The end of my food stamp diet..

Friday of last week, my "food stamp diet" came to a premature end.  With a car accident. 

Friday was a good day on the diet, until the accident, and I set about eating my normal rice, ham, and ramen diet.  But then I left work...

Another driver ran a yield and my car was left undrivable.  I had to call my wife to come pick me up, and on the way home, I just felt like junk food.

So I broke my food stamp diet, with the worst food I could find.  LJS.  Long John Silver's.

Fried fish, french fries, and "crumbs"  ..

Anyways, this isn't overall indictment of my attempt at living on food stamps, because I had plenty of food left.  I just, wanted junk food, was in a wreck, so I had some. Had I not had the money to buy LJS, I would have gladly went home and eaten my ham and chicken. 

So, now this blog will likely take a turn, towards my more "normal"cooking activities.

On being resourceful... ie my biggest regret

My biggest regret so far is the promise to my wife not to kill anything for food (I have no doubt she was right to make this request, it would just.. be easier if I could).

A couple of days ago I took a walk over my lunch hour by a stream near my building.  On the walk, I saw a few edible things I could have picked up, notably some freshwater mussels (ok those are actually gross) and some wild growing walnuts. 

If I could forage for food this whole thing wouldn't be difficult at all. In fact, it would have been much easier to do this in summer when my vegetable garden was growing.  It's interesting to consider what degree people in poverty could have access to these high quality food sources. 

For a few years I lived in north east Wichita, and can remember seeing people, quite obviously in poverty, fishing in area ponds and lakes.   Were they actually supplementing their diet this way, or was it just a cheap form of recreation?

 I didn't pick up any walnuts.  Nor dig out any fresh water mussels.  I'll do this the "expensive" way and buy my food. Time for lunch, ramen it is again... but I could be eating walnuts and fish, for free.

Day 4 summary.. food boredom

I've been full all week, but just starting to get bored with my food.  As a result, this is a bit of a boring post.

Yesterday's summary:

1. Breakfast: Rice and chicken
2. Lunch: Three packs of ramen, ham, carrots
3. Dinner: Ham and rice, kale black bean soup

The rice and chicken dish was somewhat new.  The chicken was cooked with a lot of juice in it which makes a good sauce for the rice. 

If I were poor, I feel like this is definitely something I could pull off long term.  It would be boring, but that's not a problem if the other option is going hungry. 

I really need to go use my last $3.50, just to pick up some fruit and vegetables.  Bananas? 

Oh yeah, and I've decided to end the challenge on Saturday night.  Mainly because I have a family Thanksgiving on Sunday, and my wife would be embarrassed if I showed up with a bowl of rice and ham for myself. Though it would provide for an interesting conversation with my father-in-law.

I think a thanksgiving dinner will be a grand way to end this week-hoping to eat until I puke.

Day Three Summary... eating healthier?

Day three and I'm starting to get in a rhythm with structured eating.  First my meals:

1. Breakfast: Rice and ham
2. Lunch: Sweet potato chips, carrots, rice, chicken
3. Dinner: Soup, ham and rice, the rest of the sweet potato chips

My famous "ham and rice"

So, the sweet potato chips went really fast.  I had started with three pounds of sweet potatoes, and went through that in basically two days. Tonight I'll head over to Aldi for some more vegetables... maybe even some bananas?

Luckily, both the ham and rice, and the chicken taste really good.  Though I'm starting to crave sweet things.  To be honest, the most difficult part of this is *knowing* that I have plenty of money, and knowing that I could go get a candy bar anytime I want.  So it's all about simulating "poverty" through suppression of urges.. at this point at least.   Oh yeah, and that 200lbs of beef in the freezer.

There are apparently quite a few people doing the SNAPChallenge nationwide (SNAP is what food stamps are called now.. stands for SUPPLEMENTAL Nutrition Assistance Program).  So I've found quite a bit to read on it recently (some locals in my community are doing it, their comments found here)

The arguments I've found that annoy me the most show a poor understanding of economics.  Specifically, comments like "I can't imagine feeding a whole family on this kind of budget."  I'll probably write an entire post on this, because I can put together some easy efficiency equations on it, but feeding an entire family on $30/person/week actually becomes more efficient as you add members.

A few simple to understand reasons for this

1. More members = more opportunity to buy in bulk, bulk purchasing cheaper.
2. More budget = more purchasing = more variety, without additional cost.

This challenge would be much easier if my wife would have done it with me (though I don't blame her for not participating in my craziness).  I could have used her $30 to simultaneously buy larger portions at cheaper price per unit AND buy more variety in what I bought, and then splitting the dietary variation between the two of us.

