Did you see Nourished Kitchen's "Food Stamp Challenge"

[pampered_mom]

I came across her post this morning and let me just say "Finally!!". I've been a bit disappointed with most of the discussions that take place when talking about nutrient dense foods and budgetary concerns. For the most part I've found them to be somewhat limiting. Yes, buying in bulk and direct from the farmer are fantastic options and yes, in an ideal world we'd all do that. Usually my concerns have been discounted or responded to with hostility (I'm still a bit confused as to why a particular farmer with our local WAPF group had to be so open with his personal attack).

I'm really looking forward to reading her posts and am especially intrigued by comments asking about if it'd be possible for those who face food allergies/sensitivities. As if I wasn't overwhelmed enough with dh's recent need to eliminate all sorts of stuff, I'm wondering that same question myself...and wondering if I could do it.

From the post:

The Assumptions

To keep us honest and on target, let’s assume a “worst-case”:

* It’s unlikely that most SNAP recipients have access to a farmers market, farm stand or CSA accepting EBT (this is quickly changing thanks to grants from the USDA) thus all shopping must be done at a EBT-accepting grocery store.
* It’s unlikely that most SNAP recipients have access to a food bank served with organic, local foods.
* It’s likely that many SNAP recipients are relying exclusively or close to exclusively on nutrition assistance benefits to purchase food.
* It’s unlikely that most SNAP recipients have well-stocked pantry to use as a reserve well, and must build one on budget.

The Rules

The $227 budget must supply:

* 3 Meals a Day for a Month for Our Family of Three
* 2 Snacks a Day for a Month for Our Child
* Only Whole, Unrefined Foods
* Everything eaten during the month must be purchased that month. In other words: you can’t rely on your pantry!

A number of the gluten free flours/grains and such are a bit pricey as it is, but I'm thinking the biggest difficulty/greatest expense is going to be on the fat front. If you can't have casein and you don't want to consume canola or soy products then for the most part it would seem that coconut oil is your best bet.

I don't think our local co-op takes EBT, although I could be wrong. Even if they did take EBT coconut oil is rather pricey there. It's still a bit pricey for those with limited budgets to order from MRH, but at least it's less so and anyway they don't take EBT so that's out.

So...if you couldn't have butter or coconut oil what would you get that would be widely available at your average grocery store?

[lil_miss_understood]

How timely. See my related post.
I've never seen that blog. Time to go check it out!

[pampered_mom]

I saw your post too. :0) Unfortunately, most of the substitutes that I can think of aren't available at the local grocery store (coconut oil, lard, red palm oil, palm shortening). It's all a bit tricky I say. It was so much easier with butter!

[JTA Mom]

Originally Posted by pampered_mom

So...if you couldn't have butter or coconut oil what would you get that would be widely available at your average grocery store?

I have a similar budget. I render my own fats. I buy conventional meats (I know, the horror! But we NEED a high meat diet, we don't do well as mostly veggies--btdt). So cheap ground beef. I pop it into the crock pot or large pot over medium-low heat. I get about 4-5 cups of pure white tallow, 6.5lbs of pure meat and the rest water/broth from 10lbs of ground beef. Not bad for the investment.

I also trim extra fats off of meats & store them in the fridge for later use. I kept the HUGE amount of fat when making lamb breast and use it when cooking.

I'm interested to see if she goes with conventional meats or cuts WAY down on pastured meat & goes mostly veg.

Ami

[lil_miss_understood]

They actually sell palm shortening at my Fred Meyer's.. not at Safeway though (which is more what I consider a grocery store than FMs is).

[JamieCatheryn]

Coconut oil is $5 a quart at my local Kroger, pretty close to the cost of butter. It's showing up more and more on the shelves, I think word is getting out. Many places have palm oil too. I have no clue how I'd feed my family on $227, our budget reaches twice that and I'm doing things as simply as I know how.

[lil_miss_understood]

Originally Posted by JamieCatheryn

Coconut oil is $5 a quart at my local Kroger, pretty close to the cost of butter. It's showing up more and more on the shelves, I think word is getting out. Many places have palm oil too. I have no clue how I'd feed my family on $227, our budget reaches twice that and I'm doing things as simply as I know how.

What would you use if you couldn't use coconut oil?
JTA Mom, could you tell me more about rendering tallow from ground beef?

