Posted on 08/07/2007 11:00:37 AM PDT by NEMDF
Slice: Mother strives for healthful meals on a budget
Sandra Shepard has to make the $500 food stamp allotment she receives reach to the end of the month. She plans carefully so that she will be able to feed her family of five, including, daughter Macole Shepard, 13, and son Dominic Shepard, 10.At half past noon, the No. 30 rolls up. And the family's monthly marketing ritual is on.
Shepard's next three hours will be filled with comparison pricing and child pleas. It will wrap up with 33 plastic grocery bags and a crowded cab ride.
Not a suburban soccer mom's ideal afternoon, but Shepard doesn't mind.
The 44-year-old mother has no job, no car and no husband to share the bills. In her world wracked by financial instability, the monthly shopping trip offers a welcome bit of control.
The tricky part is stretching her food stamp allotment to feed her family of five.
Providing nutritious fare for a little more than $1 per meal per family member is challenging - and it's getting more so every month.
* * *
Grocery prices are soaring at the highest rate in years.
Not since 1980 has the annual growth rate of food bills been as high, said Steve Reed, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Fresh vegetables and fruit helped drive up grocery costs 4.6 percent in June compared with a year ago. That's faster than the 2.7 percent inflation rate during that period.
Combine the squeeze at the supermarket with increasing demands on time, and
we're all in danger of falling short of hitting the U.S. Department of Agriculture measures for fit and healthy Americans.
Consider: Only one in five people eats the recommended daily amount of fruit; kids eat less than half the fruits and veggies our federal government advises; and obesity in youngsters is on the rise.
Failure to pull it all off could mean low performance at school or work and raise a number of health problems.
Nationwide, roughly 26 million people receive food stamps on debit-type plastic cards. Shepard is among the 120,000 or so in Nebraska. Half the recipients are children.
For them, the challenge is magnified with every trip to the grocery store.
* * *
When the No. 30 reaches the No Frills intersection, several passengers quickly jaywalk toward the store.
Shepard pauses, her bad foot still smarting from a slip on the ice while walking home from a party in December.
The broken bones have temporarily exempted her from food stamp work requirements.
When she gets a job, she wants day hours. Her past night shifts, Shepard says, have left her kids vulnerable to the streets. Her 15-year-old son has been in the youth detention center for truancy.
Thirteen-year-old daughter Macole, however, is on the honor roll, a distinction mom boasts on a bumper sticker plastered on her front door. Son Dominic, 10, also is on track, and Shepard wants to keep it that way.
She instructs Macole to run into the Dollar Tree for deodorant.
"Ain't nothin' but a dollar, and just as good."
Dominic and his mom saunter into the cool market. It's bursting with brilliant colors and orderly shelves, a contrast to their public housing apartment.
Shepard mounts a motorized scooter. Dominic grabs a shopping cart, and the mom-son caravan heads to the produce aisle.
Mom bypasses bananas, examines strawberries and settles on a pineapple. "Dang," she exclaims. "Apples went up."
She bags 10 nectarines and, after a third thought, gives in to the pricey Bing cherries. "It's summer," she reasons.
Shepard draws the line at the Asian cocktail shrimp that caught her daughter's eye. Nix on the beef Twister Dogs her son saw on TV.
She chooses calorie-dense, generic fish sticks over the trans-fat-free kind. Sodium-plenty salami and smoked liver are in; two-for-$1 corn on the cob out.
"That's just ridiculous. I'll buy the frozen corn."
Key to staying within budget, says Shepard, is buying in bulk. Economy-sized ketchup and pickles. Pork chops by the carton.
"I don't really care for pork chops, but they're cheap."
The 10-pound pack of ground beef will make four meals: spaghetti, sloppy Joes, tacos and hamburgers.
Breakfast? Her kids like the taste of plain-label cocoa puffs.
Snacks? She buys four $1 boxes of gummy candies.
Shepard calls the eight frozen pizzas and two dozen $1 TV dinners "fast food" - they're the closest her children get to Pizza Hut or KFC.
More often, she carves her own nuggets out of chicken breasts.
"Anything a restaurant can make, I can make better," says the former waitress.
She learned the craft from her ex, who was a better cook than a husband.
Just when it seems nothing more will fit in the two carts, Dominic stuffs in 30 Kool-Aid packets. They have sugar at home.
Finally, mom lets the kids splurge on the spicy deli wings they've been eyeing. They're cold and must be microwaved at home. Warm munchies, just like paper products and alcohol, aren't allowed under food stamp rules.
On to the register, where a cashier honors the outside ads tucked under Shepard's arm.
* * *
Total price tag: $346.
Shepard calls a cab, then pores over the draping receipt.
Her food stamp allotment for the month is $500. She has yet to buy food items she saw for less at Walgreens. That will barely leave the $100 food stamp reserve she tries to save for midmonth incidentals.
"Those Bing cherries did me in," she concludes.
The family's separate $500 state welfare check pays for rent, clothes, toiletries and other nonfood supplies.
Fifteen minutes later, Happy Cab arrives and Shepard packs the trunk with bags. Jumbo egg and Ramen noodle cartons ride on kids' laps.
Shepard calls ahead on her cell phone to round up carriers.
Keith, her 18-year-old, meets the cab at the 29th and Parker Streets housing project. A recent South High graduate, he baby-sits his girlfriend's child while she attends school.
Monte, the 15-year-old, is a no-show. The two oldest live in Missouri.
