our marriage for a long time now.
It’s been two years. I still haven’t had my anniversary dinner. The last time I ate anywhere but fast food (paid for by someone else!) was at the memorial dinner for my mother, at a Mediterranean restaurant in the Detroit area. Fantastic food, sad occasion.
And I haven’t had any of the upscale loose leaf teas I used to drink daily. I buy cheap tea now. Sometimes when I visit friends or family I get the nice tea again, but it’s a rare occasion.
I bought some frozen dinners for the first time in months and months - just four of them. I can make my own, of course, but that eats up my time and despite being underemployed I really don’t have a lot of spare time. Being able to skip cooking from scratch some nights is really something I’ve missed.
Obviously, I cook a lot from scratch and that saves a lot of money. I probably grew a couple hundred dollars worth of vegetables in my garden this year. That might sound crazy, but it’s not. We were eating 5-10 pounds of vegetables a week during the height of summer, and I plant a wide variety. Buying those 7 types of lettuce at the store would not have been cheap. I had 4 varieties of snap beans. Cucumbers, turnips, beets, radishes, spinach, kale, bok choy, two varieties of parsley… it adds up over the course of a summer. I estimate saving $10-20 a week for 3-4 months.
No. I’ve been poor before. I used to pick up the free enlivenment cheese and goods back then. I used to buy food and donate to a homeless shelter back when I lived in Chicago. I used to work at a clinic where, among other things, we tried to help some of our clients get various forms of public aid. I have long known that food stamps do a lot of good despite there being fraud on the part of some recipients. I am a little surprised to find myself on them, but the possibility occurred to me when I was laid off. But I’m probably the exception.
I just though I’d write a little more on this, having a bit of time this afternoon
I read this gentleman’s blog in a bit more detail. I note that he said he did make mistakes in shopping, this being his first time on such a budget. He also spends time traveling, which complicates matters, and he didn’t do that much cooking from scratch.
Over a year ago I voluntarily put us on a very strict food budget just simply to stretch money. I actually looked up the food stamp allotment amount and used that as a floor, meaning I would expect to spend at least that much on food per month. Realistically, I was actually spending about $10 a week more person. However, I calculated that before the current administration increased food stamp allotments. As it happens, that allotment increase works out to around $42 a month. In other words, the food budget I’ve had all along had already been very close to what we’re getting on food stamps now. This, no doubt is why we’ve had minimal trouble adjusting.
Also keep in mind that Callebs did not accept food donations or gifts. Realistically, those of us on food stamps do accept such gifts. It would be foolish not to do so. This does relieve some pressure on us. Children would be getting free lunches at schools. Children and mothers of infants are likely also eligible for WIC. Adults might be visiting soup kitchens or food pantries in additions to getting SNAP. I had a garden this summer. However, all of these supplements to the supplement program either require additional work/effort, or rely on the kindness of others.
As organic food is typically significantly higher priced than non-organic they’ll run out of money long before the end of the month. Unless local food is cheaper the same thing will happen - but if local food IS cheaper than they’d be smart to buy such a thing. So when vegetables and fruits are in season then yes, buying locally may make sense.
One also has to consider that many foods in chain grocery stores might, in fact, be local. When buying locally cuts down on transportation costs stores might well do that. My local Meijer’s does list the produce from local suppliers and even lists where it comes from so presumably they find some good in doing this. Their prices are entirely competitive with other stores as well.
So, while I can see some purchasing of organic or local foods while on SNAP I don’t see being able to entirely live on them.
Again, no, but that’s because I’ve had practice at these things. If I didn’t know as much about cooking as I do, and if my kitchen was not as well equipped as it is I’d have a much more difficult time.
By the way - I made shepherd’s pie last night for dinner. The meat, gravy and vegetables were purchased via SNAP. The potatoes were reconstituted flakes that I inherited from when my mother passed away and dad moved in with one of my sisters and thus no longer needed a kitchen of his own (we got multiple boxes of that stuff, I used most of the last one last night. It took us about 10 months go deplete the Inherited Potatoes). Likewise, the pepper came from the parents. The parsley was from this summer’s garden. The pan … I don’t know, I’ve had it for decades, a big Pyrex backing pan. The husband had a couple rum balls for desert, said rumballs being a holiday gift from friends. I’d say that’s a typical reflection of how we eat - much of it purchased via benefits, a few odds and ends from other people, and the equipment either comes with the house (the stove/oven) or I’ve had for ages.
Thought of another one: sushi. I adore sushi, but it’s been off the menu for two years, it’s too expensive to justify. It’s a luxury, not a necessity. There are other, less expensive fish I enjoy and those are what I eat.