[Juvysen]

Our teeny crappy neighborhood grocery store even carries organic extra virgin coconut oil. I was a little shocked at that, but it's nice that I don't have to go all the way to the high end grocery for it.

I love her blog... I got SO excited to see this challenge. I have a soft spot for finding ways that people can eat well even on a low income budget. My mom and dad were pretty poor when I was growing up (despite their college degrees) and yet we always had healthy real food on the table. It's possible... it just takes time and effort... and sometime ingenuity... not always easy to come by when you're in a position of very low income. My mom was an at-home mom, though, and I suspect we ate better because she had time to bake our bread and spend all day cooking a cheap cut of meat where if she were working we probably would have eaten more Kraft mac & cheese.... because we could afford it and she wouldn't have had the time to do more. But I don't really know.

I'd love to see more (free!) classes on eating well on a shoestring budget... I really think it could help a lot of people.

[Purple Sage]

Thanks for linking to that blog post - I had missed it. What a wonderful idea, and I can't wait to see what she does with it!

I also liked Dana's comments and glad you spoke out in support of them.

[crunchy_mama]

Originally Posted by JTA Mom

I have a similar budget. I render my own fats. I buy conventional meats (I know, the horror! But we NEED a high meat diet, we don't do well as mostly veggies--btdt). So cheap ground beef. I pop it into the crock pot or large pot over medium-low heat. I get about 4-5 cups of pure white tallow, 6.5lbs of pure meat and the rest water/broth from 10lbs of ground beef. Not bad for the investment.

I also trim extra fats off of meats & store them in the fridge for later use. I kept the HUGE amount of fat when making lamb breast and use it when cooking.

I'm interested to see if she goes with conventional meats or cuts WAY down on pastured meat & goes mostly veg.

Ami

Ditto. That is about my current budget. Well, it is $300 with 4 of us and 1 on the way, but $100 is going toward bulk shopping. But I do also have some pantry supplies- plenty of good fat- like the tallow I bought last month. I cut out of my regular budget to get enough budget for that and split it with a friend. I also have pastured chickens I bought this summer(I buy all at one time to save a lot of money) for part of our meat.

The rest of our meat is conventional as I cannot function as a veggie, especially being pregnant and there is NOTHING else to cut from the budget right now- we don't have cable or cell phones- dh takes leftovers for lunch. Our only bills are literally house, car insurance, electric, and phone/internet(no local access to internet- which I actually use a lot in various ways to save us money as a lot of the foods we eat I cannot get locally)-


It seems a lot of people that do it all organic on the cheap just go super heavy with grains- especially wheat and such. We have been supplementing with plenty of potatoes lately as they are cheap, but would love to be able to afford a wider variety of veggies. Hopefully, after the end of this after the birth is all paid for we can have a bit more breathing room. However, it still won't be anywhere near a lot of budgets. Lots of people spend more on their food than our house cost per month. I will definitely be looking for some different ideas.

[Magelet]

I am really looking forward to seeing this. There are two of us and our budget is a good deal larger, but its still small (and we're in a very high COL). also, there is a good chance our budget will shrink soon, so I'm really looking forward to reading how she does it. We've been trying to get away from grain heavy because while its cheap, it doesn't seem to be great for us. We can handle grains, but need plenty of meat and on weeks we eat really grain heavy don't feel as well.

[mady5]

All of the commenters speaking about needing meat reminded me of this post about paleo on a budget:
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2009/0...nsive-low.html
The budget is a little higher, but not that much more if you consider that in his family of four, each member eats 12 oz of meat, 4 eggs, and 8 tbsp of butter a day- my 4yo would eat a third of that at most.

[pampered_mom]

mady5 - The problem I have with his blog post is that it wasn't clear if he would have been able to purchase those items with an EBT card. Does a place like Sprouts take an EBT card (we don't have them in my area)?

Another issue I have with his example and potentially with the Nourished Kitchen challenge is that the results aren't necessarily conclusive. Meaning...just because they're successful doesn't mean that *everyone* would be successful. There are areas of our country, particularly urban areas, where grocery stores either don't exist or the ones that do have limited selection/high prices aka "Food Deserts."

The blogger in particular references a scene from "Food, Inc." where the family talks about having to eat at a fast food restaurant. I haven't seen "Food, Inc." so I can't comment specifically on that scene, but in spite of the blogger's dismissal a scenario like that isn't necessarily all that out there.

