SNAP Challenge – Day 7: The Final Day

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week.

My family has decided to feed one more person at our table each day … Since we have four people in our family, we will feed an extra person by pledging one-quarter of our monthly food budget to our local food pantry.

I’ve reached the seventh and final day of my SNAP Challenge. It has been an incredible experience and I am very glad that I tried it. I started the Challenge with two goals in mind. First, I wanted to experience first-hand what it would be like to live on a budget of $4 per day for food for one week. A good friend of mine often quotes “Idealism is proportional to one’s distance from a problem.” Nothing helps you understand what someone goes through until you walk in their shoes, right? Second, I was hoping that the Challenge might bring the issue of food insecurity to the forefront of my thoughts for a while so that I could really dig into the issues in my mind.

Looking back over the week, I feel that I have achieved both of these objectives. At first, the planning process was what kept me thinking about food and budgets and nutrition. It was a challenge and I love a challenge. I’m also a planner at heart so that part came naturally, though I was surprised at how much time that planning took. The next thing to strike me was the social aspect of food and how limiting it is not to be able to share meals with others as we so often do to connect. Then the hunger started kicking in and I started to look deeper at how limited food would affect growing children and learning and concentrating. Of necessity, the week’s food variety was limited which in turn put limits on my nutritional intake. Toward the end of the week, this began to take a toll on me physically and brought to mind thoughts of balance.

I feel that, through this Challenge, my understanding and compassion for people who live with hunger in their lives has grown exponentially. I experienced moments of deep sadness, some anger and now resolve. My family’s food costs well exceed $4 per person per day and I would like to acknowledge that this Challenge has taught me that it is very difficult to maintain a balanced, nutritious diet on this budget. Therefore, my family has decided to feed one more person at our table each day. We will do so at an amount that allows for health and food choice. Since we have four people in our family, we will feed an extra person by pledging one-quarter of our monthly food budget to our local food pantry.

I also acknowledge that, though this will undoubtedly help, it will not address the societal problems that contribute to hunger. To that point, I will continue to work with Foodshare, Connecticut Food Bank, EndHungerConnecticut!, and others to effectuate policies in our state to lift people out of poverty and food insecurity and into self sustainability and security.

I also challenge others to try the SNAP Challenge. There really isn’t anything like experience to inform us. Many people have shared their thoughts and ideas about this Challenge with me. It has been a wonderful dialogue. Now, I challenge you. If you have a great idea, try it out. Take the Challenge and apply it. Don’t forget to share your experiences as you go along. We can all learn from you too. Thank you to everyone who walked through the Challenge with me. Your willingness to talk about hunger and what it means in Connecticut and the country have enriched us all.

As per my past journal entries, here is the nitty-gritty of the day. I will eat oatmeal with brown sugar for breakfast and then lentils and rice for lunch and dinner. Many of you have asked what I will be eating tomorrow, after the Challenge is over. I have actually been thinking about that quite a bit. I will start the morning with scrambled eggs with salt, pepper and parsley. For lunch, I am going to have a HUGE salad with dark greens, carrots, tomatoes, candied walnuts, radishes, sprouted lentils, apples, goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. My dinner plan is not to plan. I spent a lot of time planning the ins and outs of my meals this past week. Tomorrow night, I will do dinner on the fly. I am deeply grateful that I have the ability to do so.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 6: Trying to find a balance

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

I am sitting here, staring at the computer with a raging headache, trying to concentrate on what it is I might want to write in today’s journal entry. I’ve had this headache on and off for two days. I’m on the sixth day of the Challenge. I am finding that even when I eat enough so that I don’t feel hungry, I am still not feeling well. I can’t help but think it has to do with a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Today’s menu is much like the past few days: oatmeal with brown sugar for breakfast, lentils and rice for lunch, snack of peanut butter and celery, lentils and rice for supper. I’m going to eat another snack (peanut butter and celery) and see if it helps.

It helped some. Perhaps I am having trouble recognizing it when I’m hungry now. I am learning first hand how my stomach can be “full”, but I can still be “hungry.” I tried to think of a different combination of groceries that might have given me more nutrients and vitamins, but every combination I’ve come up with so far lacks either vitamins or minerals or lacks protein. I can’t seem to find a balance that gives me enough calories, protein and vitamins on $4 a day.

