Rice is an incomplete protein. You need to mix it with something like beans and you now have a complete protein. Corn and beans are another example of two incomplete proteins when mixed together make a complete one.
You can also use lentils or peas and such instead of beans.
:rolleyes: Yeah, and maybe we can hire someone to whip them while they gag down their Ensure to make absolutely sure they don’t extract a moment of pleasure from life. After all, they’re poor, which makes them demonically evil and it’s our duty to punish them at every turn.
You have a Save-a-lot over there? You can get a normal sized frozen pizza for $1.50 a piece. It’s a good deal.
^ This.
Most of the time I was on food stamps - excuse me, EBT - I couldn’t cook in a crock pot because I didn’t own one. I didn’t own one because I didn’t have the money to buy one. If you haven’t been there you just don’t understand, but I seriously had some months where I had literally nothing left over. I was washing underwear in the sink because I couldn’t afford to do the laundry at the laundry mat. I was using baking soda (which can be purchased with foodstamps) for cleaning because I didn’t have money for cleanser or toothpaste. And you expect me to buy a cooking appliance? Are you fucking kidding?
Thank Og things got better (and thank you again to the generous Dopers and everyone else who helped me out and, among other things, enabled me to finally get a crockpot last December!).
And keep in mind - I was one of the lucky poor, with a real kitchen and my utilities included in my rent so I didn’t have to worry about increased bills from cooking all day 'cause, you know, whether it’s gas or electric running your stove a lot will cost energy and money. I also had a big enough refrigerator and freezer to store perishables.
I don’t know about the OP, but here in Indiana the EBT cards are light blue and have a distinctive logo. Once you know what they look like you can easily identify them.
Well aren’t you smarter and more industrious than poor people. :rolleyes: maybe my Mom is a worse person than yours, but your setup just wouldn’t have worked when I was growing up. To begin with, mom was dog tired at this point. And we didn’t have a kitchen table, just a tiny galley kitchen in the back of the apartment. So what would have happened is my small bit of home life would have been me watching tv alone while waiting for mom to emerge with a plate for me. She recognized that I needed a mom more than I needed a waitress.
I have plenty of soup recipes I can get on the table in 20 minutes (assuming I have STOCK which does take hours, but I would think is an ingredient) - they tend to use “convienence ingrediants” i.e. stock, canned beans instead of dried beans, frozen spinich. Bread also takes forever from scratch.
I don’t know if we still do, but some of my friends grew up on “government cheese” “government corn” (dried) and “government millet” - Millet takes forever to cook.
Incorrect.
When I was initially put on foodstamps I was required to look for work “30 hours per week” but the agency decided on what counted as “looking for work”, not me. The upshot was that I was probably spending 45-50 hours a week on job hunting but they only counted 30 hours of my effort, if that much. Another poster who appeared in this thread and I communicated extensively through PM and she was forced to look for work 30 hours per week in addition to working part time, meaning at least 50 hours per week working and looking for work, in some weeks more than that. If you did not comply ALL benefits could be terminated - a pretty harsh penalty if you’re utterly dependent on this aid for survival.
So yeah, I was under/unemployed but they terms of the aid I received demanded I spend at least 40-50 hours a week outside my home. In other words, I had no more time to cook than anyone who was working a full time job.
Please absorb this knowledge and consider changing your opinion in this matter.
I’ve been looking at this thread from time to time, and the players have lined up just as they always do, just like anyone else would have expected them to.
Once again, there seem to be the “I was poor in college but still made it” guys. Oh for fucks sake. If you were in college, how poor could you be? If you were eating cheap ass shit, it was your own fault.
Then there is the usual undertone of “why let them eat what they choose, if we can force them to buy substandard and overpriced ingredients, and cook meals from scratch” group. The ingredients CAN cost more than some finished product. Depending on how the ingredients are packaged, you may have to buy more than you needed, and the “left over” goes to waste.
