Peter (my darling husband who is subject to my food whims) and I are thinking we want to do the SNAP challenge. Not sure what that is? I'd never heard of it until a super foodie friend posted a link to a budget food blog (Budget Bytes, which is awesome even if you're not on a strict budget) whose owner is doing it for the entire month of September. We're not that brave, so we're just doing it for the week of Sept 14-20 (making it slightly easier on ourselves than the website's suggested dates by allowing ourselves a weekend evening bookend on either end), and I'll keep the first blog I've written in since my college year abroad, mostly to track it for personal reflection. Basically, for an amount of time you decide, you commit to living on the same budget as someone "benefiting" from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). This amounts to about $1.50 per person, per meal. That's $4.50 per day people! In junior high, my mom would give me $5 per day for lunch, and I thought she was so unfair because it meant I couldn't afford the personal-sized pizza everyone else got and had to stick to the reheated bean and cheese burritos, or a bag of chips, or a frozen yogurt. Peter had a $7 per day budget while in early college, and he ate boxes of corn chips from Sam's Club (see allergies below) to fit into that budget.
I have to admit, the first thing I thought about when reading about the challenge was ways to get around it. I work for a well-known coffee company - can I accept free coffee since it's part of the work culture? Nope - against the rules. I have tons of staples in my pantry - can I use those? Nope - I honestly couldn't tell you how much they cost anyway, which defeats the purpose of tracking costs, and you're supposed to act as if you had to rely solely on SNAP benefits. It also happens that we have a few vegetables growing in our yard at the moment - not too much since I have a tendency to rip them out when they get your run-of-the-mill plant diseases (like aphids - ick), but we've got kale, tomatoes, and some herbs. Can we eat those? I'm still considering this one - the average person who lives on SNAP benefits is probably working several jobs and struggling to provide and care for a family. They don't have time to garden (and likely don't have a house with a yard large enough to grow much), nor do they have time to make the spreadsheet I've already started to come up with meal ideas and grocery lists for the week. That being said, we happen to live in Seattle, where there seems to be a community garden on every block. It's possible that even someone without a bunch of excess time would have access to some kind of fresh, local produce. The UDistrict food bank even gives out coupons to the farmer's market that is up the street. Jury's still out on this one.
Adding to the complexity of the challenge is the fact that Peter has a number of food allergies - corn, soy, peanuts, sesame, cod, cantaloupe and clams. Recognize those first 2 or 3? Yep, the filler items that seem to go into all processes (read: cheap) food. We joke that we're made for each other - I don't like eating processed food and enjoy cooking, and he can't eat processed food and enjoys eating. We'll have to change our eating habits without changing our eating restrictions. Planning on lots of beans and rice for this one!
What am I (are we...) hoping to gain from the challenge? I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes suffer from a lack of empathy. Like many people who have grown up in middle to upper-middle class families, I've never felt hungry because I didn't have enough food to eat. I don't always understand why people make the "poor" food choices - why would you go to McDonald's when you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables? Maybe it's because you're starving, but you're exhausted from working several jobs, and your kids are cranky, and McDonald's is a whole lot easier than trying to whip up a perfectly nutritionally-balanced 3-course meal, complete with a hand-carved radish rose. I'd like to better understand what people go through when they have to make hard decisions related to a basic need. On a more selfish note, while I pay a lot of attention to ingredients in the food we eat because of the aforementioned allergies, I don't pay a lot of attention to the value we get for what we're buying, or to the waste we create when I cook. We'll probably have kids in the next several years, and I want them to learn to be responsible individuals who are capable of making smart decisions about what they eat and why, and the best way to do that is to see an example*.
Back to that menu planning!
*Disclaimer: my parents taught me things like budgeting, eating healthy, looking at price/ingredient listings, etc. They had/have the same goals for me as I have for my future kids. That being said, I think we all get lazy, and just because we've learned a skill, it doesn't mean we always choose to exercise it (for example,I use the dishwasher, because washing dishes by hand is a lot of work). :-)
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