Speaking of balance, I want to acknowledge how much time it takes to learn the ins and outs of what foods contain what nutrients and vitamins, analyze a diet, find recipes for inexpensive foods, plan a menu, buy the food, make the food, and make sure the food is with you when you need it. Balance that with working full time, raising kids, helping out family, participating in your community and more and you really come to see how it might be hard to find the time to eat healthy when your resources are limited.

I feel so incredibly sad that there are some people in my own community and state that feel this way all of the time, especially children who are growing and trying to learn.

Well, balance or not, I have another two meetings to attend this evening. So off I go.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 5: A Challenge By Any Other Name…

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

After a fifth morning in a row eating delicious and nutritious oatmeal with brown sugar, we’ve decided that this should actually be called the “SNAP at you challenge.” Yes, I was a bit grumpy this morning. My mother, however, loved the oatmeal. I brought the one left over tortilla with refried beans and rice with me for lunch for us to share along with, yup, you guessed it, black beans and rice. I also decided to eat my second apple. Can you believe it? I forgot the salsa. Lunch. Bland but filling. I was so thankful that my mom didn’t complain. I might have gotten grumpy again.

I was pretty hungry this afternoon. We’re going to finish up the lentil soup tonight. I’m really getting down to the nitty gritty. Carrots…gone. Apples…gone. One more serving of black beans and rice that we’ll share for lunch tomorrow. I think I have enough oatmeal for the two of us through Saturday. I now have celery, some dried lentils, a few cups of uncooked rice, a few tortillas and peanut butter to work with. Oh yes, I have an onion and some garlic too. I’m not really going to count the brown sugar, salt, salsa and oil. The peanut butter is hard to count too because it is made with so much oil (ingredients: peanuts, peanut oil, corn syrup, rapeseed and cottonseed oils) I feel sick after I eat it. I don’t have much left anyway.

A month ago, I promised to make a large pan of baked ziti for a gathering on Friday (tomorrow). It seemed so strange to be making this dish that I will not be eating. It was even stranger to realize that it cost $12.46 to make. It smells SOOO good. I miss cheese. Even more than cheese, I miss salad.

A typical salad for me: romaine lettuce, a chopped tomato, a chopped carrot, goat cheese, glazed walnuts, and a handful of sprouted lentils, all topped with balsamic vinaigrette. Conservatively adding up the ingredients, that would come to about $6. Even a pared down salad without the nuts and goat cheese would run me about $3. If all I had was $4 to eat all day, that would never fly. I have the added benefit of having all of these ingredients available to me in my local store. As I understand it, there are many inner city neighborhoods that lack fresh fruits and vegetables in their little bodega grocery stores. Even if they are there, if you add up how much it costs to have a simple salad, I can see why some people would reach for other options. The only green I’ve had was a jalapeno and some celery.

I’ve had some folks question why I am sharing my food with my mother who came to visit me unexpectedly this week. I did so because that is part of life. People who live on the SNAP benefits have mothers who come to visit unexpectedly too and they have to make due. Though I’m not sure my mother will be running over here again anytime soon after the meals I’ve been serving her. I am quite certain she can’t wait to get home and have a banana.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 4: Analysis and a Visit

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

Analysis

Again, I started the day with oatmeal with brown sugar. I like oatmeal a lot, but I am having a harder and harder time putting the spoon in my mouth. Eating like this does lack a bit of variety. I know that eating a variety of foods gives you a better chance of getting the nutrients you need. I was feeling very hungry and tired yesterday so I did a little analysis of what kind of nutrition I was getting.

First of all, I want to say that it is not as easy as one might think to figure out what you are and are not getting in your food. The labels only go so far and I found the Internet only marginally helpful. I compared what I could find out to the 2010 Nutritional Recommendations from the federal government. What I found was a bit of a surprise to me.

I tried to pick foods that I thought were protein rich and very healthy. Despite that, I found that I got just over half as much protein as I should have over a two day period. I got almost as much carbohydrates as I should have, and half as much fat. It was much harder to analyze the vitamins and minerals, but it looks like there are two that are either too low to count or lacking altogether: B12 and vitamin C. The real culprit, though seems to be just plainly and simply the amount of food. For a 2,000 calorie diet, I was getting less than half of the calories I needed. I simply need to eat more food, preferably in the form of protein.