There is the “poor people are poor because they don’t work, or work fewer hours”. Here’s something - many places (fat food places especially) play games with the schedules. The manager rearranges all the time to ensure no one works a full week. Why? The employees are part time and get no benefits that way. They’ve pulled that on people I personally know. They don’t work a full week, because the schedule gets changed to KEEP them from getting the 40 hours.
And then, there is the “poor people just suck, so let’s make them suffer” mentality. Yeah, right.
You know, my interactions with public aid have been neutral to positive for the most part, but I have that exact same reaction as well.
I suppose it’s as good a time as any to say that, after three glorious months of making sufficient income to not qualify for food stamps I may be reapplying on Monday. Oddly enough, I also got a lead on a part time job as well. My life is… interesting these days. But between the two my nerves are jangling.
Then again, feeding the poor is a helluva nice side effect…
Well, what you gonna do if there’s a flood or a drought or some drunken asshole drives an SUV through their garden? You’re also assuming poor people have a room for a garden. I happen to have the room (and a garden) but many don’t. Well, suppose if the poor gardener has a crop failure we can just let 'em starve. :rolleyes:
Or were you being sarcastic? I’m not sure.
When I said Iphone I meant… Iphone. Sorry if that confused you.
I think you’re being whooshed.
Honestly, if people make bad choices on food stamps THEY are the ones who are going to suffer. Like Sleeps pointed out that one woman. Yeah, she’d just go to the pantry, but eventually they’d probably catch on. Hell, you don’t need food stamps to waste money – you could spend your entire grocery budget on lobster and caviar. But you wouldn’t have any money for anything else.
And, as already pointed out, it is entirely possible she purchased an iPhone prior to an economic catastrophe that left her on foodstamps. Poor today doesn’t mean poor last year. There’s just no way to know if she’s formerly middle-class or higher and down on her luck, but still retaining items bought in the past, or a scammer of some sort.
Maybe it was a gift. Maybe she bought the phone before she lost her job. Maybe she had an upgrade coming and made a decision to buy it because she couldn’t afford or get broadband for her house and her kid needs to use the internet. Maybe it was a friend’s phone and he or she let her use it for the day. Maybe she’s been looking for a job so long she decided that email access while out was a necessity so she can jump on any contacts in real time. Maybe she got access to a cheap jail broken iPhone on ebay or through a friend that upgraded and is using it without a data plan.
Just sayin’.
I don’t have much of an opinion on food stamps.
But I’m a little tired of the argument that the poor are so stupid that they can’t figure out how to make polenta and beans. That they have so little time that throwing things into a crock pot is impossible. If they have such poor planning and life skills that these tasks are beyond them, they really need to be in a group home where someone throws institutional food on their plate. I think we do the poor no favors by assuming that they are so dumb that they can’t manage to boil water, bake a potato and that a microwave burrito and frozen pizza are the most we can expect from them.
Frozen pizza may taste better, it may be easier and quicker, and it may even be cheaper (though its hard to get cheaper than polenta and refried beans - polenta by itself outcheaps even ramen noodles - cooks about as fast, too). But poor people are NOT stupid people incapable of feeding themselves.
Illiterate peasants manage to cook for themselves. Certainly the American poor can figure out how to make oatmeal and scrambled eggs.
Most of them do. What makes you think they don’t?
A doper sport, slamming the poor. It is fun to slam the needy who are struggling. If you didn’t, you might find yourself feeling for those who are hurting. Can’t have that. So we will demonize them. They are evil and stupid . I have so much to teach them about how they should live their lives. Come sit on my knee and I will tell you how to be like me. But remember, the good things in life are not for you. Even a coke or a bag of chips is not allowed for the little people .
Indeed.
Giving poor people money for food is far more effective than any other way to stimulate the economy. The farmers benefit, as do the various ingredient processors, the brand, the distributors and the supermarket. Wages are paid at every step, something that doesn’t happen if the poor grow their own food.
Why does the Right Wing hate the free market?