Remains of the Day

Sunday Noon

So I find I am having mixed feelings here as I finish SNAPfast.  It's been an unexpectedly intense experience, a holiday from the normal, and little bit of a quest.  Part of me doesn't want to go home to my normal routine.   Another part of me is equally happy that this over.  Its been a lot of work and a mental drain.  Luckily for me I have a choice.

The leftovers?  Two slices of bologna, most of the quart of milk, maybe half of the tomato sauce, and  2 cups of cooked beans.  All things equal, it was pretty close.

What am I going to take from this?  No single insight has been astounding, no one aspect has been life altering, and yet it does feel significant.  I'm really glad to have taken part and I certainly learned some things. 

 I do believe that it is possible to live off $28 per week, but not well.  I'm not talking living high on the hog, I'm talking basic nutrition.  I did get enough calories to sustain me, I didn't suffer deep hunger pains, I didn't have to skip a single meal.   Would I be getting a good, healthy balance of nutrients, to ensure I stayed healthy?   I doubt it.  I will admit that I think it is possible, but not practical.

If this were my budget I would not be able to cook dinner for a few friends.  Maybe I could offer them a bologna sandwich.  I would not be baking cakes.  I would not be preparing the Thanksgiving meal that most of us enjoy.  Not possible.  In fact, all the fellowship and celebrations that we enjoy that include sharing food would probably be darkened knowing that if I did use my budget for birthday candles, pumpkin pie, etc that I might not have anything left by the end of the week.

I have never intended this SNAPfast and the accompanying blog that emerged to be poltical.  I have been going for the experiential.   I hoped to open a window for myself into the daily lives of several million Pennsylvanians for whom food insecurity and nutrition are a struggle, and then I invited you to see what I was seeing.   It was illuminating fore me.

I learned that I like carrots.  I missed diet Coke.  I learned rice and beans could go a long way...a long and boring way.  I learned there are more people around me than I realized that care about these issues, and I am heartened by that.   Thanks all for your comments, your support, and your consideration of what this might mean in the bigger picture.  I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, if any.

Someone asked me if I was going to have a big brunch today to celebrate.   I decided on yogurt and some berries, and I felt really blessed.

Sexy Coffee

Saturday 6:00 AM

I woke up early this morning to the sound of singing…..an ethereal female voice keening something soft and inscrutable, but urgent.  It seemed to be coming from the front part of my apartment, so I stumbled curiously out of bed and to where my breakfast bar separates the living room and the kitchen.  The music became louder, more insistent.  I turned the corner and spied on my counter the most alluring kitchen appliance I have ever seen.  Her curvaceous pot, the proud jut of her water receptacle, and an inviting warmth emanating from her heating element all sent electric waves of desire through me.   My coffee pot was singing its siren song of forbidden and deadly pleasures.  Could I resist?

 

 

No, I couldn’t.

When I started SNAPfast I said I would not brew coffee at home, since I could not afford to buy it on my $28 budget.  Up to now I haven’t, but was always able to grab a cup first thing at work or at church.   Dear reader, I hope you will forgive, but I could not face this morning without a cup.

Today is day seven of SNAPfast.  I’m getting better at planning meals, so breakfast and lunch will be simple affairs of toast, the last of the bologna, and a half a browning banana that has somehow survived the week.  My final dinner will be a feast of the last of the chicken (I’ll have gotten three meals out of one package), some rice, the last potato, and the last of the carrots.   Unfortunately there is nothing green to be had at all, canned or otherwise. 

While I’ll save the retrospective of the week for tomorrow, one of the things I know has been underscored for me this week is the challenge of nutrition.  My belly has not been painfully empty  but it is clear that what I have put into it has not been all that healthy.   Yes, I’ve avoided cheese doodles and soda, but have listed heavily into the land of carbohydrates and starches.  I’ve done okay on fats….maybe slightly under where I should be, despite the bologna.  Sodium is a lost battle, blown beyond all reason, but you probably know that many foods have a lot of sodium lurking in them.   

Where I’ve really missed the boat is vitamins and minerals.   I’m way under where I should be on fruits and vegetables.  The jingle “4-4-3-2” from the Mulligan Stew gang in the 70’s (don’t remember it?  Look it up on You Tube) comes into my head, reminding me of what I learned in the fourth grade….that you need 4 servings of fruits and veggies a day.  I think today that number is up to five per day.  No way I’ve made that this week.   I did put fresh produce on my shopping list, and I purchased some, but they’re expensive.  As we have established the canned varieties have much less nutritive value. 