I find that particularly interesting because I am definitely full when I finish a meal. Therefore, I will need to eat more often. So today, I will add another mini-meal. I will have lentil soup for lunch, carrots and peanut butter for an afternoon snack and rice, refried beans and salsa in two soft tacos for dinner. We’ll see how that goes.

A Visit

I had the pleasure of an unexpected visit from my mother this evening. In the spirit of the challenge, she will be eating with me. We will both dine on the refried beans, rice and salsa in soft taco shells tonight.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 3: Hunger

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

Today is the first day that I have really felt very, very hungry.

I started the day with my obligatory bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of brown sugar. At about 11a.m., I started longing for lunch and feeling a bit tired. For lunch, I had an apple dipped in about three tablespoons of peanut butter. I chose a red delicious apple because I recently read an article that said the skin in a red delicious apple has more vitamins in it than any other apple variety. It filled me up at the time, but at about 3:00 pm, I got really, really hungry.

I felt quite sleepy in a meeting this afternoon and my stomach hurt.

My kids called to ask me if they could have friends over this evening and I felt so tired that I just had to say no.

I had to break down and have a bowl of beans and rice with salsa at 3:30 p.m. I am glad that I cooked it in advance so that all I had to do was heat it up. I’m not sure I could have waited much longer to actually get home and cook something from scratch.

I felt a lot better afterward, more focused, not as grumpy. I’ll have to see how eating this extra meal will fit into the weekly plan. I know I’ll need to eat again this evening. I have to give a keynote address tonight at 6:30 p.m. After that, I’ll have a bowl of leftover lentil soup.

I think I need to analyze the nutrients that I’m taking in. Perhaps there is something specific that I am missing. Once I figure out what it is, I hope I can meet that need for under $2.58. That is all I had left after my grocery trip at the beginning of the week.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 2: Craving Eggs

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

Day 2: It is hard to concentrate when you are hungry.

I woke up craving eggs this morning. I had oatmeal with brown sugar. One serving today. For lunch, I wrapped leftover black beans and rice in two soft taco shells with salsa and packed it away to bring with me to work. It traveled better than I thought it would. My colleagues went out to lunch together today. I did not. For dinner, I made lentil soup with onion, celery, carrot and the diced tomatoes. I missed putting potatoes and zucchini in it. I put in extra salt in place of the pepper, thyme and other spices I usually use. It is pretty good. Not great. My family had french fries with their dinner tonight. The smell was almost too much to bear. It was interesting to me that their three orders of french fries equaled what is almost a third of my week’s budget.

This morning when I was making lunches for the kids, my son, who is 11 years old, asked me if I could make him two sandwiches tomorrow for school. He was hungry after eating his lunch of a cheese sandwich with mayonnaise, tomatoes and spinach accompanied by a small packet of smart food (a puffed corn snack), a large cucumber from our garden, some ginger snap cookies and a cereal bar. This wasn’t just a sandwich with a slice of cheese, it had large chunks of mozzarella cheese in it. It seems that each day, he eats his weight in food. He is growing so fast. He told me it was hard to concentrate after lunch. It is clear to me that he would not do well on this challenge. Tonight, I’m thinking about the children in Connecticut his age that have no choice.

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SNAP Challenge – Day 1: Planning Is Essential

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. In this entry, Deb recounted the social isolation of people who are food insecure.

Morning Ritual

Looking at my schedule today, I realized that I was going to have to make the bulk of my food this morning since I would be gone most of the day (church, kids’ soccer, 9/11 Memorials, etc,). We would have to go right from church to soccer so I’d need to bring a lunch.

So I set the alarm an hour earlier and got to work in the kitchen. First I made some oatmeal for breakfast. Though this was the real oats that you make on the stove, I was thinking of the portions that come in those little instant oatmeals. I figured that one of those little portions would never keep me through lunch. So I made two portions of oatmeal. Well, the real stuff makes more than those little packets and it turned out that two portions of oatmeal was WAY too much food for me this morning. I put some brown sugar on it and ate it all anyway. Live and learn.

