Last Week

I took a couple of days off. When I last posted I was ecstatic  about having 10 pounds of chicken; actually, I still am. I went to the store and bought 2 whole chickens that weighed 9 and 1/2 pounds. The chicken quarters in the bag at the food bank had were breasts and legs, so I thought that whole chickens were equally valid. We had a whole baked chicken on Friday night  and I had enough left over to get three more meals from that bird. We had  twice baked legs and thighs over rice with tomatoes, pepper and onions the next night. Then we had white chili made with great northern beans and finally tonight we had chicken pot pies with carrots, potatoes and peas. We took a break on Sunday and had tacos with refried beans.

I have to confess that I cheated a bit this week. We have a vegetable garden at our house. Actually we have two 4′ X 8′ raised beds in which we raise tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and lettuce. We had a fall crop of lettuce planted and it had to be cut before the hard frost, so we have been having salad for the last 5 days. I haven’t put anything in the salad, other than the lettuce ,that I did not get at the food bank or buy with my food stamp money.

Today I bought the Turkey for Thursday. I found it at Costco for 99 cents a pound so I bought a 15 pound one. That should cover us and I have money left over to buy  onions. So we will be having creamed onions as well as the regular stuff.

I have to think a bit about what I have learned. I know that this was not easy and I am not sure how people do this every day. They are my heroes.

I still have chicken parts in the freezer and I still have half a pound of hamburger. I will be going to the food bank tomorrow to see what else is there for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Score

Yesterday I needed to go shopping and I stopped at the food bank to see what I could buy this week. I decided that it was time to get the commodities bag that I would get once a month. I find the supplies that you get in a bag interesting; for one thing everyone gets the same amount of food 2 people or 10 people , it doesn’t make a difference, and the contents are interesting. I have seen bags taken in the summer that had the usual items, canned beans, rice, pasta and the like and 4 tomatoes from Florida ( green as grass) and a 16 pound frozen Turkey. Last month there were 18 eggs and 4 pints of frozen strawberries along with the usual items. This month I got rice, canned beef stew, dried kidney beans, cereal, canned fruit and,  yahoo, 10 pounds of frozen quartered chickens. So along with the vegetables and dairy I could get with my Fishbucks I am set for the rest of the month. I still have to buy a Turkey for Thanksgiving but I have my last $49.00 to do that this week. Thanksgiving will happen thanks to the food bank.

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Another Comic Interlude or Maybe Not

We have been getting a lot of catalogs lately. It is that time of year after all. Lots of these catalogs have special foods for the Holidays. We got one today that had us on the floor laughing. On further thought, I have decided that it isn’t that funny. The catalog is from Spain and has a lot of lovely looking Spanish dishes. It is very nice to look at ,and then I started to look at the prices. WOW! I am use to having the prices in these speciality catalogs be two or three times the higher than Central Market, so I was paging through; until I got to the front of the catalog and about dropped my teeth. The offering was an 15 pound free range, smoked and hung for four years, ham. Price $950.00.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, I am just dumbfounded. Needless to say we will not be buying anything from this catalog.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, we had curried chicken for dinner and it was good, if I do ay so myself. I will be shopping tomorrow.

Monday- getting short

We finished the corned beef yesterday, with corned beef hash. We had enough to have lunch today.  Three meals from 2 1/2 pounds of corned beef, not to bad.Tonight we had a ham slice, a squash;that I bought the beginning of week two, biscuits and kale. I still have 2 chicken thighs  and a half pound of hamburger that I got in the Ebox  in week one. ( I froze them.) I will have to see what is at the food bank tomorrow to figure out the next three days.

I have most of Thanksgiving  figured out the turkey  will be bought with food stamps. I have enough potatoes from the food bank. I also got cranberries from the food bank. I can make stuffing with bread I got at the food bank. I  also got yams from the food bank. I got a pumpkin from the food bank. I am still short, something green; beans,brussel sprouts or the like, peas would do. You will notice that most of the food came from the food bank. Thanksgiving  would not have been possible with out being able to use the food bank. I am still short on appetizers and something to drink. We usually have Martinelli’s. I would have to buy a case. So instead I am making Cranberry Shrub. Shrub is a vinegar drink that was made in colonial times. I will include the recipe at the end of this blog.

I have used my recipe boxes ( I have three) a lot this month and I have also used several cook books. The  2 that I have used the most are; “Cooking in Everyday English”, by Todd English and the “More-with-Less Cookbook ” by Doris Longacre. Cooking in Everyday English is a new cookbook but he uses fresh vegetables and lots of his meals are vegetarian. I  got his cookbook at the library and liked it so much that I bought it. I have not had a bad recipe out of this cookbook. The More-with-Less cookbook was first published in 1976 and I have used it for many years, it is a great book if you are trying to eat cheaply. It contains lots of recipes for soups and casseroles and uses little meat.