Beef by the fractional cow

Worst thing about this food-stamp experiment week so far?

Sitting in my freezer is 200 pounds (1/4 of a steer) of beef I acquired over the weekend.  I had one steak from it.  The rest of my quarter will sit for at least seven days before I can eat it.

Eventually,  I should calculate whether it would make sense to allow food stamp recipients to float dollars month-to-month so that they can save and make these types of bulk purchases.  Of course that game comes with other requirements (primarily planning and freezer space) but it is an effective way to acquire food cheaply.

Oh, and also in our freezer.  Five beef tongues.  Five.  Tongues.  After the food stamp thing is over I'll post on this blog my recipe for beef tongue pastrami.

5 cow tongues, soon to be pastrami

See.. the worst thing about cow tongue, is that you have to peel the taste buds off before eating...

Day 2 Summary

Day two went well, but little time for blogging as I had a busy schedule.

Here were my meals:

1. Breakfast: big bowl of plain rice
2. Lunch: ham with rice, a bunch of carrots
3. Dinner: chicken, sweet potato chips, black bean and kale soup, more carrots

Main thought of the day?  I was finally able to complete my cooking for the week so every meal doesn't have to be ham/rice/carrots. 

I roasted the chicken with chili powder, and pulled it all off the bone last night.  I also made the soup which is tasty, and means I'm at least getting some greens.  I think the soup could become a normal staple of my diet, but would need to add a few ingredients (an avocado?  some lime juice?)

Also, finished dehydrating the sweet potato chips, which are amazing.  Probably should have made more, but my dehydrator is relatively small. 

I still have $3 in my budget, so I may head back tomorrow evening for more sweet potatoes and maybe some bananas.  Who knows.  I already have far more meat than I'll need for the week.

I've noticed some other people taking this challenge who complain about headaches and difficulty concentrating.  I haven't had this problem yet, but I noticed I'm probably eating healthier than normal, with fewer processed foods and snacks. 

End of First Day Summary

Eating on a food stamp diet went well today.  Here's a breakdown:

Breakfast: Plain rice.  I've never been a huge breakfast guy, and this seemed to hold me together pretty well.
 
Lunch: Two packages of ramen with ham added.  A bunch of baby carrots. 

Dinner: Rice, ham, a few black beans, and some more baby carrots.


The food was good and mostly nutritious (save for the ramen), and I feel good sitting here at the end of the day. 

Also, tonight I cooked some of my meals for the week.  I don't really do recipes, but here's a summary of what I've made/am in the process of making:

1. Sweet potato chips:  peel, slice thin, and dehydrate the sweet potatoes.
2. Chili roasted chicken: take chicken parts, throw them in dutch oven with chili powder.  Sear the skin on stove, and throw in oven for a couple of hours.
3. Ham fried rice:  just make normal fried rice, except with ham.  Throw in some carrots if you're feeling daring.
4. Black bean kale soup:  throw cooked black beans, raw kale, and chicken broth from roasted chicken in blender.  Puree.  Eat cold.
5. Kale greens:  make traditional southern greens recipe, use chicken fat from (2) above, and some fatty left-over ham parts.

Third shopping trip and a plumbing problem

With about $7 dollars left, I thought I'd head back over to Aldi to spend a bit more, increase variety and maybe buy some spices.

But there was a problem at home.. specifically a clogged drain meant I couldn't really cook without flooding the house.

So I considered this the opportunity to attack the kind of issues that food stamp participants deal with quite often: eating cheaply in the face of adversity.

I could get the plumbing issue solved on Monday, but I wouldn't be able to pre-cook meals over the weekend.  I already cooked the ham, and cut it down into pieces, but I needed a strategy for Monday.

I remembered college cheapness.  One of my favorite meals in college was to take cheap meat (generally precooked deli chicken strips from Dillons) and put it on top of a bed of ramen noodles.  It was easily prepared in a dorm room without any actual cooking supplies-which meant I could easily do the same thing with ham at work tomorrow.

So my first goal at Aldi was cheap Ramen.  Found a 12 pack of the dry stuff for $2.

My meals for the week looked fairly bland at this point, I bought a bottle of chili powder for $1 to spice things up a little.

Finally I picked up some baby carrots (Veggies!!!!).

Here's another picture of some of my recent takes... 

Hey how'd that 12 pack of PBR get in there?  I live in Lawrence, KS (#lfk), it's a necessity.  

 And another receipt:

I have a little over $3 left for the week after spending $26.78 over the first three shopping trips.

