This is how much it costs ‘Meals on Wheels’ to feed one elderly person for a year

The administration’s proposed cuts target the Department of Housing and Urban Development and call for the elimination of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant, which helps fund programs including Meals on Wheels, which deliver food (and human interaction) to elderly, disabled and poor recipients. “The federal government has spent over $150 billion on this block grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results,”

“What the heck do you eat? Flour?”

Hardly.

Breakfast - store brand oatmeal (not that envelope stuff) or toast (store brand bread or homemade) or eggs. Eggs run about 20 cents each and 2 pieces of toast is 7 cents. To be fair - homemade jelly made with free fruit/juice plus the cost of sugar. Homemade pancakes are pennies. A banana is 15 cents. Average breakfasts = 50 cents.

Lunch - Usually leftovers but playing along so lets say a taco salad. A taco salad at Dairy Queen runs about $7, snort. Chop up some lettuce, onion, tomato, cheese and a wee bit of leftover ground meat and dressing so you’re looking at maybe $1.25 max. Or another meat salad is a twist on a Big Mac - a Big Mac Salad with lettuce, onion, pickle, homemade thousand island dressing (because homemade is WONDERFUL), ground meat and a slice of American cheese is also <$1.25. Same with a Coney Dog salad using a weenie and cabbage.

Dinner - Last night’s dinner for two+ (hubby had seconds) was a $3.52 boneless chuck shoulder roast ($2.97/lb so a bit over a pound of meat). A 59 cent can of beets spiced up for a ginger beet salad (ginger root from the garden). Four roasted carrots = 32 cents. Say $2 per plate and there’s one serving of beets left.

Dinner the night before was cleaning out the fridge with a rice casserole (9x9” baking pan) with the meat of one pork chop, 2 celery stalks, 1/4 of a lg. yellow onion, chopped pecans (free from our trees), 4 white mushrooms (45 cents) and a small can of store brand mushroom soup (89 cents). And homemade coleslaw (half a head of cabbage and 1 small shredded carrot = 46 cents) with homemade mayo (one egg yolk, veg oil, lemon juice, squirt of mustard, salt). All total couldn’t have been more than $3.75 and there’s another night of slaw left over.

I’ve posted many times before and left the copy cat recipe for made from scratch Schlotsky’s sandwiches. Homemade sourdough buns (the no kneed dough takes mere seconds to throw together) and all the fixin’s and homemade garlic sauce can be made for $1.50. Disclaimer - I only use two of the three meats because our town’s only grocery store doesn’t carry it but I can’t taste the difference. IOW, for the price of one medium restaurant bought sandwich, you can make 4 or 5. Hands on time is less than driving to buy them.

Two large (jelly roll pans) homemade pizzas cost $2-3 each. This size because 2 use up one can of 88 cent spaghetti sauce. The meat can be leftovers or splurge on $2.69/lb fresh Italian sausage.

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