That doesn't mean that I don't think there's value in challenges/ideas like this because at the very least it's a start and could accomplish a lot towards making "traditional foods" more accessible to folks from every walk of life (and there are certainly other solutions to the problem of food deserts...like Growing Power in Milwaukee, WI - although I don't think they take EBT/WIC Farmer's Market vouchers).

I've always felt that there was some resistance to these kinds of discussions in the past amongst those who fell under the "traditional foods" banner...I'm glad there's some more openness lately due in large part I suppose to the economy which is unfortunate. It's not like folks with limited means suddenly appeared with the downturn in the economy. I'm at the very least grateful that the TF types on MDC have seemed to be more open in the past.

[crunchy_mama]

I don't know about Urban areas, we live rurally so that is a different set of issues. However, all stores that sell food around here take food stamps(even the discount/salvage stores). But things like using the Farmer's Market for produce isn't an option if you use EBT it is just a few people that do it on their own. So, my best option for cheap produce is whatever Aldi's offer. So, no matter whatever cheap things offered at the Farmer's Market- which is better quality- no luck if you are EBT. However, even on a limited budget I have that option because my budget is cash, so I can spend it wherever I want. Although, we cannot get these super produce deals like I see some getting on produce on Farmer's Market, I can get cheaper cucumbers and tomatoes though- no good luck on potatoes or sweetpotatoes though- they are $3 for a small box- containing about 2lbs worth. No greens of any kind available. corn is about the same price.

I would be shocked if a place like Sprouts didn't take EBT, but the bigger problem is if you live urban(from my understanding) is that the places to buy things just isn't available period. The places that are available are not a bad choice because they don't take EBT but because they charge exorbitant prices due to having a captive audience. But I could be wrong. I think for the people in those areas the big challenge is transportation to decent price stores, however there is generally public transportation in urban areas. I like rural, so without a vehicle we couldn't even get to anywhere to get groceries- let alone work. So, there are different challenges for different places. I think that often that does get lost for those who live in nice suburbs and such with plenty of access to a variety of options.

[crunchy_mama]

Well, I reread your post and think I was repeating a lot in a way, my brain is still not fully active this am.

I did check out the primal challenge, but it is not terribly helpful for me as our budget is considerably less than that right now.

[FairyRae]

Another way to get fat is to skim it off the top of bone broth--I do this w/ beef broth after it's hardened--works fine for sauteeing/cooking w/ etc.

My local grocery store also carries coconut oil and palm oil. Quite expensive though...

Also, making ghee out of butter might be a possibility (can take the casein and lactose out), although it takes 4 sticks of butter to make 1 'stick' of ghee.

This thread it awesome--I'm excited to check out the paleo on a budget link!

[Ruthla]

Rice is cheap and readily available in "regular" grocery stores. Cream of rice cereal makes a nice "bread crumb substitute) in meatballs. The rice flour is expensive, but I suppose I could grind it myself in the coffee grinder if I had to. Or you could skip all baking, and rely on whole brown rice with meals, use potatoes at some meals instead, etc.

I use a combination of olive oil and grapeseed oil, plus butter (butter is the only dairy product I can tolerate.) All are available in local supermarkets.

For meats, I buy a lot of canned fish, ground beef in "family packs", and whole chickens. When I'm less lazy, I render the chicken fat- but generally I just eat the meat fats WITH the meat.

I have to buy conventional meats, as there is very limited organic kosher meat available, and it's expensive. I don't do well on a low-meat diet- I don't tolerate grains or beans very well, although I can handle each of those once or twice a week. My budget isn't as tight as this challenge (I get more food stamps than the "average" she picked for this challenge) but it's still hard to stay within budget and still get foods that are healthy for all family members.

[Peacemamalove]

Great blog! Thanks so much it was just what I was looking for!

[AahRee]

I'd love to try this, too. Our budget doesn't have to be quite that tight, but I'd like to know we could do it if we had to. We spend way too much on food & eating out, and we have very little savings or "flex" - I want to change that. But, my husband has a HUGE appetite. I'm thinking that the sheer volume of food he eats might get us into trouble.

Also, does anyone know if her number is for food only, or for all groceries (pet food, paper products, cleaning products, etc.?)

[MamaGwynn]

Originally Posted by vbportraits

Also, does anyone know if her number is for food only, or for all groceries (pet food, paper products, cleaning products, etc.?)

It's just for food. You can't buy any non-food items with EBT. You also can't buy already prepared sandwiches and things of the like.