I don't know about that, but the mother is definitely not about to run any marathons any time soon.
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."
bing cherries, tv dinners, shrimp cocktail?
And what is healthful about TV dinners, Kool Aid and frozen pizzas???
I thought food stamps were just supposed to cover milk, cheese, eggs, beans, tuna, juice, peanut butter...stuff like that? Granted, I have to admit, I’ve never seen a food stamp...are they stamps?
No sympathy from me either. Cry me a river lady, I’d love to blow $500/month on groceries.
Who writes this stuff anyway?
She certainly has time to make food from scratch for much cheaper.Cheaper and tastier!
Monte, the 15-year-old, is a no-show. The two oldest live in Missouri.
Oldest child is a high school graduate. He should have a job and be supporting himself. (What do you bet the "girlfriend's" child is also his?) Second child is out of the house ... in Juvenile Detention, it sounds like, as well as in Missouri.
That leaves her with herself, a 13-year-old boy, and a 10-year-old girl. And nothing to do but cook nutritious meals for them.
They used to be coupons, but now many states have gone to an electronic debit card so the recipients won't have their precious self esteem damaged by being readily recognized as parasites.
To her credit, at least two of her kids have he same last name as she does. That’s unusual for this kind of story.
I don't know about that, but the mother is definitely not about to run any marathons any time soon.
Have to disagree. I live in Omaha, and my 15 year-old daughter had a choice between 2 jobs that she was offered, both working in grocery stores for minimum wage plus.
The jobs are there if the kids go looking for them.
We had that program here in Colorado as well--it's a federal government program. My husband kept noticing all these Mexican families heading into the school each morning. I just happened to look at the local school district's website and discovered the "free" program. They were feeding kids from anywhere from 1 years old on up to 18.
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 ;-)
Same thing at our house! For those of you who like to save money, there’s a great website: www.hillbillyhousewife.com. Lots of cheap menus, grocery lists, money saving info & good recipes too!
Perhaps this story will help enlighten others who don’t understand how their tax dollars are being spent. When we hear this election season how we must do more to help the poor, about how women and children are at the bottom of the poverty level, and how we must spend more to get them out of poverty, that we must have government health care for the poor remember this story. She gets help with her cost of housing, she spends more money on food than most of us, does her government housing include heat, air and water, she may have gotten free child care, free medical and dental. Makes sumcks out of thoes of us who try to support our families, then help to support her.
$500.00 per month? Is that before taxes, or after? Oh Wait! It’s tax free!. That works out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.70 per hour, taking into account our wonderful Government taxes and fees. That’s not even taking into account other welfare “freebies” which provide housing and addtional incomes. Since minimum wage is in the neighborhood of $5.85 per hour, there’s no incentive to ever get a job! She has 2 ADULT children. Why aren’t they supplementing the income? Notice that she has enough money for cab rides and cell phones, though.
She should have put those planning skills to work before she got knocked up 5 times.
True - and I had the ages backward: the boy is only 10, which means he eats about half as much as he would if he were 13 :-).
She has a four-bedroom apartment, too, presumably because she had all four children living with her at some point.
I’d rather live in a tent with my 8 kids than have this woman’s life, but if the news source is trying to make us think she’s “poor,” they’ve failed!
Walmart has cheepo brand seeds for a dime! Think about i, with a little labor and a buck, you can have your very own farmers market, and can the stuff to last all year. But noooooooooooo, she needs $500 for groceries, plus free rent and $500 for toilet paper and crack.
Drug testing should be mandatory for all wlefare types, with a one-srike & you are out policy, for life.
I thought I was the only one to eyeball the cherries and keep on walking once I saw the price!
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.
I spend about 500 to feed 4 of us but that includes household cleaning products and food and litter for 4 cats and 2 strays. Also we hardly eat out.
I also pay for it myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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