Cranberry Shrub:

2 cups cranberries

2 cups apple cider vinegar

1 cup Sugar

Heat vinegar and cranberries on sauce pan until simmering. Simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and put mixture in non-reactive bowl, cover and leave on kitchen counter for 72 hours.

Strain out cranberries and reserve vinegar. Throw cranberries away. Heat vinegar with sugar until dissolved and simmer 5 more minutes. Cool, store in refrigerator in a glass jar. This keeps forever.

To use: add one or two tablespoons to a 8 oz glass of water, tonic or soda water. Makes a beautiful pink, refreshing drink.

You can use almost any fruit in this mix. I have used rhubarb, ginger and raspberries and of course cranberries.

Saturday Beginning of the 3rd week

Went to spend my food stamp money and purchase the items I found at the food bank. I decided to try Walmart to see if it was really cheaper. It really is. I spent $12.69  to purchase the vegetables and the dairy items that I saw at the food bank. I spent $10.28 of the money I would have had with food stamps. I bought a ham slice and about 2 1/2 pound corned beef. I have potatoes, carrots and a cabbage and that much corned beef will feed us for three meals I think. Actually I did not buy the corned beef; a good friend gave it to me but since we are going to eat it I decided I needed to account for it.

Several friends have given us food and except for the banana bread and the jam I have included it all in the price of the food we are using. If I haven’t “bought ” it, we are not eating it. I also want to let friends know that I actually have 36 jars of jam and jelly in my pantry and they are out of circulation until the end of the month. Since I don’t eat jelly, that is enough to last the rest of our lives. I appreciate the offer of food from friends but we really are doing OK.

I managed to find Turkeys for about $1.00 a pound so it looks like I will have enough to buy a good sized Turkey and have enough left over to buy yams and stuffing. I have been stock up all month.

The biggest problem I have with eating this way is the inability to buy in bulk. Usually I shop at a grocery store about once a week. I shop at Costco once a month, or every other month, for staples. Some of the things I buy there last for half a year. I also buy meat on sale and freeze what I will not use right away. Not being able to do that is frustrating and really expensive.I think if I did this all the time I would try to schedule some purchases each month that would last longer than a week. I was worried that if I did not divide the food stamp money into weekly increments I would run out. The one thing I notice that we cannot afford is fish, almost all fish is too expensive and I refuse to buy fish sticks or breaded fish stuff. I am never sure what kind of fish it is. I worry about farmed fish because of the amounts of mercury in them. We usually eat fish about once a week.

Related articles

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Thursday Week 2

We are not starving. We are eating less meat, which is probably good. We are eating vegetarian dinners  a couple of times a week. My husband says we are passing gas like vegans  and we both blame it on the dog.  The dog is very confused and you really can’t blame it on the cats because they don’t believe you. The dog does. I  am going to invest in some Beano.

Tonight is  tofu with bean sprouts and carrots and rice, always a good dinner. I like Chinese food. We had chicken last night with potatoes, with yogurt  topping and stir fried vegetables.  Our lunches have been leftovers as have been some of our breakfasts.

Thanksgiving is beginning to worry me a little. I can manage to get most of the basics. It really is a cheap meal to prepare, except for the Turkey. Over the last several weeks I have managed to gather all the extras, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cranberries and stuffing. I did buy two turkey backs early in the month so I can make stock for gravy, but a 2 family home only gets 1 turkey breast for Thanksgiving dinner.  We have 15 coming to our house for the holiday and there are 3 hungry boys in the group. We are lucky, our family has deciding that we will make this a potluck. It is nice to have a wonderful extended family. Breathing a sigh of relief. I am still going to have to buy a turkey but I think we can do that if we do not use 50% of our food stamp money that week.

Tuesday Week 2

     I got to the food bank today and managed to get chicken, some sausages and Tofu. I think this will take us until Friday when I get some more Food Stamp “money” . I am going to have to buy a 16 pound Turkey in order to make Thanksgiving happen. As a family of 2 we would get a Turkey Breast in the holiday basket from the food bank. I can manage the rest of the dinner since I have been stocking up on potatoes, yams, cranberries and pumpkin. A sixteen pound Turkey is going to take up about $34.00 of my $49.00 budget for next week. We have about 15 people coming for dinner. We will have a little meat and a lot of gravy, but also a lot of fun. 

    The Swedish apple pie that I baked last night was as good as I remembered. We also had pizza which used up the last of the spaghetti sauce that I got at the first of the month.

The recipe follows.

