Every Little Thing's Thoughts on Challenge Prep

9 days! Nine days until my Hunger Challenge week begins. I’m Stacy again, from Every Little Thing, and I’ve started the meal-planning process with some apprehension. Am I ready for this? Thankfully, I have the choice to participate in this challenge, but many do not. $30 per person isn’t much so I’m hoping to spend our $60 budget wisely while keeping our bellies full and bodies fed with nutritious, local food.

> Thoughts on protein: Though I’ve recently been trying to eat less meat (strictly for health reasons), I do enjoy the occasional burger and chicken breast. While meal-planning for the Challenge though, I’ve certainly found the cost of meat to be quite a hurdle in getting the most out of my $60. I’m also picky about my meat, so I’ve decided not to use this meager food budget as a reason to buy a 30-pack of hot dogs or canned chicken. Not to say I don’t understand why people do – a hot dog is better than a hungry belly.  That said, my goal is to use this $60 budget to create nutritionally-minded meals, as all natural and fresh as I can, and I think I can do it without processed meat.

The proteins I’ll look for include: beans, quinoa, lentils, eggs, tuna, and any cheap, quality meat I can find. “Cheap, quality meat” is a tall order,  but I’m sticking with my goal and not compromising my money if I don’t have to. I’m considering a pound of ground beef from the market for about $5. You can do a lot with a pound of ground beef and I think I can stretch it between several servings of chili and a couple burgers or addition to stuffed peppers.

> Thoughts on snacks: I’m a snacker. I love to eat my lunch in parts – yogurt at 10 a.m; sandwich at 11:30; chips at 1:oo; and so on. $30 per person doesn’t save room for a lot of snack food, so I’ll need to be more mindful of my meals, eating one large portion instead of many small ones. I will also have to eat leftovers, which I’ve had a hard time with in the past. Three words for that: get.over.it.

> Thoughts on the farmer’s market: Many, many people have told me that their farmer’s markets are much more expensive than their regular grocery store. My market can go both ways but I firmly believe that the extra money spent goes towards a greater good and better quality food. I would like to buy much of my food at the market for the Hunger Challenge – this won’t be entirely possible but I’ll do what I can. I already know I’ll purchase peppers, squash, onion, potatoes, and eggs from the market. I’m going to search for cheaper bread options (Companion Early Bird Outlet?) and will carefully price out meat.

> Thoughts on convenience: One thing I can’t deny – convenience goes out the window when you have a limited budget. No canned beans – you can make twice as many with a bag of dry. No individual packages of anything – bulk is cheaper (and less waste!). I’ll be putting more work into all our meals, but lunches specifically. Any individually-sized foods I buy are almost solely for our lunchboxes, so I’ll have to make better use of my glass Pyrex bowls!

My next post will have my budget and hopefully, meal plans. As you’re preparing for your hunger challenge, here's a question to think about:

Do you consider spices, olive oil, and salt and pepper pantry staples, and therefore don’t need to be included in the challenge?

(There’s no way to generalize for all people on food stamps but I feel as though nothing can truly be considered a pantry staple. I have had clients that literally have nothing left in their pantry at the end of each week, and spices are of little concern when you just need food. Salt and pepper may be the one exception.)

Hunger Challenge Introduction

People in America are hungry. Children in America are hungry.

An astonishing number of kids come home from school everyday and rifle through the cupboards, hoping that today will be the day they find a rogue pop-tart or or box of mac-and-cheese. An astonishing number of parents go without so that their children can eat a sandwich for dinner.

An astonishing number of people go without because they simply have no other choice.

So what do we do? We donate our time, money, and canned goods. We lament and empathize. We educate those that don’t know or understand. We do what we can.

But do we experience? Put our feet in another person’s shoes? Buy our groceries with another person’s budget?

This September, you have the chance to do just that.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Stacy and I’m taking the Hunger Challenge! I’ll be spending the week of September 18 – 24 eating on a budget that mimics Missouri’s food stamp benefits - $4 a day ($29 a week).  However, I actually live in Illinois, where the food stamp benefits are actually $5 a day ($35 a week).  Because I’m working alongside Feeding Illinois as well as Food Outreach, I’m setting my budget at $30 a week per person, as a compromise.

