So, today was the last day of my food stamp challenge.  I whined and complained sometimes, but I have to say that this was one of the best things, to date, I have done. Going into this I was scared I would not be able to pull it off and tonight I am very proud that I got thru it (and it didn't even kill me!!!) I am proud that it made news all across the country; I am glad that the media decided that this kind of awareness was important enough to talk about. This challenge, the blog and the articles were not about me.  The point of all of this was to share my journey so that others realize the struggle that people face every day.  I hope it has raised that awareness, even if just for a handful of people. 

Today I skipped breakfast and lunch, it was busy at work and I left early for an appointment. I got home about 8:30 tonight, made myself some plain pasta and am now sitting down to compose my thoughts about the last week.

I am not quite sure where to start; I have so many mixed feelings. I have learned so much more from this challenge than I ever thought I would.  In fact, a co-worker asked me the other day, "Do you think that this week is going to change the way you look at/think about food?" and it did not even take me a whole minute to reply "Yes". I don't think it is possible to live like this and not be changed by it.

I am a list person, so here is what I have taken away from this experience:

*My perception about the food stamp program has always been that it is not regulated enough, that people are allowed to stay on the program for too long (as far as I am concerned it should be temporary relief) and that abuse is not caught quickly enough - those views about this program have not changed.  I think as the economy gets worse people are more inclined to try to get whatever they can for free, leaving the people who are legitimately in this program for the right reasons with not enough money and leaving some people not able to get assistance even if they probably should.  I think that this is a great program, and teamed up with other programs can help someone in need of a hand up with exactly that, but imagine the possibilities of a larger allotment of money and/or more people being able to get help if those who abuse the system were removed from it.

*I don't think I really had a preconceived notion before about whether the amount recipients receive is enough or not, but I can tell you that I certainly do now. The national average is enough to sustain, but not for any long period of time.  The money I was allowed to live off of for the last week certainly kept me alive and fed all the time, but it certainly did not provide me with the nutrients I should have had or the variety that anyone would enjoy.  I suppose that if I was not doing this for just one week, my cupboard arsenal would continue to build a little so that some staples lasted longer than one week and some of the money could be spent on other things, but simply it is NOT enough.

*I believe that everyone who receives this assistance should also receive a class on how to be a smart shopper, how to coupon effectively (my friend shared with me a couple of days ago that she saved approx. $133 dollars using coupons during her last shopping trip (she spent 205, saved 133!!!!!!!!!!) (Thanks Shannon) and how to cook a variety of foods by spending the least amount of money possible.

*I believe that receiving this limited amount of assistance for a long period of time could lead to health problems including childhood obesity because the cheapest foods to buy are not necessarily the ones that are healthy for you.

*I have become so much prouder of my single parent friends for making it work all the time.

*I realized that by the end of the challenge I felt myself less hungry from meal to meal and able to get thru the day with only one Pepsi, but I am still not sure if it was my body was getting used to less food or if my body was just adjusting to the hunger feeling so it was not bothering me that much.

*I have become very aware of the price of food, the value of a dollar and the fact that I take advantage of the fact that I don't have to live this way week after week.

*I have learned that on Tuesday’s they mark down meats with manager’s specials because the sell by date is coming up and if you buy then and freeze right away they are perfectly fine and you can save quite a bit of money (Thanks Ashlee).

*I have learned that cup o soups are horrible, have no nutritional value, are not filling and are a complete waste of your money, even if they are 3 for $1.

*I have learned the true meaning of “give us this day our daily bread”.

*I have learned that some of our legislators feel comfortable making decisions about people’s lives and how to drastically affect those lives without knowing for a day or a week what those lives are like.

If I could send three messages at the end of all of this they would be the following:

1)     If you are not making ends meet and you are struggling to figure out how to buy food despite your best efforts to support yourself and/or your family, I urge you to apply for assistance.  SNAP, WIC, free or reduced breakfast/lunches at school for your children, food pantries, help from your local churches, etc… Do what you have to do to make sure that the people in your life are fed and healthy.  I found a free calculator online that helps you to determine whether you would be eligible for food stamp assistance; you can find that resource by going to http://www.snap-step1.usda.gov/fns/.

2)     If you receive this assistance and your situation has changed; perhaps you don’t need it like you did before, or perhaps you don’t need as much of it as you did before, please let your caseworker know.  There are a lot of people who could desperately use the help.