Once inside, Macole and Dominic snap into action.
They remove all frozen items from boxes so more fits in the refrigerator-freezer.
They store meat and cheese in the deep freezer, which Shepard bought for $80 with her Earned Income Tax Credit. She calls it her salvation because it lets her stock up on sale items.
"We always had a deep freeze growing up."
Shepard fondly recalls her "spoiled" childhood on a Missouri farm with fruit trees.
She became pregnant with her first child at age 20, had another child but never married their father.
She wound up in an Omaha shelter seven years ago after escaping the abusive man she did wed. Here, she received higher public assistance benefits and was absorbed into public housing.
Despite being in a high-crime pocket, she is pleased with her four-bedroom apartment. It's on the outer ring of the housing development, and she says violence is worse near the core.
Nonetheless, summer requires extra vigilance. The same watchful eye goes for the family budget, since the kids during this break don't get free school breakfasts and lunches.
* * *
For now, anyway, the refrigerator is full. Everyone's happy.
Shepard is frustrated by her limited mobility, but there's a bright side: She'd be throwing together a lot more "fast food" dinners if she were working.
Indeed, preparing healthful meals on a food stamp budget requires time and planning.
Dominic lobbies for his favorite: weenie and bean casserole topped with cornbread. Low in nutrients, but tasty and cheap.
Mom's doughnuts - hot biscuits topped with powdered sugar glaze - will be dessert.
"We manage," said Shepard. "You just deal with it the best you can."
I wonder how much each of these barbecue chicken wing, biscuit-and-glaze, frozen pizza, gummi bear eating people weigh.
It's amazing that she buys all this pricey precooked prepared food when she sits around the house all day.
She certainly has time to make food from scratch for much cheaper.
And if you think about, having NO JOB so you would have ALL DAY to do things like clean and cut up the carrots, cook in batches, etc., etc. And sometimes at my house we eat beanie weanie or eggs or the $.99/lb chicken parts because that IS ALL WE CAN AFFORD. And I have never FELT SORRY for myself over it.
I couldn't tell you the last time we spent $500 on food in a month, including crap like soda, candy, and snacks.
She only gets 4 meals out of 10 pounds of hamburger? I don’t want to brag but I think I could get 8 meals out of 10 pounds. For the 3 of us when my son was a teenager I could stretch a pound of hamburger to 2 meals.
Shepard calls ahead on her cell phone to round up carriers....How much that costin’ me?
either did we...and we had 6 kids and a grandmother that stayed with us for a few years....
we ate apples...my mom worked occassionally picking apples so that is one thing we always had....
my mom made her own pizza, which was called "hot pie" back where I come from....dough and all.....she made the sauce by mixing tomato paste with a little water and oregano and other herbs or spices...we put cheese on it but never any meat...
she canned...she made home made soup....we had a good garden and we would eat tomato or cucumber sandwiches every day for lunch during the summer....
we had meatloaf...spaghetti...rarely did we have steak...maybe never.....
$500 seems like a lot to me.....this woman has nothing to complain about....
Maybe they are too fat to work.
“Shepard calls ahead on her cell phone to round up carriers”
Who pays for the cell phone?
The food budget does goe up in the summer, but I’m surprised her 10 pounds of hamburger only makes four meals. That’s 2 1/2 pounds per meal! For only five people? Ten pounds would be 10 meals around here ;-)
It’s too bad home economics classes are no longer taught in school. I think the mom in the story needs some advice, and I think the writer probably grew up in a home where pinching pennies on the grocery budget would have been exotic.
I spend $300 to $400 a week on groceries, but then again I pay for it....
btt
The only point made here was the cost of food is going up at almost twice the rate of inflation, and that was only for the month of June.
One could argue that the administration in Washington is not doing enough to see that people are getting access to the fruits and vegetables that they will need to help win the war on the epidemic of obesity by reading between the lines but you’re right, this qualifies more as filler as it stands.
“It’s too bad home economics classes are no longer taught in school.”
Shop, too. But that would be sexist. Better to have all those sex ed classes.
The oldest ones can work, and why is welfare paying for kids over 18 anyway - shouldn't they get their own welfare allowances? OR A JOB????
I am so tired of this welfare state of affairs in America. Too much Gimme and not enough Give.
Yep, she gets housing free, free medical, $500 a month in free food, no wonder she can afford a cellphone and a taxi ride. Wah, what a great country, where having a cell phone and digital cable (i'm SURE she has!) still allows you to be considered poor.
Shiite, she's better off than many honest people who work fro a damn living.
That's funny. I love cherries, but they're so expensive that I never buy them. I can't justify the expense. I try and rationalize, but it's just not worth the $4 per lb they cost. Maybe I need to get on food stamps.
“One could argue that the administration in Washington is not doing enough to see that people are getting access to the fruits and vegetables that they will need to help win the war on the epidemic of obesity”
I feed my family plenty of fruits and vegetables on less than this woman spends. But, my kids can’t have big bags of gummy bears at $2 per bag when I can buy 4-6 apples or a bag of carrots for the same price.
Yes and it did say she passed on bananas... generally one of the least expensive fruits. And she does seem to buy frozen veggies which are generally more costly than canned. So I don’t really think the administration in Washington somehow should be seeing that we have access to fruits and vegetables.
I will never forget being behind a woman in line at the store in Chicago who bought Salmon and Beef for her cat when they told her she couldn’t get the catfood for stamps. Oh yeah, she had a cab waiting for her outside as well.
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