Food Stamp Budget: Proceeding

So, this food stamp budget thing is ok.  

For breakfast, I grabbed a handful of fruit (several plums) to throw down on my stomach full of nerves, because woah nelly, this teaching thing is a bitch.  The last time I took biology was in high school, and now I'm expected to teach 2 recitation sections of Mammalian Physiology to psychotic rabid premeds.  Imagine someone told you to teach 20th century British literature, with the only qualification being that you speak and read English.  That more or less defines the mess I've gotten myself into, and it is quite possibly in the running to make the list of The Top 10 Worst Things In The World That One Can Do.  

Danny had leftover bobka (cake) and plums with yogurt (from the fridge) for breakfast, and he had leftover stuffed cabbage, pot roast, and sweet and sour cabbage, mashed potatoes, bread with pickles, and finally brie and leftover cake for dessert. For lunch, I had leftover stuffing and lentils, and for dinner, leftover stuffed cabbage sandwich (toast, warmed stuffed cabbage cut into slices, a bit of mayo and ketchup to supplement the sauce) and leftover cake.  See, this leftover thing is getting in the way.  I think the only way to make it so I can see what $25 per person per week is really like is by doing it for several weeks.  Technically, the leftover stuffing was free; I took it along with stuffed cabbage, pot roast, mashed potatoes, and a whole bunch of cake home from Rosh Hashanah.  Oh yeah, and tomorrow is Yom Kippur, where Jews fast all day.  So really, this is one big cheat.  I can't bring myself to waste food by ignoring the amazing leftovers in the name of experimentation.

I'm going to do it again this upcoming week.

I haven't made beet salad or borscht yet, and I still have one pumpkin.  We have an obscene amount of bread left, and there's sweet and sour cabbage and about 2 servings of pumpkin soup still in the fridge.  My lunch finished off the lentils.  And might I add... anyone not blessed with bowel regularity ought to consider increasing their intake of lentils.  Seriously.  All you need is some sauteed soup veg, a very generous amount of lemon juice and chopped parsley, and some salt and pepper.  I'm addicted to it.  But then, I grew up in a house where lemon, salt, and pepper was the dressing of choice for, well, nearly everything.  

And by nearly everything, I mean normal salad, drained canned chickpeas, steamed zucchini, steamed broccoli, raw sliced tomato (plain and on sandwiches), fish (broiled, grilled, steamed), etc.  Seriously.  It's really good, especially with some chopped fresh herb and/or garlic.  Forget bottled salad dressing.  It's not worth it.

My assessment so far?  I think I had a leg up shopping in NY for fruits and veg and bread, not to mention Rosh Hashanah leftovers and Yom Kippur fasting.  The Food Stamp Budget will definitely continue into the upcoming weeks, but for now, the fridge will continue to be cleaned out by Danny and me because I HATE wasting food.  I'm going to keep this thing updated, with full disclosure of all food eaten.  (But only dinner tomorrow because of the fast.)  So, to whom it applies, I hope you have an easy fast.  :)

Soup-er.

Danny made pumpkin soup last night from the smaller of the two pumpkins. We followed the Good Eats suggestion of taking a meat cleaver and a hammer and tapping the back of the meat cleaver to split the pumpkin into quarters. The seeds were scooped, and the pumpkin roasted, as per the recipe (click link in "pumpkin soup" above).

We approximated the quantity of chicken broth (from leftovers of the previous week) needed, added a bit extra ginger (from a large chunk in the freezer), and omitted the heavy cream. It's just not necessary. You can get a very smooth velvety soup from just the pumpkin and broth. I'm not busting heavy cream, but I like soup to be something I can eat like a salad - i.e., massive quantities whenever I want, not have to think about whether it's going to make me sorry later, and be comprised mostly of veggies. I think of it like cold-weather salad, because I really love salad, but eating something cold and wet when it's cold and wet outside isn't the nicest thing. So, during the winter months, hot soup fills salad's place in my meals. We had nutmeg and the requisite honey in the pantry, and I have the leftovers for lunch with some lentil salad, a couple slices of bread to dip in the soup, some plums, and 2 cookies (leftover from the family get-together this weekend).