 If I were to not qualify for SNAP (to do so means a family of two cannot make more than 21K per year!) I would be eating out of food pantries, where there is a woeful lack of produce available.  While it is true that the persistent and innovative efforts of some here in Bucks County are changing that by collaborating with local farmers, we still have a long way to go.  In urban centers the problem is much worse.

Long story short:  People who have to subsist on food stamps or food assistance from pantries face a huge challenge in eating healthy.   This vulnerable population, often already with health problems, has an uphill battle to improve or maintain their health.  An inability to do so contributes to their being trapped in a cycle of poverty.    Let’s talk solutions tomorrow!

Thanks a latte!

 

Thursday 10:00 pm

Today I passed by the supermarket across from where I work.  Sometimes for Iunch I get a hoagie, chips and a drink.  It’s a “meal deal” and costs me five bucks.  It got me thinking about the cost of a single meal.  Doing the math and dividing $28.00 by 21 meals in a week, results in a figure of $1.33 per meal, almost one fourth of what I pay for my “deal.”    I also considered this from the other end, by that I mean estimating what I would typically spend on meals.   I figure $2.00 per breakfast is probably fair (although we have established that I am not a big breakfast eater, I do often grab a mid-morning something at WaWa.)   Let’s set lunch at $5.00 per day, and dinner four nights a week, if I cook at home, at $6.00 each and dinner out three nights per week, say 20.00 per outing (although it is sometimes more).   Grand total, if I did the arithmetic right, is $133.00 per week, which is $105.00 more than my SNAPfast week budget.  Bear in mind that this includes no snacks, no splurges, no diet cokes on the road, and no treating friends.  If I did the SNAPfast all year long I would save almost $5500.00.  Yikes!   

Since I am kicking around numbers, here are some other calculations I did:  My $28.00, if used differently, would buy me 8.6 grande lattes at Starbucks.    It would buy about 5 Happy Meals at McDonalds.   $28.00 is about the most I’ll pay for one pair of jeans.  $28.00 would fill my gas tank, but only ¾ full.   Maybe my car gets to eat better than I do.  What's up with that?

Trotting out statistics to dramatize one’s point sometimes seems sanctimonious to me, and that’s not my intent here.  Nor am I trying to inspire guilt.  I am just sharing what I discovered when I did math that I wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for SNAPfast.   It’s all about perspective, and when I am in the routine of my daily life, week in and week out, I think I lose sight of the fact that the way I live my life is not the ONLY way to live a life.   Ok…. I’m getting off the soapbox…for now.

When this week is over I’ll probably still eat at McDonalds some….and probably get a latte from time to time.  But I suspect the memory of this week is going to nag me a little bit.   And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

 

 

Flat Timothy

Flat Timothy


9:00 pm Wednesday

So my brother Andrew shared with his family (which includes a lovely wife and three boys) about this SNAPfast that I am doing and they had good discussion about hunger.  The next day I got this email from him about something my nephew had done: 

After reading the book, Flat Stanley in school, Thaddeus' class has a project to make a "flat sibling". Students take their  " flat friend"  [avatar] on spring break, pose him/her in pictures and write stories about him/her.      Thaddeus has made Flat Timothy.        I can only imagine that Flat Timothy will be revealed to have become flat because he only ate spaghetti, canned vegetables, and bologna sandwiches for a week.


I think I am going to cry.

What did the rice say to the bean?

Wednesday 6:00 pm

So today is day 4 and "steady as she goes."  Based on what I've eaten and what I have left, I think I'm going to make it to Sunday in relatively good condition.  Friends and colleagues have been sweet and solicitous, but it isn't really warranted.  I'm not suffering, but my choices are limited and I have to work harder.  I hope that I am not coming across as a martyr in this blog, because I'm not.

Tonight I am taking the plunge and doing the rice and beans thing.  I had to soak the damn beans overnight and now I have to simmer them for 90 minutes.  After all this, wouldn't it be ironic if they were just nasty tasting?   Did I mention that patience is not my strong suit?   The rice goes in for 45 minutes and then I guess I'll mix them together in a big pot. Sounds bland, so I will scrounge for something in my limited cupboard to liven it up.   I sometimes bluff and say that I am an "intuitve cook," but what that really means is that I don't have a clue what I am doing and I'll throw in anything that is handy.  Just like a gambler, once in a great while I'll hit paydirt--and that's what I remember.  The 95% of the time that it flops I conveniently forget.

