My "What if" Food Challenge

By Elizabeth Archerd, Membership and Marketing Manager

October 30 - Wrapping up the What-If Challenge

We got through it!

Off-Challenge food: Rich was at a nursing home meeting on Tuesday night, which served "light" refreshments – meatballs in barbecue sauce type food. Wedge had the annual meeting on Wednesday night, so I got a lovely supper there – as could any member. We attended a funeral followed by an enormous spread of food on Thursday. We were both exhausted from the week of elder care and the funeral and totally caved on Friday night. We brought home a take'n bake pizza. Not to worry though, we have plenty of food left for lunches and dinners for the first week of November.

Breakfasts continued to be either the whole grain cereal with fruit and a sausage or egg , or the fabulous Breakfast Beans with veggies or fruit. Work lunches were tuna and rye crackers and smoked mozzarella with celery, pear and carrot or a bowl of red lentil squash soup with the cheese and veggies or fruit. Both lunches satisfy and keep hunger at bay until dinner.

On Tuesday when Rich was gone, I thawed out the pasta sauce with ground beef and cooked up some pasta and grated a bit of cheese over it. Richard ate a chicken thigh on Wednesday night and I finished the drumstick today at lunch. Yes, it was the same chicken we bought on October 1. In addition to our freezer, we keep the refrigerator quite cold, so food stays good for a long time.

We continued to enjoy spicy black beans this week, with corn tortillas.

The fridge still holds most of a cabbage, celery, two beets, a grapefruit, a bit of the spicy black beans, breakfast whole grains, 2-3 servings of cooked pasta, cheeses and corn tortillas from the challenge purchases. In the freezer there are still three containers of borscht (yes!), 3.5 cups per container; one 3.5 cup container of pasta sauce with ground beef; and two 3.5 cup containers of red lentil-squash soup. With the packaged products and unused grains and beans (pictured above) and the remaining oils, vinegar, tamari, spices and herbs, salt, pepper and baking powder (pictured below), it seems likely that the pre-challenge leftovers and the pizza we ordered were balanced by the leftovers.

We shopped for November on Saturday. Two things were immediately apparent. I stuck to the list closely and was not even tempted to go off program. Also, though I watched prices and kept choosing the lowest price of the list items (within my organic, local etc. framework from October) there was an enormous sense of relief that the challenge was over.

The experience confirms my suspicion that it is possible to live on a very tight food budget and still buy organic and otherwise sustainable food. But it is not a cakewalk – at least not to start. If SNAP were my reality instead of an experiment, I'd make coffee an occasional treat and use tea for the daily caffeine dose. We would have liked more fruit and a bit more dairy, which we could have had with the coffee money. We'd also have made meals out of cabbage 2-3 times a week from the beginning. A single cabbage yields many satisfying meals and terrific nourishment. A recipe off the net for "Oklahoma Comfort Casserole" consists of an onion, a whole cabbage, frozen green beans and a bit of sausage. Served over a potato, half a small squash or some roasted beets, turnips, rutabagas or parsnips, it is even more satisfying than it is plain. Little variations would round out the nutrient profile, as would switching between green and red cabbage.

I want to again note that I did this as a co-op member. That's important, because our members get $45/year in discount and member-only specials. Then there is the patronage refund, which no conventional grocery store will ever send to shoppers. It would be a considerable advantage for SNAP recipients. A single person who spent $200/mo (max. SNAP benefit for one) here would have received a patronage refund check last week for $86.40, a couple on $367/mo (max. SNAP benefit for two) would have received $158.44. Whatever size the household, the patronage refund and member discount savings add considerable value to the SNAP allotment.

If I lived on a SNAP food budget, I'd definitely go to a food shelf for the three-day food supply every month, both to build up a reserve and to feel comfortable inviting a friend who dropped over unexpectedly to stay for supper. I'd take advantage of the Market Bucks program at area farmers markets, which provides an extra $5 of market tokens per visit for shoppers who use EBT cards. That would put quite a bit of extra local produce in the household budget for six months of the year, freeing up some of the allotment for more dairy or meat products. SNAP can be used to purchase garden seeds, and I would give collards, kale and fresh herbs a try in the yard. (We've kept a rosemary plant for years – we winter it in the kitchen window and take it outside for the summer months. We just dug up some spearmint and potted it for the winter, too. Fresh flavors become very important by February.)

How has it changed us?

My husband effortlessly dropped weight this month. Not a bad thing. I, however, the one who had been losing on purpose, maintained my weight within a tenth of a pound during the Challenge. It takes more veggies and fruits than the minimum daily requirement for the weight to leave, apparently, but it's nice to know exactly how to keep from gaining it all back.

I'm writing on Sunday. Bread dough is rising in the machine, banana bread is baking, a new batch of Breakfast Beans cooked over night and is cooling in the fridge. Rich and I have plans for everything in the fridge for several days of meals and I'm imagining an onion pie for dinner later in the week. I expect to shop to a plan and continue to cook up a storm on at least a few weekends every month.

The unexpected impact of this Challenge was an upwelling of a sense of abundant generosity. Linda Watson of www.cookforgood.com points out that with the money you save eating "wildly affordable organic" you free up money for causes you support. There is a benefit for those of us who are not forced to live on a restrictive food budget to try it out. When we do not live out to our "budgetary edges," there is more freedom to respond to the needs around us. Frugal living does not have to be about being stingy, but can be a pathway to wise generosity. I knew this in theory, but was surprised at how strongly and joyfully generosity seized me when need became apparent this month. So I didn't lose any weight, but boy, I sure am happy.