I was thinking more like caffeine pills.
The caffeine withdrawal is a confounding variable. For her to go without caffeine and blame the effects on her diet is a bit like going without aspirin or allergy medication or (if she’s a smoker) nicotine and blaming the effects of that on having to eat on $30/week.
On Trader Joe’s. I shop there every week, not for all my groceries, but for much of it, and the prices are pretty good. Comparable to non-Sale, store brand prices for most items. You’ll get a nice loaf of bread for 3, but they won't have a .99 sale on cheapo white bread that’s about to expire. Pasta is $1 a pound, pasta sauce is $2-4 a jar, rice and beans are reasonable. Canned goods are about the same as my regular store, PB and Jellies are less than name brand. Milk, eggs, butter etc are the same or less than my regular store. Frozen chicken and fish are nicely priced.
They do have too much space set aside for treats and snacks, there’s a ton of them all over the store, and they have too many holes in their stock to be a full replacement for a normal supermarket.
My husband and I get $283/month in food stamps, which comes to just under $10/day for the two of us. I buy most of my groceries once a month.
I try to spend $4 or so on meat per day, so about $120 for the month. I’ve found that pork chops ($1.50/lb) and chicken breasts ($1/lb) are way more economical than ground turkey ($2.15/lb) and of course hamburger is $3-4 now. Last month I got an amazing deal on pork, so we had pork chops or pulled pork at least every other day.
The rest of my budget is spent on butter, cheese, peanut butter, eggs, tuna, and veggies. I try to buy more canned veggies since frozen ones take up valuable freezer space and fresh ones go bad, but I also save part of my food stamps to restock the perishables once a week or so. I shop in the mark-down areas for both produce and meat and buy a lot of whatever’s on sale.
We eat a very low carb diet so no bread, pasta, rice, oatmeal etc. I do buy coffee and spices, mayo, mustard, pickles and stuff like that but I don’t run out all at the same time so it’s not a problem.
My father-in-law lives with us but isn’t part of our household for food stamp purposes. He eats with us about half the time and buys and prepares his own food the rest of the time. He also goes to the soup kitchen and several food banks. Most of what he gets from there is carby stuff that we don’t eat, so we pass that on to neighbors, but he will score the occasional ham and lots of garden produce in season.
When I first read the story about Gwynneth Paltrow, I thought “$29/week? No way!” But we don’t spend very much more than that and eat very well and are able to help out our kids and friends when they run short. It’s all in how, and where, you shop.
If we’re talking $29 a week for one person it’s quite easy to get sufficient nutrients from rice, beans, eggs, and maybe some chicken or canned fish. There’s also plenty for some onions and garlic and some inexpensive spices used conservatively. There’s always some inexpensive produce available also. It’s not good eating, no question about it, and for just one person with no other resources it’s difficult to get the economy of scale.
The problem isn’t that people can’t survive on that amount of money, the problem is that so many people have to do it for so long. Even for those who don’t mind such a basic diet they’ll be facing the high costs of everything else in life. It’s a disgrace that we have so many people barely keeping themselves clothed, out of the rain, and eating at a subsistence level.
We dropped $300 at Trader Joe’s yesterday. I shop there roughly once every six weeks. They are very good at certain things but very bad at others. The cheeses they sell are cheaper and better quality than my local store. Their tomato sauces are just as good and slightly cheaper by about fifty cents a jar. Bread is the same price and so are many items such as canned beans, butter, frozen vegetables and many of their cereals. The quality is also better than my local supermarket. Like another poster mentioned, we find their canned beans to be of better quality than what you get at my local supermarket. Same with items such as extra sharp cheddar, their frozen sweet corn and the challah rolls they have.
But we go there primarily for treats not staples. This is not a pace where I would go if were shopping on a budget. I can get much cheaper prices on pasta at my local supermarket. Same with certain items such as rice by the bag and meat like chicken. I go there primarily to buy frozen items for a quick at home lunch, quality (if limited) produce, bulk but again good quality chocolate, holiday items, seafood, excellent cheeses and party items.
If I were shopping on a tighter budget (food is one of the few areas where my husband and I will spend extra funds) I would go to Aldi’s, the local dollar store and stick to my supermarket because I can get better deals.
Yep. I don’t eat this every night, but often I just stir fry some garlic, onions and mushrooms, maybe add a few ounces of meat, make a sauce out of a bit of chicken stock (or white wine or both) with some soy sauce and white pepper and serve over rice. Quick, easy, tasty and cheap. You can add whatever you happen to have in the fridge.
When I was in grad school, I ate cheap, cheap, and cheap. Lots of chili (rice and beans with a bit of ground beef), pasta, chicken. If you have the time to cook, and you shop judiciously, you can get by on very little.