So here in the middle of my week I will admit that this mini-journey, this exercise, this participant-observer experiment  has me really humbled.  There is much that I take for granted in my insulated middle-class life.  I suppose if the biggest challenge I faced on a day-to-day basis was eating off 28 bucks a week that I could adapt and do it under my present circumstances.  But, when I add to this, worries about healthcare, not having insurance, working in a brutal minium-wage job, and maintaining affordable housing all while having one or more dependents, I am simply blown away.  I guess what I am getting at is what I think of as the "cascade effect."    Every adversity that a person faces makes them more susceptible to other adversities in an exponential manner.  Those who are facing several at a time have the odds stacked mightily against them. 

I just sampled a bean from the pot.......and it tastes nasty.

I'm in love with....carrots

I’m in love with ….. carrots.

Tuesday 10:00 pm

I am tired.  Quite a long day and I just put the last dish into the dishwasher and cranked that puppy up.  I realize that feeling tired at the end of a workday is normal for most of us, but I am particularly wiped tonight.  One thing that I have noticed in the last three days is that planning and preparing meals, especially with an eye toward a modicum of nutrition and on a strict budget, requires a lot of mental energy.  This is a little bit of a stretch, so bear with me.   I am experiencing it a little like learning to speak a new language.   I remember being in Italy as a college student and spending days speaking only Italian and how totally drained I would feel at the end of a day.  Something that was normally effortless (communicating) suddenly became an effortful process.  For me so far the experience of obtaining and preparing meals during this SANPfast has been very effortful.   I am used to pulling into to the nearest fast food joint or convenience store at the first pang of hunger and filling myself mindlessly with whatever was handy.  No thought involved in that at all.   In the last three days I have been thinking about meals in advance, trying to figure out how to ensure I get some nutrients, making sure I am pacing my consumption of my supplies, and then finally considering whether I might actually like what I am eating.   This is exhausting!

Another note about consumption of my supplies:   I did experience a touch of anxiety today about whether I might run out of food before the week was over.  Would I gut it out if I did, or just chalk it up as a failure and allow myself an out?   I know that the consequences to me of “failing” here are academic, because I can just always run down the street and fill my grocery cart, but what about people for whom the stakes are real and for whom this is not an exercise? 

On a lighter note, I told my wonderfully supportive boyfriend Robert tonight that I had discovered something unexpected this week….that I actually like carrots!  Where have they been all my life???

Day Two, Meal Two

Day two, meal two

Monday 12:00 pm

Right on time, at 12:01 my stomach growls.  No, I never ate the mid-morning snack, so I haven’t had anything since 7:30 pm last night.  I probably should get out of the habit of going 16 hours without eating.  Looking forward to my tuna fish sandwich now.  Forgot whether to check if it was packed in water or oil. 

So it was tuna in vegetable oil, not the tastiest, but a good source of protein and surprisingly some vitamins too.   The can made one and a half sandwiches.  I was full after one sandwich, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to transport half a can of tuna home, so I finished it off….waste not, want not.   I had a nice golden delicious apple too.  Definitely ahead of where I was yesterday from a nutritional perspective.

Delayed Gratification

Monday 9:47 pm

Long day at work, but productive.  Instead of coming straight home I stopped off to sit in on a friend’s rehearsal and ended up getting home at 8:30, tired, grumpy and hungry.   I went right to work, grabbing things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter for inspection.  Checking on the rice and beans, I grimaced (ok..cursed) seeing that the rice would take 45 minutes to cook.  Patience with food has NEVER been my strong suit, hence I have always bought Minute Rice.   Tonight, tired and hungry as I was, 45 minutes seemed like an eternity.  Plan B.  I sliced a large white potato in half, skinned a large carrot, and broke apart one small head of broccoli.  I usually discard the woody stalk, but recalled that if it is cooked longer, it can become tender and not bad, so I kept it.  For a protein I decided to go for broke and pulled out the pack of chicken.  There were probably six “tenders” in the package, but it seemed like two would be an adequate serving.  Four different items require four different pots, pans, or steaming implements.  In the past when I was cooking for two I used to laugh that I could whip up a basic meal  (meat, starch, and veg) in 20 minutes flat.  Tonight I went for four, and got it done in about 25.  I browned the chicken, using a little butter and black pepper.   Okay, so I know browning chicken in butter is not the best way to live a long, heart healthy life, but I did not buy any oil and I am trying to do this thing by the books.  Talking to my mother this afternoon about the project, she encouraged me to allow myself some basics like seasonings and such, but my stubborn Irish came out…thus chicken a la butter.   Hey, don’t laugh…it worked.  

The carrot was tender, the potato hefty, the broccoli was tasty, and the chicken was really quite good.  By 9:20 I was really satisfied and feeling pretty good about the outcome.  Of course, the dishes are still in the sink and, curiously enough, the dishwasher hasn’t emptied itself.   It’s now 10:00 pm and I have to be in the office by 7:00 am.  What are the chances I’m cleaning up tonight?