1 egg unbeaten

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup apples peeled, cored and cubed ( that is one large apple or 2 small ones)

1/2 cup nuts, cut fine ( anything but peanuts)

a pinch of salt

Mix everything in order given. Put in a well oiled pie pan and sprinkle with sugar

Bake 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven

Serve. Really great with ice cream which, of course ,we cannot afford, but it is great all by its self.

As my mother always said, “tastes like more than it is.” Enjoy!

Another Interlude – Maybe not so comic

This post requires a little background.

My husband is a gardener. We have a small yard and he is only interested in vegetables, actually he is mostly interested in tomatoes. He is a little obsessive about it. We also have two very large Big Leaf Maple trees in a neighbor’s yard that drop all of their leaves in our yard. Every fall he rakes all the leaves, grinds them, and makes compost. Now a yard that is only .2 acres does not need as much compost as is made, so he gives compost away to the neighbors who want it .

Our next door neighbor got 4- 55 gallon tubs of compost last week. They have a much  bigger yard and she has a vegetable garden also. She came by this morning and brought us a loaf of banana bread and a jar of homemade jam. She has always brought something like that as thanks for the compost. This has been going on for 9 years.

Today the gift brought me to tears.  The banana bread is great but what really touched me was the jam. I am out, and my husband almost always has toast and jam as part of his breakfast. I wasn’t sure when I could afford more since I have spent all but $6.00 of my food stamp budget this week. I was surprised at my depth of feeling. We aren’t starving by any means. I have to think a little harder about what we eat and work a little harder to prepare it, but the worry about having enough is new to me.

WEEK 2

    I think that this is the week that starts to be difficult. I went to the store yesterday to spend some of our food stamp money.  I am dividing the $196.00 per month into $49.00 per week allotments. I am not sure how food stamps work . I assume you get a monthly amount of stamps or the equivalent. I wonder if you get more “money” in months with five weeks. I will have to find out. 

    In any case, we were out of granola so instead of buying granola  at $6.00 per pound I bought enough raw materials to make granola for the rest of the month. The ingredients cost $8.00 but that makes 3 pounds of granola, which will last all month. By the time I finished shopping I had spent $32.28 for staples. I did not buy any meat. I have meat left from the Ebox I got the first of the month, two chicken thighs and a half pound of hamburger. I want to save that for the last week of the month. 

    We had a vegetarian dinner on Friday night and chicken thighs on Saturday night. We will eat vegetarian again tonight and hope for meat at the food bank tomorrow. I am finding that we can get enough vegetables, bread and dairy, if I shop every other day, but meat and eggs are a problem.

     We are having  vegetarian tamale pie for dinner with guacamole . For some reason the food bank had many many avocados and tomatoes. I am going to make an Swedish Apple pie for dessert and snacking. I will publish that recipe tomorrow if it turns out well. It is one my Mom made and I made it a couple of times when the kids were young.

About Gluten-Free food & Thanksgiving

    Both my husband and I are pretty healthy for our ages. Neither of us has a serious allergy. We use soy milk rather than cows milk but that is about it. We can both eat yougert and other products with milk in them. We have no problems with wheat or wheat products.  

     I have been wondering how people with allergies manage at the food bank and with food stamps. Gluten-free products are very expensive and the food bank does not get much in the way of gluten-free products.  I have found out that most people who have this problem or who have a family member with this problem make their own food. A loaf of wheat bread can cost as little a $2.00 per loaf but the lowest price for gluten-free that I found was $6.00 per loaf. That has to cut your food budget to less than one third of what a person with no allergies gets and it has to make shopping much more difficult.

   I  already find that I am spending much more time shopping. This is a surprise. I usually shop one day a week and go to Costco once a month or once every two months. I find that I am going to the grocery store two or three times a week. I can’t get enough money together at one time to get ahead. Since the food bank limits the amount of some things, I have to go several times a week in order to get enough for the week. I understand why there are limits. The food bank never knows what or how much of a single item they will have at a time and they don’t know how many people will show up in a day. I think they do a good job but it does make it difficult.

    I am starting to get ready for Thanksgiving. I have cranberries for sauce and I have a pumpkin for pie. I think I can get enough potatoes and green beans. I just have stuffing and the Turkey left to purchase. I started looking at turkeys at the store. It looks like they cost about $2:00 per pound. We may have a small turkey but lots of gravy.

   This is the end of one week and I am feeling a little more comfortable with the process. We have had good meals for the past two days. We had fish one day and pork chops the next. I am managing to have enough left over for lunches and breakfast had been the usual, although I notice that my husband is almost out of Granola, so I will have to buy some more. Thanks to the food bank we are being able to get enough vegetables and even some meat.  So far so good.