Not too shabby... :)

The soup itself is totally awesome, and if you're into butternut or acorn squash, Alton Brown says it works equally well with those veggies. Like I said, it's really smooth, you can adjust viscosity with broth, and keeping it simple on the flavoring front - nutmeg, ginger, honey, salt, pepper - allows the pumpkin to be a player, not just as something in which to throw spices. If I was craving some heat, I can see hot peppers not being out of place, but be careful choosing. Tabasco or Frank's Redhot have no place in this soup. You'd need some deliberate heat, not vinegar with some chilis thrown in for the hell of it. Your best bet would likely be some fresh chilis chopped up and sprinkled over top, or maybe hot pepper flakes, but stay away from vinegar-based hot sauce for this.

Last night, Danny and I had the pumpkin soup and some sweet and sour cabbage for dinner... so far, so good. And healthy. Rock on, food stamp budget!

Cost of Eating: The Food Stamp Challenge

I came across an interesting challenge last week, while flipping through a newspaper. A county food pantry was trying to raise awareness of hunger by challenging people to eat on a food stamp budget, $25 per person per week. I thought, "Wow, that's not so different from what I spend a week on food, give or take."

Unfortunately, Rosh Hashanah got in the way, and we had a week long foodfest, all the treats from the old country, until finally, on Sunday, after rolling out from my parents' house in NY to return to MD, Danny and I stopped at good old M&M Farms. We got plums, pears, 2 beautiful perfect pie pumpkins, potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, a bunch of fresh parsley, 2 boxes of mushrooms, bell peppers, 2 lbs of carrots, 5 limes, some lettuce, and beets, ready to resume a normal diet. All that amazing produce cost $30. Then we stopped at Rockland Bakery, got bread for probably about ~3 weeks to freeze for later, and that cost $13. And I thought, hmm. Maybe now would be a good time to try that Food Stamp Budget Thing.

I immediately failed, making tuna sandwiches out of pantry tuna for lunch. I don't know if pantry tuna counts, seeing as I didn't buy it with my $50. And if I divide the bread expenditure by 2, assuming our stash is depleted in 2 weeks (which it won't be, but whatever), Danny and I have spent only $37 on food for the week. And if I factor in a can of tomatoes and stew beef (because a batch of borscht is certainly in order), a can of Israeli pickles (for beet salad), then I'll be at around $45, with enough money for a 1/2 gallon of milk (~$3) to add to the weekly groceries. I'm also at liberty to add a bag of lentils for weekly protein, which clocks in under $1. We have eggs left over from last week.

I have a vision of borscht, warm lentil salad, sweet and sour cabbage, gingery pumpkin soup, pumpkin breakfast muffins (a pumpkin-y riff on the super-healthy bran, nut, and raisin filled version my grandma's been eating for 79 years... and hey, 79 years of bran muffin eating can't be wrong) accompanied by autumn fruits, baked potatoes, and sauteed mushrooms and onions to round out whatever needs rounding out. I forgot how much a box of kasha (buckwheat groats) costs, but I should check that because kasha is delicious, especially when it's loaded with mushrooms and onions.

I have to say, $25 per week per person isn't miserable. But then, if I shopped for food in Maryland, it might be. Fruit is quite expensive here. Apples can't possibly be more in season, and yet they cost $1.50 per pound. They're $0.99 per pound in M&M, and they have a very nice assortment of varieties; macoun, macintosh, and cortland. Bosc pears and plums - Italian prune varieties, large dark purple ones with green flesh, and the light pinky-purple ones with orange flesh also clock in at $0.99. Plums and pears aren't listed in the weekly flyer here in MD, so who knows what they cost. Bell peppers in MD are 4 for $5. Even if they are 1 lb each, that's more than $1 per pound, and they were $0.79 per pound at M&M. Granted, M&M and the local cheap supermarket here are equal for items like onions and in-season squash (even though I love pumpkin, I can't eat butternut or acorn because of a weird intolerance for assorted squashes and sweet potatoes). But I'd still take M&M because their onions aren't prebagged, and their food in general tends to last longer before turning to mush.

It's very curious. Peaches trucked from farms 45 minutes out are just barely underselling the supermarket ones. It's a pretty messed up system we have here in MD. But I will persevere with this foodstamp thing. It's not that far off from how Danny and I normally eat. If anyone else reads this blasted thing, are you up for the challenge? If so, please specify rough geographical location, because I want to know where people charge what for food.