Eating in "interesting" times

This is the point in the Hunger Challenge where things get "interesting." My original plan of stretching Monday's chicken and bean stew into three meals has proven to be a sound one: we enjoyed it as made Monday night with nothing else, and Tuesday night we added a $7 pack of Uli's fresh German brats -- mmm-mmm! I threw together a simple salad of organic lettuce, a few slivers of red onion, and half an avocado. I got exactly enough organic cornmeal, flour, sugar and baking powder from PCC's bulk section to make a pan of cornbread (altogether about $3).  While these did not seem like extravagant purchases, man do they add up fast!

So, faced with about $29 left for the week, for Day 3, I got $1.85 worth of organic short-grain brown rice from the bulk section at PCC, and used a small amount each of green cabbage, kale, carrots, onion, garlic, mushrooms and celery (all of them organic) to make a fantastic mess of fried rice.  I even found a bangin' deal on organic soy sauce at Viet Wah to season it all.  I served it with a simple salad of half a tomato and half a cucumber (also both organic) sliced, with a little salt and pepper. Everyone tore into it with relish and rapacity, and there's probably enough left for two more meals.  All of that came to just under $12.

If we had to make it from here until Friday night without spending another penny, we probably could. Earlier in the week, I spent $3.47 on a dozen eggs, $5.49 on a gallon of organic milk, and $7 on a pound of coffee for the week (I make it Turkish style every morning at home).  That may be just what we'll do, as I'm now down to about my last $11 bucks.

But besides obsessing over my food budget, a few related issues have occurred to me this week. Yesterday I measured the drive to my local PCC (the Seward Park store): a 7-mile round trip. Like many low-income folks, I can't afford a Prius, and unfortunately my vehicle is a gas-guzzling Dodge Ram pickup. A 7-mile round trip is almost half a gallon of gas for me, so there goes another $2 bucks every time I think I'll just "run down to the store real quick."  Many people living on food stamps do not have vehicles at all, and were I to take the bus, the trip would take four times as long, with two blocks to walk, two transfers, and limit me to purchase only what my arms can carry. Not to mention having to scrape up bus fare from under the pet fur encrusted couch cushions.

Which brings me to another thing: cat litter. Cat food. Dog food. I live with two felines and one enormous dog; they've got to eat too. I haven't figured pet food into my overall budget for the week, but I've spent money on it nonetheless.

The rules of the Hunger Challenge are not all that realistic when you get right down to it. In the real world, people offer you food all the time.  Free snacks are available in many places, as are free meals.  The vast majority of folks living on food stamps are likely visiting their neighborhood food bank to supplement the woefully inadequate pittance the government deems "enough." So I have accepted food that was offered to me this week and I'm not feeling guilty about it. It would have been rude to say no, but it did make me think.

And that, after all, is the point. It's not necessarily the challenge of living on a limited food budget for a week that makes this whole exercise worthwhile, but really spending some time exploring the tangled web of issues surrounding food security and our food system as a whole. (News flash: we're in trouble, folks!) More on this later. To paraphrase an old Chinese curse, we are now eating in "interesting" times.