Second shopping trip

After my first shopping trip I had already attained a ton of meat, more rice than I can probably eat in a week, and a few sweet potatoes.

For this shopping trip, my goal was variety.  And some foods that at least give the appearance that I eat more vegetables than meat.

This time, I headed to Wal-Mart.

The first thing I picked up failed the vegetable test. More cheap meat.  I found 10 lbs of chicken back parts (thighs, legs) for $7.  Americans like white meat, but in my opinion there's more flavor to the thighs and legs.  American preferences just make my favorite parts cheaper.

So now to the vegetables.  I'm not huge on the Kale-wagon, but I know there's a lot of nutrients in Kale, it's kind of tasty, and not horribly expensive.  I bought a pound of Kale for a couple of bucks.

Finally black beans, which are technically a legume, but for appearances I'll count as a  vegetable.  Hey, it's a plant, and fairly nutritious. 

To summarize I spent $11.08 on veggies and more meat.  Probably going overboard on the meat thing, but I'm from Kansas, and that's how we roll. 

First the kale:

And 10 lbs of chicken

 And the receipt

First shopping trip

To prep for this project, I looked at grocery ads for three or four days trying to figure out the best buys.  I segmented foods in three ways (the way I look at foods) at this point:

• Protein
• Carbs
• Vegetables/Fruits

For protein it was easy to calculate price per pound (because that's the way it's listed in ads) and determine the best buy.  The best deal I found initially was ham at 99 cents a pound at Aldi.  

For carbs, rice seemed to be the best buy at most stores, and also goes well with a lot of different foods-so I should buy bulk and use it in multiple dishes.  I also found the best buy on rice at Aldi, 3lbs dry for about $1.50. 

To round out my shopping trip at Aldi, I found a good deal on sweet potatoes, in 3 lbs for less than $1.

Here's a picture of my take home:

For this I spent about $11.50, pretax (9 pounds of ham, 3 pounds of rice, 3 pounds of sweet potatoes):

At this point there's more than $18 bucks left, and already have a substantial amount of food, just need to add some variety in my next few purchases.  I plan on making ham steaks, pork fried rice, plain rice, and sweet potato chips out of what I have so far, just to start out.

Only problem so far, I'm a little ashamed to admit that I intend on eating up to 9 pounds of ham in a week.

Food Stamp (Snap) Challenge-The Rules

Before I get started, I want to document the rules for my own food stamp challenge.  First, two rules provided by my wife (who serves as the official photographer of this blog):

1. No killing anything for food.
2. No picking up roadkill for food.

Both of these food sources are available to anyone including food stamp recipients, but due to my wife's concerns for my health, I gave in on both accounts.  Obviously the fact that she had to lay down these rules says a little something about my personality.


But my real rules for the week:

1. Start date: Monday  November 18th.
2. End date: Sunday November 24th.
3. Budget for the week:  $30 for any food consumed.
4. No accepting free food.  I work in an office with a lot of free food in the breakroom, for this week, it's all off limits.
5. No additional condiments.  I've read the rules for several of these challenges, and many allow condiments that you already have on hand, but I think I could make a meal off of the condiments in our fridge.  So, no condiments, unless I acquire them within budget during the week.

And it begins

I should probably provide some background on this blog, why I'm undertaking it, and what it will contain before jumping in.

For the most part, I've been inspired by recent news articles on the food stamp program, as well as my own "cheap" cooking.  More on my "other" cooking in coming posts, but the food stamp articles fall into two categories, one (washington post) that references the difficulties in eating healthy on food stamps and coming cuts to the programs, and two (ljworld) that shows "rich" people challenging themselves to live on food amounting to about $30 a week, like the amount a food stamp recipient would receive.

Although a lot bothers me about each of these articles and what they say about our society, I feel more challenged "solve" food stamp living.  In real life I work as an analyst building statistical computer models to solve real world problems.  I see problems, though different in content,  similar in structure to the food stamp problem.

Unfortunately I don't have enough supermarket data to build an algorithm that maximizes nutrition, variety and total food.  If I did, this project would be simple.  Instead I'll put together a generalized system of strategies to live on $30 a week in food money.

If I'm lucky, it might be a good resource to aid the strategy of food stamp recipients.  At the very least it's a fun project that fits into my cheap cooking habit.  Over time, this blog will likely morph into documenting my weird cooking hobbies.  As an example, here's a picture of a recent creation, beef heart seared in bacon fat, over a bed of onions.  (with, for some reason, chicken tikka masala on the other side of the plate)