Mexican Bologna

   Monday 7:00 am

Starting a typical week today.  As usual I leave only the barest margin of time to get myself out of the house and on the road to work, not eating breakfast.  This is not because of the SNAPfast, but my general lack of hunger in the mornings.   About 10:30 am I’ll start to want something to eat.   So, with no hitches I am out the door exactly when I need to be.  Until it hits me, about a quarter mile up the road, that I have packed no mid-morning snack or lunch.  I turn back and zip down my driveway, run in, and open the fridge.   What to grab?  I settle on the can of tuna, an apple, and a couple of slices of bread.  I should get some protein and vitamins from these.  It occurs to me that I am relying heavily on sandwiches, and as the bread to bologna ratio is 2:1 (two slices of bread for each one slice of bologna), I think I am going to run out of bread.    Happily, I remember that fried bologna was a treat as a child, so it might be fun to resurrect that as a breadless alternative.  Do you know that if you cut four little snips in the perimeter of the bologna and heat it up in a frying pan, the center will rise up, making something that resembles a Mexican hat?  At least that’s what my Aunt Carolyn called it when we were growing up.  Go figure….a mostly Irish kid from the south, eating a "meat" named for a town in Italy, fried up to resemble a sombrero.  Is that diversity or what?

Let the "Games" begin

Sunday 10:00 pm

Day one of SNAPfast was pretty mild.  I was sort of excited to get started and was feeling positive about the whole project.  When I got up this morning for church, I found I wasn’t really hungry, which is not an unusual thing for me.  I’ve never been a big morning eater, so I opted to not have anything before church.  I do generally have a cup or two of coffee in the morning, but I did not this morning since I had not bought any with my 28 bucks.   I did avail myself to a cup after church during coffee hour, then I scooted out.  I had a rehearsal from 11 to 2 and I knew there would be lots of snacks there.  To stick to my fast I decided to pack a bologna sandwich and take it with me.  I felt a little sheepish, like I was packing my lunch for school.  I did get a few comments about why I brought a sandwich with me, and when I explained to a few patient souls, they smiled and seemed interested.  I did find that I wanted to dive into the chips and pretzels they had laid out, but didn’t.   Later on in the afternoon at home I did feel hungry.  Being the lazy person I am, I did the quickest thing and slapped together another bologna sandwich.

By 7:00 pm I was hungry again and realized that two bologna sandwiches were all I had really eaten for the day, so I set out to make dinner.   Of the things I had purchased I was most interested in pasta, so I boiled some water, threw in spaghetti, and heated up store-brand tomato/basil sauce.  Realizing that I had probably not consumed a single vitamin for the day, I opened a small can of mixed vegetables.  They were not very appetizing, but I really felt I should have something, so I heated them up and seasoned them with butter and salt.   When finished, the meal was a substantial heap on my plate.  I ate the whole thing and generally enjoyed it.  I’ve never met a carbohydrate I didn’t like.  Cleaning up, I decided to take a closer look at the nutritive value of the vegetables, expecting to congratulate myself for a balanced meal.  I was chagrined when I looked at the can’s label.   The 8.25 oz can held “about” two servings.  Even though it contained carrots, peas, corn potatoes, corn, green beans, celery and limas, it could only claim to have 80% of my vitamin A requirement, followed by a mere 12% of Vitamin C. That’s it.  I thought vegetables were supposed to be good for you and were chock full of all sorts of healthy things.  I suppose I’ll need to read labels more closely.  What I did consume in this one small can was 24% of my daily sodium requirement.   I did not go on to calculate the amount of sodium in the pasta, the sauce, the two slices of bologna and the four slices of bread, but I have no doubt I was over the recommended limit by a mile.

So my first day was a mixed bag.  I did not really feel deprived or bothered by hunger, but the nutrition from what I ate was probably relatively poor.  If I am going to eat well I am going to have to put more effort into reading labels.  Tomorrow I’ll have something fresh.

SNAPfast

Hunger Games

Saturday 3:45 pm

I just returned from the grocery store in town, a pretty normal activity for me on a Saturday afternoon.  This week’s shopping trip was a bit different, however.  I’ve decided to participate in what’s called a SNAPfast.  For the next seven days I’ll be trying to live off of $28 in food, the average food stamp benefit per week.  I learned about SNAPfast last month, when it was announced in church by Father Michael.  I toyed with the idea of actually doing it for a while, but yesterday, while attending the Bucks County Hunger and Nutrition Coalition forum, “In Our Backyard,” I decided to go for it.  Impulsively I opened my mouth and shared this with my CEO, Jamie Haddon, who promptly tweeted it out to the world.  Oh boy…no turning back now.

