Posted on 09/22/2011 7:36:30 AM PDT by Abathar
(CNN) -- That is the reality for the more than 40 million Americans who rely on food stamps. According to the Food Research and Action Center the average food stamp allotment is just $30 per week.
I began thinking about taking a food stamp challenge earlier this month when I met several women who we profiled on hunger for two CNN stories airing this week. These women had to make tough choices between paying bills and buying food. Often they skipped meals so their children could eat. Often the amount of food stamps they received was not enough.
Living on a food stamp budget for just one week won't begin to put me in these women's shoes or come close to the struggles that millions of low-income families face every day; week in and week out, month after month. But I do expect to gain a new perspective and a better understanding.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
OMG that lady is amazing!
I’m using her channel for homeschooling today. As soon as we finish math, we’re going to start in on her channel.
Wow. How many in your family? My daughters are grown and out of the house, so it's just Hubby and me. We eat pretty well, (Hubby grills a fabulous steak), but I bet we're under $250 a month. That includes what I buy to make the lunches I take to work every day. I don't think I ever went over $400 even when the girls were still home, and we were feeding four adults and occasionally my MIL.
You’re right.
There’s no reason people on the govt dole should be allowed to buy what other people paying their own way can’t afford to buy.
I’ve had to feed myself on chicken necks and rice more than once in my life, they can do the same thing.
Just four. A teenage boy and a husband who love crab legs, steak and sockeye salmon. That also includes entertaining and alcohol :-)
A teenaged boy will eat 1000.00 a month by himself!!!!! lol!
Ah, that explains it. I have a separate accounting for alcohol, but yeah, that would drive the budget up, wouldn’t it?
And heck, canned beans are the expensive kind!
Eat? Probably... it’s the bar tab that kills me.
Yep, though spinach doesn’t tend to come as a ‘head’.
Oh, that’s really nutrious.../S!
...grrr!
NUTRITIOUS!
Sure, you could do that. And you could be healthy too.
What would you do with 4 kids between the ages of 12 and 6? That diet, though healthy and nutritious, would last about 3 days with my kids. Threatening them with starvation if they DON’T eat their food would likely be reported to a school ‘guidance counselor’ and then further reported to DSHS as “abuse”.
That menu would last ONLY if you had an ‘iron grip’ on your kid’s behavior, as well as WHAT they said and WHO they said it to. You cannot spank for correction anymore. So....I don’t think it’d last very long before the kid’s complaints drove you stark, raving insane.
Liquid bread, worked well for the Egyptians so why buck a multi-millennial tradition...
Great thread.
I hear you! Hams are always very cheap around Christmas and Easter (always well under $1 per pound). Turkeys are cheap around Thanksgiving and Christmas (usually 25 cents or less per pound). I stock up on both when they are cheap, since I have an large extra freezer. I try to pick up 5 large turkeys and 4-5 huge hams when they are cheap and throw them in my freezer, and then cook one a month of each until they are gone.
I rarely run out of ham, but I do usually run out of my cheap turkeys around March of each year, just as the weather is starting to warm up, but I probably wouldn’t want to heat up the house by having the oven on all day to cook it anyway (My hubby tried cooking turkey on the BBQ once, but I haven’t let him do it since because the turkey wasn’t ready until 11 pm! LOL)
I always joke that I should buy and extra freezer just for my hams and turkeys!
LOL - We did exactly the same thing. Now we’ve moved on to The Dust Bowl Era.
If you can find her cookbook used, it’s a good find.
Don’t forget when Aldi’s has it’s Corned Beef on sale after St. Patrick’s Day. I picked up 8 for 69 cents a pound. It’s in the planning.
By myself I was able to make $18 a week stretch. Bologna, frozen fish, cans of tuna, store brand bread and macaroni with the occasional rice and beans loaded with store brand hot sauce. With my family, I might be able to make $30 stretch but there would be some complaining.
One thing for certain, we would be a lot slimmer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzspsovNvII
It's nasty! When I looked it up, I noticed Google's instant search feedback disabled itself. It seems to do that whenever it thinks some of the results are, um, off color.
I wonder if the fact that black people made such a piece signals a change for the better (or worse from Zero's perspective).
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