3)     If you are a politician about to make a decision that would cut the amount of money allotted to someone to feed themselves and/or their families, please think again.  Unless you are willing to live in their shoes, deal with the embarrassment some people feel for asking for the help they so desperately need, feel their hunger pains and experience their inability to purchase things you may never think twice about throwing in your cart, take a long look at what you would be doing to these people you know nothing about and what you would be doing to their lives.

One final thought …

The holidays are fast approaching, food pantries are drained and shelters/soup kitchens have more visitors than they can handle.  I know that it seems during the holidays that everyone is asking for help with every charity, but if every single person (perhaps even those receiving assistance) can find a way to add one can of veggies, one bag of rice, one $5 gift card or one bottle of juice to their shopping list, and drop it at a local pantry or soup kitchen, you will be helping more than you could possibly know.  Times are tough, but when you really look at your grocery bill, is there just one thing on there that you could live without so that a kid could be a bit less hungry one night?

Happy Holidays everyone – may this season find you warm, happy, healthy and not hungry!!

Until my next journey …

I did not get a chance to write last night so I am going to try to catch people up quickly before I head to work.

My power was restored yesterday (thank you PSNH for working around the clock, away from your families, and probably starving and tired and freezing).

I was in meetings all day yesterday and as the rest of the office ordered in bagels for breakfast and subs and salads and ice cream for lunch I ate my oatmeal and my cup o soup (FYI - as a reward to myself for getting this far I am going to eat oatmeal for breakfast and lunch today and I am hopefully never again touching those soup cups!!!!!).

When I got home and had power and was real hungry for dinner I was once again bummed to remember that I had no food left really because it has all been thrown away due to the power situation over my last few days - so I made some spaghetti noodles, added a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to them (since those things are all condiments and that is the only thing you can use that you had in your house before) and I added some of my frozen green beans that were not frozen anymore, but obviously did not kill me, and that was my dinner.  I ate an applesauce for dessert.

This morning I am awake now getting ready to go to work and I feel hungry, but I will eat my banana here in just a few minutes and my oatmeal at work and I will be fine.  I will eat oatmeal again later in the day before I leave work because I won't be home until later tonight where I will have pasta just like I did last night and then I will be done. 

I will write a longer blog later tonight after my final meal on this challenge.  I am excited that this is my last day and look forward to sharing some final thoughts about this week with all of you. 

Until tonight ...

I did feel like I was getting somewhere, learning how to eat smaller meals, more filling meals, make the most of what I had, make sure not to be wasteful etc... and now the snow storm along with the loss of power has made this nearly impossible.

Don't fret, I have not given up quite yet, but had my parents not instilled determination in me (thanks again mom & dad), this would be my last blog and I would be typing it from a restaurant while waiting for my meal - neither of those is the case.  I am typing it from a friend's house where I have come to stay for the night because I stil have no power and no heat.

Today when I got home from work I had to throw away the rest of the chicken I had left over in the refrigerator and the last half of the jar of sauce.  I have had no power since late Saturday and despite my best efforts to save the chicken in a bowl full of snow, it is gone.

So I went to work and ate my oatmeal and banana and for lunch I forced down another one of those stupid cup o soup's.  I worried all day long about throwing away the food I bought and tried to decide all day long what I would do for the remainder of this challenge.  I have pasta and rice left over, frozen veggies which are no longer frozen, but I am pretty sure they won't kill me if I eat them, and so I decided I would live vegetarian for the rest of the challenge week, but without power I have no way of cooking any of it.

I contemplated boiling water on a propane grill outside in the cold and then I came home and the firetrucks were there because my neighbor was caught cooking food for her kids on a charcoal grill in the living room of her apartment and the gas levels, etc.. were so high that they had to fan it out before it was safe to go back into!!!  I was not planning on cooking on the propane grill inside my apartment (although just because I know my parents are reading this blog I did call and ask them on Sunday if it would be a safe thing to do, to which my father quickly responded NO!! Now I know why!!!!) but at that moment I didn't want to use the grill at all.  My first reaction was "uh, open flame in your apartment cooking food and you don't see a problem with this" and then I realized that a couple days ago I had the same thought.  It is survival I suppose and in that moment today she was probably thinking that she needed to cook some food before it went bad and she wanted to feed her children who were probably hungry.  I hope when the firefighters made her leave her apartment because the fumes were unsafe for the children that she found a place to go, like I have tonight, to be able to eat and feed her children.

So I started thinking ... I am participating on a "food stamp challenge" not a "homeless challenge" and I understand that the challenge has guidelines but I am pretty sure that someone receiving assistance with no power and now no food would find an alternative way to eat, which is what I did last night and what I am doing tonight and any other night that I don't have power.  Does this make me a failure at this challenge? It might, but if it has I am quite confident that I have already learned my lesson - but I push on - and I will continue to eat at work and will continue to be fed by my family and friends until I have power again to at least be able to cook myself pasta in my own house, even if it has nothing on it now because that stuff is in the garbage.