First, a little about me.  My name is Tim Philpot and I live in Bucks County, PA.  I work for United Way of Bucks County, where my job title is Director of Community Impact.  I live alone in a comfortable apartment, have a new car (basic, but still new), and a lot of perks and conveniences.  I make a decent, living wage, typical for a non-profit employee.   I have a savings account that’s pretty healthy.  I’m not in debt.   I don’t worry about where my next meal is coming from.  In fact, eating out is one of my indulgences…probably where most of my discretionary income goes.  I’m not particularly health conscious.  I know what healthy food choices are, but I often am too lazy to eat well. 

You might be asking the question, why would I do this?   I suppose my motivations are mixed.  First, I am a person concerned about hunger.  In my job I’ve come to learn that about 10% of adults in my county are food insecure, as are 15% of children.  My church contributes to a local food pantry that sees about 1500 visits per year.  I also admit that my political leanings are way left, and I hate to see the gap between the ultrawealthy and everyone else widen so much. I see hunger as a symptom of this and it makes me mad.  Also, part of my job is being an advocate for the hungry, so I figure that it would be good to at least try to experience a tiny bit of what food insecure people actually live with on a daily basis.  Another motive is that I like a challenge, I like games, and seeing if I can stretch a dollar is intriguing to me.  Finally, if I am honest, I must admit a streak of darker motivation – denial.  A little voice in my head whispers things like, “Can it really be that bad?  Aren’t people just making poor choices and buying chips and soda and the like?   If they really shopped smart (like me) they’d be just fine.”  I’m not proud of these thoughts, and most of the time I don’t believe them, but occasionally they nag me.   It’s time to put them to the test.

So I went up to market and pulled out my smart phone calculator and got to work.  How far could I stretch $28.00?  I started with rice and beans, figuring that these would be relatively cheap and filling.  Then pasta and tomato sauce, followed by a few canned vegetables and a loaf of wheat bread (my Home Ec. Teacher mother would frown if I were to eat white bread).   For proteins I selected “meat bologna,” one can of tuna, and some chicken breast filets.  In the dairy section I picked up a quart of milk and a small tub of butter with canola oil.  I’m not sure why I picked that particular item, except it was on sale and I figured everything else I was purchasing was really bland, so some butter would hopefully improve the taste.  I rounded off my list with some produce, including two small broccoli crowns, two white potatoes, a bag of raw carrots, two apples, and a tangerine.  I was hoping to get a bag of oranges, but realized I was overshooting the $28 mark, so I settled for one rather anemic tangerine.  I hope you can’t develop scurvy in a week.

Here’s what I didn’t buy:  soda, dessert, frozen dinners, sauces, yogurt, cookies, pretzels, or hummus. There is no beef in the haul, unless you count a little bit mixed into the bologna.  I did consider buying a whole chicken, but I’ve never cooked one and thought that this perhaps wasn’t the time to start.  I considered, but decided against frozen chicken backs (I’m not kidding).   Spam was also kind of expensive, so I skipped that as well.  No, I normally don’t eat spam, but I suppose I’ve heard the stereotype that people on a tight budget sometimes do.  I notice that about 80% of my purchase is store brand products.  I didn’t really plan that out, but went for what seemed cheapest in most cases.

On this trip I resisted buying anything else.  No toilet paper, dish soap or greeting cards.  Although I’m starting the fast tomorrow, I didn’t buy a big meal for tonight.  Either I’ll chow down on what’s left laying around my fridge, or I’ll go out. 

Finally I took the cart up to the checkout and rang myself up.  $28.01.   How did that happen?  I was certain I was under the mark.  I decide to give myself one cent of grace.  Impulsively I ask the clerk to take my picture.  I’m no good at selfies.  She treats it like a bizarre request (doesn’t everyone do this in the grocery store?) but complies.

Back at home I snapped a pic of everything laid out on my kitchen counter, cleared off two shelves in the refrigerator and packed everything in there.  I set up some rules for myself:  No coffee at home, but I’ll give myself permission to drink it in the office.  If, in the course of the day, someone in the office leaves a tray of cookies or a box of donuts in the break room, that’s fair game too, so long as I limit myself to one.  Everything at home left over from last week’s shopping trip is off limits.  I decide against doing a weigh-in…too dramatic.  I will try to write a little about the experience every day.  Not sure it will amount to much, but who knows.