There are a few reasons why this challenge is especially meaningful for me. As a social worker, I’ve worked with kids who own one pair  of shoes, who have only a bag of chips for lunch, who go home to take care of siblings with a box of rice and the aforementioned mac-and-cheese. I’ve seen how hard their parent struggle to just…survive.

Another reason this challenge holds a special place in my heart is because of my involvement with Slow Food St. Louis. I moved to St. Louis just one year ago and knew exactly one person. Slow Food really helped me find a positive use for my time and meet some of the most caring and friendly people I have ever sat next at the dinner table. The Slow Food mission (“promoting fresh, local, and sustainably-produced food, biodiversity, and the preservation of food traditions”) is true to my heart and something I try to support in every aspect of my life.

So there you have it! Thanks to Food Outreach, I’ll be blogging on this blog as well as my own, Every Little Thing. Feel free to follow along here or on my blog (or both!). I’ll be blogging once a week until I start the challenge on September 18th, when I will blog daily updates.

(As mentioned above, you might also see me blogging over at Feeding Illinois! I’m supporting them in the Hunger Challenge as well)

My challenge motto? Educate. Participate. Challenge yourself.

The Joy of Eating

One reason I chose to become a dietitian was my passion for food. Some people enjoy learning about politics, marketing, or style...I want to learn everything I can about food.
I consider my place of "zen" when I have the opportunity to spend time in my kitchen creating nourishing dishes. I find comfort in grocery stores. I spend hours researching where my husband and I should go for dinner.
I find "joy" in eating. It is one of the pleasures of life.
Although I ate "nutritiously" throughout this hunger challenge and proved to myself that I could eat healthy on an extremely low budget, I can't say I found the "joy" of eating that I am accustomed to. I take for granted that every single day, I can walk into a food store and "splurge." I take for granted that I can savor a food and not feel guilt. This week, I had a very strict plan that I could not afford to stray away from and it felt constraining. I turned down going out to eat with friends. I turned down easily accessible food when I was hungry. I turned down going in for coffee with my running group because I didn't think I could handle smell of fresh brewed coffee.
Living on this budget separated me socially from friends, reduced my ability to immediately nourish myself when I was hungry, and in the end, stole some of the "joy" out of eating. Participating in this challenge for the second year did not make thing necessarily easier. $28 is $28 and it's restricting, it's challenging, and it's scary to feel hunger. I am blessed that it ends tomorrow. I think that this challenge goes beyond calling us to take action by helping to provide resources for the food insecure, but just as importantly, to give them moments of "joy" in eating.

A True Temporary Challenge

I vividly remember my meals during Food Outreach’s 2009 Hunger Challenge, and I haven’t eaten brown lentils since. One my frugal recipe ideas included a lentil dish that oddly combined mint, brown lentils, and tomatoes… long story short, it wasn’t good, and I ate a lot of it. A couple of weeks ago, when I saw an email from Food Outreach in my inbox, it sat there unopened for a couple of days. I admit that I was avoiding it. This hunger “challenge” is just that, truly challenging, and I felt guilty for not wanting to address the email. Many individuals and families in St. Louis and in our country don’t have the option to say no to this email invitation. They live it each day.
I decided to start my challenge on Monday the 13th. This year, Food Outreach gave us the option to choose the week in which we would live off of our $28/week, $4/day food allotment. I chose next week because I am not traveling anywhere, don’t have any visiting guests, and my husband will be on the road with work, so I only have to worry about feeding myself. This timing makes it easier for me to live off of a food stamp budget, but those that are food insecure don’t get to pick and choose.
Before Monday, I will be forced to plan out a week’s worth of meals, re-think any dinner plans with girlfriends, and peruse the newspapers for grocery sales. I already know from last year’s experience, that I can’t afford my morning caffeine jolt, enjoy an after lunch dark chocolate fix, or visit my neighborly restaurant Winslow’s Home. Doing this for the second year lessened the initial shock that I couldn’t afford these indulgences, but my hunger challenge only lasts one week. The following week I am back to mindlessly enjoying foods that others would think hard about before throwing them into their grocery cart or ordering off a menu.
Like last year, I plan on posting any recipes I try, but you can be rest assured one ingredient you won’t see on my grocery list are those brown lentils…