While that was cooking, I cut up an onion and half the jalapeno, sautéed them, added some salt and started cooking them with the black beans. They needed to simmer for an hour and a half. That would be for dinner (black beans and rice with salsa). I made a big pot so that I could save what I didn’t eat for future meals. Then I made my lunch: three large celery sticks loaded with peanut butter. I’m not a huge fan of celery, but the alternative vehicles for peanut butter were not as economical. Then I hit the shower and started the day.

End of the Day Thoughts

I wasn’t hungry during the day today. The oatmeal was very filling and kept me to lunch just fine. Lunch was interesting, though. Our church had an after service picnic. I, of course, ate the lunch I brought. It started me thinking about our culture and the integral sociology of sharing a meal. How many times have I caught up with friends over coffee and a bagel or met someone for lunch at a local restaurant or even had a working lunch with colleagues. Close friends visit each other for dinner meals, families connecting and bonding. I realize that with limited food, there will be no invitations for friends to join me at my home to eat. I simply cannot spare the food. I also cannot make the meals I normally would make for guests. I cannot imagine feeding a guest peanut butter and celery. If my children brought home a friend from school, they would not be able to raid the refrigerator or snack cabinet. There would be no homemade cookies waiting on the counter. Food and sharing it is a fundamental part of our social interactions and bonding. I can only imagine the isolation that I would feel if this were not simply an exercise for one week and if it were to last months on end.

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SNAP Challenge: Preparation Day

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days.

September is Hunger Awareness Month and to help increase awareness of the thousands of people in this state who are food insecure and those that live their lives hungry, I am going to take the SNAP Challenge.

What is the SNAP Challenge?

Well SNAP used to be called Food Stamps. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. People who qualify for SNAP receive $4 per day to spend on food.

The challenge is to try to live on those $4 per day for food. I’m going to take the challenge for one week. Therefore, I have $28 to spend on food for the week. I plan on keeping a little journal along the way. If you are interested in more information about the SNAP Challenge or if you want to join me in the Challenge, you can click here to see how.

Prep Day

I made up a grocery list of things I’d like to eat in the next week with an eye toward frugality. I went to an online grocery store site in order to get a rough estimate of food prices as I was making up the list so that I could stay under $28.

The first thing that struck me was seasonings. I love spicy, spiced flavorful food. Spices are expensive! The next thing that struck me was the up-front costs of stock items in the kitchen like salt, sugar and oil. Since the rules of the SNAP Challenge demand that no food can pass your lips unless you purchase it on the $4 per day budget, I had to incorporate things like salt, sugar and oil which will last much longer than the week, but are pretty critical for the cooking I was planning on doing.

I took the list to my local grocery store, which is not the least expensive place to buy groceries, but I wanted to be cognizant that many people who do not have enough to eat also cannot travel long distances to buy food. I felt I should stay in my community to keep in the spirit of the Challenge.

Here is the list of what I bought:

Vegetable Oil (store brand): $ 1.75
Peanut Butter (store brand): $ 1.99
Diced Tomatoes (store brand): $ 1.00
Vegetarian Refried Beans: $ 1.00
Salsa (store brand): $ 1.34
Soft Tacos (12 count): $ 1.89
Dried Black Beans (store brand): $ 0.89
Dried Lentils (store brand): $ 0.69
Long Grain Rice (store brand): $ 1.50
Old Fashioned Oats (store brand): $ 1.00
Brown Sugar (store brand): $ 1.59
Salt (store brand): $ 0.59
Onions (3): $ 3.82
Carrots (one bunch): $ 1.29
Celery (one bunch): $ 2.50
Jalapeno pepper: $ 0.31
One head garlic: $ 0.50
Red Delicious Apples (2): $ 1.77
Total $25.42

I left a little leeway in case I forgot something important. I will be able to go back to the store and get it (if it costs less than $2.58!).
My list includes mostly items that are the store brand. It is heartening for me to note that the labels on the store brand items I bought we not loaded with preservatives and chemicals and fillers like I expected. I know this can sometimes be the case, but for these items, it was minimal. As someone who normally eats organic, that was important to me.

I am vegetarian so you won’t see meat products on my list, but I was sad not to be able to include dairy either. I really love cheese, which was not in the cards for me on this budget!

Well, I’m stocked up as much as I can be. I’m soaking the black beans overnight so that I can cook them tomorrow for dinner. I’ll let you know how the day goes tomorrow.

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