A couple of comments by readers have prompted more thought about this challenge and about living on such a tight budget.  I have been reading over the last day or so about extreme couponing and I have read stories about people who walk out of a store with bags and bags of groceries for less than $20.  It is called extreme couponing for a reason and you have to be dedicated to it and watchful for good deals, etc.. but perhaps a class on couponing could be offered to those who receive assistance from state and federally funded programs so that the recipients can make more from what they are given.  Perhaps when you are given assistance you could be paired up with someone who has made it a habit to shop smart, cut coupons, scout out sales, etc..., kind of like a mentoring program.  This is a journey and a there is a learning period on how to make this money go the farthest it possibly can, maybe more time should be spent teaching people how to make a little go a long way.

Still nothing from the legislators I sent invites to - I wonder if they are reading this blog? I wonder if at the end of this week they will have learned anything from it?  I certainly know I will have - in fact, I have already learned so much!!!

Until tomorrow ...

So my intention was to follow this challenge to the letter of the law (or "guidelines" so to say), but mother nature worked against me today.

I ate my banana when I woke up, but come lunch time I was unable to eat my cup o soup (which actually is a blessing in disguise I think - I really am not a fan of those things) because I have had no electricity since Saturday night.  No lunch so now I am real hungry, but could not cook any of the food I bought on this challenge because I can't cook with no power.  So, I am at my parents house and I am going to eat and drink here tonight for free.

It's not exactly to the guidelines, although I think anyone in the situation of receiving assistance who can't cook the food that they bought would have to find a way to eat tonight so that is what I am doing.  The one thing I said when I started this and had these guidelines to follow was "well how unrealistic is this, anyone on assistance would accept a free meal if they were lucky enough to have someone cook one for them", but I forged ahead with the intention of following this exactly as it was presented.  Tonight I am thankful that I have someone to feed me (thanks Mom & Dad) and I am going to graciously accept their offer :)   A warm place to stay, a hot shower in the morning before I go to work and good food in my belly.

I was worried though that the chicken I have left in the fridge to cook was gonna go bad and that is the rest of the food that I have for the week so I took a big tupperware bowl, filled it with snow (thanks to the advice from a friend) and put my leftover chicken in it so that it would stay good.  It's not gonna freeze because there is no power, but hopefully it will keep it cold enough to stay good so that I can eat the rest of the week ... I fear that it doesn't stay good, what will I do then? I will have pasta and rice and veggies to eat for Mon-Wed nights dinners, but no meat :(   Here's hoping ...

This blog is creeping up on 100 hits, maybe it's over that now, have not checked since the end of last week, but I think it's great.  I hope that my experiences are teaching people that even if you have a negative view of the SNAP program that you shoud be careful not to make that a negative view on the recipients of the system -- not all of them abuse the system, I am learning that, and the ones that don't abuse it really do need the help; add mother nature striking to the list and I am assuming then the stress they already feel about things being tight are even worse, especially for those with small children to keep warm and fed.

Assuming the courthouse has power tomorrow I will resume oatmeal and a banana for breakfast in the morning.  Hope everyone is safe, warm and full tonight.

Until tomorrow ...

Perhaps it is because I slept thru breakfast, was home to make myself a little bit more of a filling lunch of spaghetti instead of one of those soup cups or maybe my body is getting used to having less food, but today was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. 

I realized when I woke up that I was glad I slept in because I brought the whole box of oatmeal to work and it is still there so all I have for breakfast food here is bananas.  I was up for a couple of hours and then made myself a pot of pasta, ate some for lunch and finished the rest for dinner tonight.

I think perhaps the trick to not being able to afford a lot of food is to make sure that you are eating small portions of stuff that really fills you up so that you can go longer in between meals.

I have been doing a lot of reading about hunger and the SNAP program, etc.. and I found what I think could be a really useful site, not only for those receiving assistance, but really for anyone who is living on a grocery budget.  http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/ is a website that allows you to select the food you have or the price per meal that you have to spend and then it gives you recipes.  When I plugged in $1.50/meal it gave me over 600 recipes!!!!!  I highly recommend everyone checks it out :)

Hope everyone has warm food in their bellies on this cold snowy night ...

Until tomorrow ...

Today was very frustrating!