And, as noted in the other thread, the $30 figure is made up. Or, rather, it’s the average people get. But many of those people have some income. If you’re living solely off FS, then it’s more like $6.50/day or closer to $45.50/week.
And as they say, there’s the rub. Many people on food stamps don’t have the resources of good supermarkets, storage space, decent kitchens or time to make it work. I ate cheap when I was in grad school too. I was also doing work I loved and knew it was a temporary condition and all this would pay off with a career I was passionate for.
Too many chronically poor people lack hope, and that can drain the motivation to be creative and work hard to eat well on little money.
I was sharing a house with 3 other guys, so I got 1/4 of a refrigerator and one cabinet for food storage. Even today, I rarely use more than one burner when I cook.
I think it’s more of a chicken and egg thing. Which came first, the lack of motivation or the chronic poverty?
FRIED eggs, Mr. Rockefeller?! Ooh la la! Water’s free! Boil that bastard!
Yeah well I’m funded by pharma-shill AND Zion Nazi Jew money so those Rockefellers have nothing on me.
I’m sure it will differ in each situation, but based on my experience there are plenty of people in deep poverty working multiple part time jobs and trying to take care of families. I seriously doubt they all lack motivation to get ahead, which lead to them being impoverished. Do not minimize the effect the lack of any kitchen space, reasonable grocery stores, a reasonable way to transport groceries (no car or decent transportation) can make it exhausting to live in poverty for an extended period of time.
Sure, some of us did it for different stretches of time, but the bar shouldn’t be “well, someone was able to manage it and wrangle themselves out of poverty so most should” but rather “is it reasonable to ask someone to work hard to better their life while also working multiple jobs, have no decent healthcare, live in crime riddled areas (or whatever combination of roadblocks each family must overcome) AND fight to put decent food on the table”?
It doesn’t have to be easy, but does it have to be so immensely hard for the truly poor to get a leg up?
So on nights that you maybe DON’T add a few ounces of meat, this amounts to a condiment, poured onto rice. This won’t exactly keep a guy going, if he’s been pouring concrete or unloading trucks or stocking shelves all day.
I think it’s “crime-ridden”.
StG
If I understand you correctly, I see your point. Yes, it is easier to buy a half gallon jug of cooking oil if you know it will have to last you, as opposed to just slumming it for a week.
[QUOTE=IvoryTowerDenizen]
And as they say, there’s the rub. Many people on food stamps don’t have the resources of good supermarkets, storage space, decent kitchens or time to make it work.
[/quote]
That’s not much of a rub. I’ve been poor - I managed to get to the supermarket without a car, and I shared a house with four other guys. And I manage to cook while holding a full-time job - most poor households do not have any full-time year-round workers so they are no more strapped for time than I am, or a grad student would be.
Sometimes you gotta do things you don’t feel like doing. Cooking on a budget counts IMO as one of those things.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ve wondered what the government is doing with the milk and cheese they buy from the diary farmers?
Back around 1980 they started giving dried milk,cheese and rice away to anybody on SSI. I knew some families that got it. They even went to a free class and taught dishes they could prepare. I ate at my friends house a few times. Some of those rice and cheese dishes were pretty good. They had some chopped up chicken and green peas in it.
If the gov. has that stuff warehoused, it needs to be given out. Help people in need.
LOL That cheese rice dish with chicken and a veg must of been in the recipe pamphlet they gave out. I distinctly recall that exact dish at several friend’s home. Quite tasty and filling.
It would be a little expensive if people had to buy the cheese and rice with their food stamps. Unless they found the cheese on special.
The “S” in SNAP stands for “Supplemental”. SNAP wasn’t supposed to be the only source of food in a pantry.
I don’t know how much per month I spend on food. Not much. I spend more to feed the dogs, cats, horses and wild birds. I spend about $250/month to feed the animals. To be honest, I put more care into their diet than I do my own. I’m pickier than they are, though.
For my food, I shop at a store that sells close-outs factory overruns. I bake my own bread. Sometimes I’ll put up jams and preserves, but really, that’s not terribly cost-effective. If I had some strawberry plants it might be. I’m trying to drink more water, so my soda consumption is down. An average dinner might be a grilled cheese sandwich or a bowl of homemade vegetable soup or a George Foremanned porkchop. Lazy days it’s a ramen or a cheap microwave box. If I cook, I tend to make a big batch and eat for several days from it. If I get too tired of it, I’ll freeze the remainder, but mostly I have the ability to eat the same thing over and over and not tire of it. I don’t buy from the vending machines at work. I don’t drink expensive coffee drinks.
StG
If only they kept some sort of daily record…
I assume the gov. knows **exactly **how much gov. cheese and rice is currently warehoused. I haven’t seen any news reports about it since the 1980’s.
I don’t understand why they aren’t distributing it to the needy.