Food Stamps - Part 3

Living on the food stamp allotment of our renter carries many requirements, both physical and mental.

The first, and most obvious, is a stove, or at least a burner. After we asked the women to move because her rent was greater than her disability check and it became obvious she had no other income sources, she moved into one of the old motels that have been converted into efficiency apartments. The only unit available came with a microwave and bar refrigerator, but no stove.

She’s on a waiting list again and her rent will increase when a unit with a stove becomes available.

The last time I talked with her, my boss’s former tenant was searching second hand stores for a hotplate. Until then, she can’t cook her pinto beans.

For a dollar a day, she will have to eat things that require no cooking. A bag of dry cereal costs $3.00, a half jar of peanut butter is $1.00 and bread is $.88 a loaf. If she ate a third of a bag of cereal a day without milk, it would add 720 calories to the 410 she would get from peanut butter and bread.

Microwavable food isn’t an alternative. A pot pie cost $.89 in the local store, but only contains 390 calories. The cheapest frozen dinners are $1.25 and contain 260 to 280 calories. You need at least 1,000 a day to lose weight safely. 2,000 calories are recommended for most adults.

The bar refrigerator is adequate for left overs, although you can only make a couple days worth of pinto beans at a time without risking spoilage. Eggs, margarine, the citrus punch, even peanut butter, would all be fine. However, freezing food is impossible.

The choices I made for $39 a month require a larger pot for soaking and cooking beans or potatoes, and a smaller one with a lid for everything else. A frying pan is usually necessary to cook eggs. Some kind of flat metal is useful for warming bread over the burner: a toaster is a luxury. Beyond that, the woman needs a long handled serving spoon to stir the beans, a spatula for the eggs, a sharp knife to cut potatoes and avocados, a dull knife to spread peanut butter, a plate or bowl, a glass, and a fork or spoon to eat with.

One of the most critical things is a measuring cup. Although you only need to worry about proportions if you’re fussy about how your rice is cooked, you need to faithfully measure out each day’s portion of pinto beans, rice and lentils if you want them to last the time expected. That, in turn, assumes the first of the mental requirements: the ability to plan ahead and discipline oneself. Too many would eat too much too soon in the month and hope providence would provide.

The basic arithmetic requires both addition and division to divide $39 by 4 weeks. Planning for the inevitable 5-week month requires more math. Of course, one wants to end each month with nothing left on the card, and the surplus dry foods horded.

Buying the healthiest choices, and not living on pinto beans, wheat tortillas, and eggs, is trickier. Package labeling is difficult, and misleading. For instance, egg cartons carry no information. Protein isn’t mentioned on many but thiamin is, suggesting the latter is more important.

How does one sort through the deliberately obscure ingredients to know dextrose is sugar and if all forms of sodium are salt? How do you judge the benefits of what’s essentially sugar water with a dollop of juice and vitamins? How does one know riboflavin is good for you or the characteristics of potassium benzoate?

The woman is in her 50's. Even if she learned some of this in school, that was many years ago and much has changed. Xanthan gum was approved in 1968. I certainly have no idea what the food pyramid is supposed to tell me. It was invented after I graduated from high school in 1962. It was only in the late 60's that I learned protein wasn’t a simple ingredient, but required complementing sources, and that knowledge only came from a chance encounter, not much different than my meetings with our tenant.