I ate my oatmeal, I had my soup at lunch (by the way, the more of those I eat, the less appealing they are!!), I saved my banana this morning so I could have it for a snack tonight and I ate my applesauce later in the afternoon when I got out of a meeting, but I was cranky and hungry all day. 

I will not deny that normally I consume more food than I should anyway, which probably makes this much harder for me because not only am I not eating what I normally eat, I am barely eating what someone who eats normally would - blah.

I had a headache almost all day (even with the pepsi), as I sat in my meeting this afternoon my stomach was growling and at one point I e-mailed someone at the SEA office and whined about how hungry I was and how horrible this was.  Silly right? I mean, it's a week, I should be able to do this hands down, but it's hard!!!  At one point today I thought "forget this, it's just a challenge, people fail challenges all the time, i'll just order a sub for lunch" and then I realized that I would have to come home and blog to everyone that is reading this that I failed and that was not okay with me!  I feel like even if you are not participating in this challenge with me, by reading about my experience perhaps you are learning the same lessons I am, a lesson that we will finish together.

When I came home tonight I made chicken and rice and veggies and it was good and I am not hungry anymore, but even dinner, which seems to be the best part of my last couple of days, I am so careful making.  I normally would pour rice and if some spilled I would not really worry about it, but now I don't want the box to be empty too soon so I am being careful.  I need two bags of frozen veggies to last me all week so I am making sure not to eat too many - I don't think any parent should be having to teach their child to be light on the veggies because they have to last a while.

I am sitting on the couch now and really would like to eat a tootsie roll from a bag of halloween candy that I bought before this challenge started, in fact, I have caught myself picking one up twice already - but I am not eating it because I didn't buy it with my "food stamp money".  I know that it's just food and that I sound ridiculous right now, but it really is not easy, certainly not as easy as I thought it would be.  Perhaps this is good for me in more ways than I intended it to be!

I think that the weekend will be the hardest.  At work I have a desk full of cases to distract me (not that it seems that they did a very good job today).

I was telling a reporter the other day that my view of the SNAP program has not ever been a positive one.  When I was a kid I saw my parents work really hard every day to put food on the table and when times were tough they didn't get assistance to help them, they worked harder and longer.  Please don't take that to mean that I don't think people should be getting assistance, because I do.  I think it's not given out enough, I think it is sad that it is taken advantage of the way that it is and I am frustrated that there is not a better way to regulate it.  As an adult, I see families who really need this program who don't qualify while watching others abuse it.

I think that the next time politicians want some money, perhaps they should look at ways to revise the system to stop the abuse rather than stopping the services.  I cannot imagine, for the person or family that needs this program that it could be cut anymore without drastically affecting peoples lives.  I said before that I was silly because it's just food and for a week that's true, but for a year or several years, the reality is that food is a necessity and you can be thrifty and you can cut coupons and you can eat the same foods every day of your life, but they are still necessary and the ones that are good for you are still expensive.  Perhaps the amount of food stamp money should increase and the things you can spend it on should decrease.  Maybe you should not be allowed to buy halloween candy or valentine cards with a lollipop on them or cake mixes or chips and ice cream with food stamps, maybe you should only be allowed breads and vegetables, fruits and meats.  Maybe there is a way to hook recipients of assistance up with local farms who would be willing to take a small fee to allow for supplemental fresh fruit and vegetables since I don't know that it is possible to buy that stuff with this limited amound of money???

There has to be a better way - a better way to give people the help they need - a better way to survive on the help that you get when you really need it the most.

I am disappointed in the legislators that I invited to join me in this challenge.  I am disappointed that most of them didn't even take a minute to respond to my invite.  I am proud of the fact that I stepped way out of my comfort zone to do this and disgusted in the fact that they couldn't.  Maybe as a condition of the $100 a year they "earn" they should have to shadow someone affected by decisions their committees make!!??

Alright, I am going to eat my banana ...

.... Until tomorrow ....

Well, day one over and I am still alive :)

This morning I ate a cup of applesauce for breakfast and decided to save my oatmeal for later in the day because I had a meeting after work and knew I would not be home until late to make myself dinner.  I am not typically a breakfast person, but I snack throughout the morning at work.  I was not able to do that today because I could not afford snack food when I went shopping yesterday, it was basics and barely that!

I ate lunch around 1, a cup of soup made by Maruchen.  Not horrible for lunch, but not filling and not what I would consider healthy, I think there was more salt in that one cup of soup than I would use in a week and I love my salt. 

Made my oatmeal packet at 3:15 because I knew I was headed to the meeting right after work with no time to go home and make dinner first.  Normally on a night like this where I am headed to a meeting I would grab a sandwich at a convenience store or hit a drive thru and have dinner on the go, but all I have left for the week is 59 cents so that was not happening.

Went to my meeting which lasted from 5p-7p .. got about halfway thru it and my stomach was grumbling, all I could think about was this challenge and how this must be how a kid feels if they don't have enough food at home and how hard it must be for them to concentrate in school.  Then someone at the meeting said "do you know that the hunger rate for children in our nation's capital is 37%?" WHAT???!!!!  Can you imagine that 37% of the children in Washington DC don't have enough food??? That's not just 'oh mom i didn't get dessert tonight', that is REAL HUNGER! :( 

I came home, made spaghetti and a few meatballs from the italian sausage that I bought.  I feel full right now and I don't think that if I was not thinking about all of this and how some people never feel full that I would not fully appreciate how good it is to feel 'not hungry'.

So, that's day 1 - let's see what tomorrow brings.  A banana and oatmeal for breakfast, that I know for sure, because it's all I have for breakfast foods!!

I want to send a very special thanks to the media for recognizing how important this challenge is.  I really expected to just do this and write a blog about it for my union local, but if you google "A New Hampshire court clerk says she'll take a food stamp challenge to live on grocery budget of $31.50 a week" you will see that over a dozen newspapers and websites have picked up this story.  I was interviewed today and had a photographer snapping pictures of me too.  My human resource manager at work even shared with me that my story had made it to a newspaper in Indiana!!!!! 

I am proud to be a part of this, I am thankful that this is a challenge for me and not how I have to live my life every day and extremely appreciative of the huge lesson I am learning, even just one day in.

Until tomorrow ....

Okay, so people keep offering me free food and to have dinner at their house so that I can survive the week.  The offers are wonderful and greatly appreciated however there are guidelines set for the challenge and so I figured perhaps I should share them with my readers.  You already know what I am doing, but here is how I have to do it.

Guidelines are as follows:
1. Each person should only spend a total of $31.50 on food and beverages during the specifi ed week of Thursday,
October 27th through Thursday, November 3rd.
2. All food purchased and eaten during the Challenge week, including fast food, carry-out, dining out, coffee, beverages,
etc. must be included in the total spending.
3. During the Challenge, only eat food that you purchase for the project. Do not eat food that you already own (this does
not include spices and condiments).
4. Avoid accepting free food items from friends, family, or at work, including at receptions or meetings.
5. Try to keep track of receipts on food spending and take note of your experiences throughout the week.

Also, I did my grocery shopping tonight.  Below is a list of the items I purchased, and the grand total (do you think I pulled it off???)  Shopping was quite an experience!! On my regular budget I do not have the luxury of going to the store and buying whatever looks good, I shop smart and try to stick to a list, but it has been a really long time since I have had to add in my head as I go to make sure I don't go over.  It was a humbling experience to say the least and when I got to the check out and thought I had it all added up right in my head, I was still worried and feared the embarassment of having to tell the cashier that I needed to put something back (I was even going over in my head how I would tell her)!!

Okay so I bought oatmeal and bananas for my breakfasts, soup in a cups and applesauce for my lunches, a package of chicken thighs, a package of sausages, spaghetti, sauce, rice, frozen green beans and frozen corn, a gallon of milk, a container of drink mix and a case of water.  I was also able to get a six pack of pepsi into the mix so that my lack of caffeine headache would only rear it's ugly head for one day in the next week!!  I will eat the same things almost all week, but I imagine you would have to on this kind of a budget.  Allowed to spend $31.50, grand total of my shopping trip = $30.91.

A staff member at the my local SEA office has agreed to participate in the challenge with me, actually that person's exact words were "I'll try", but I appreciate the support.  I have had a few RSVP's from people declining my invitation, including one from Jeb Bradey which stated that because he is out of town on business thru mid-November it would not be possible for him to participate but that he sent his best and wished me luck thru my experience.

The upcoming week should be interesting!!!

Until tomorrow ....

Welcome to the blog of my Food Stamp Challenge.  I am just getting started and have never blogged here before, so bear with me :) 

Tonight I sent a formal invitation to friends, family, SEA Local 1984 staff and members of our legislature that serve on the Finance, Ways and Means and Health and Human Services committees.  I indicated to our legislators that I feel they are in a position that allows them to make decisions that affect the services provided to some of NH's lowest income families and so I invited them to participate in this challenge with me to gain some perspective before making another decision that could affect people's lives, especially if they don't understand, even a little, how they live!

I am looking forward to this and will blog as soon as my shopping is done and I have a grocery total - let's see how far $31.50 goes!!!