Slow Food on a Tiny Budget

[bleachboy]

Responding to a challenge to eat for a week on a "food stamp budget", these folks set out to prove that one can eat locally-grown slow food type stuff on a very tight budget. In their case, $60.43 a week.

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical. When I was textbook "low income," I was working 12-16 hour days. My meals largely consisted of peanut butter sandwiches and canned beans. Your mileage may vary.

I'm actually pretty skeptical about the majority of this article, but that'll do for a start.

[Moopheus]

Responding to a challenge to eat for a week on a "food stamp budget", these folks set out to prove that one can eat locally-grown slow food type stuff on a very tight budget.  In their case, $60.43 a week.

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Sixty bucks a week for groceries (just food) for two? That's a tight budget? That's probably more than I spend now, and I'm not especially frugal (though we don't buy meat or much processed/packaged food). There have certainly been times when my budget was very tight (spaghetti 4 nights, tuna sandwhiches the rest of the week) and $60 would have seemed a luxury. Locally grown? My CSA allotment over the summer, with eggs and fruit, was less than half that. And it was a lot of food.

[purplewiz]

It was an interesting article, but even though they did address the amount of time needed to prepare each meal (and I'm assuming that's active prep time, not actual start to eat time, since it mentions averaging 15 minutes, and I don't think pot roast cooks in anything even close to that time), they did not address the time and expense of acquiring the foods.

They don't mention how close the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is to where they live, or the McGehee family of Okema, or the Stepp family of Hinton, or Dennis Garret of Eufaula. Assuming that these are all different towns (as a quick Google search seems to show), you can't just discount the cost of transportation there (either public or by car) - it adds to the overall cost of the food.

Then there's time. I wish they had mentioned how long it took to do all this shopping - and if these specialty providers are open past traditional business hours. For people with a full time job, these are critical issues - at one point, I wanted buy my meat from a local butcher, but he was open only Monday - Friday, 9-5. This precluded me from doing so most of the time, simply because I needed to be at work while he was open. Safeway was open 24 hours.

There's a lot more I'd like to pick at, but I think the summary is that while yes, it's possible, it's not exactly practical.

Marcia.

[NulloModo]

I think the overall point is that it can be just an inexpensive to buy whole foods and eat well as it is to buy pre-prepared foods and eat like shit.

This was a very good article, and yet another reason I have never bought into the theory that the lower class is chained into poor nutrition by fast food and etc.

[Robert Waldrop]

They don't mention how close the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is to where they live, or the McGehee family of Okema, or the Stepp family of Hinton, or Dennis Garret of Eufaula. Assuming that these are all different towns (as a quick Google search seems to show), you can't just discount the cost of transportation there (either public or by car) - it adds to the overall cost of the food.

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is an order delivery service, and all of the local foods used in this week were bought from the local farmers through the cooperative. The first week of each month, the producers post their product availabilities and prices at our website, http://www.oklahomafood.org . The second week of the month, our members order via our online shopping cart system. On the 3rd Thursday of the month, the producers come to town and the cooperative sorts all their products into the various customer orders. We use borrowed space and volunteers, and the producers receive all of the price for their products, the cooperative adds $3.50 to each invoice for its expenses. I am the president of the cooperative, so my involvement with the cooperative is a considerable time investment, but it takes me about 20 minutes to do my monthly order for my personal household. if I was not involved as an officer, it would take about 15 minutes to go from my house to the closest pickup location for the cooperative (there are 3 pickup places in Oklahoma City, 1 in Norman, and one each in Tulsa, Muskogee, and Tahlequah).

Because some of the same questions have been asked about this experience here that have been raised elsewhere, I added a short "frequently asked quesetions about this food challenge" section to the page http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/foodchallenge.htm .

Robert Waldrop

Oklahoma City

[Devotay]

I urge everyone to visit both of Robert's websites (in his post, above). He's a great example of the people who are in the trenches doing the tough work that needs doing. The world would certainly benefit from a lot more Bob Waldrops. I had the honor of working with him to help feed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers when they passed through OKC. Quite an uplifting experience.

In regard to what NulloModo said:

yet another reason I have never bought into the theory that the lower class is chained into poor nutrition by fast food and etc.

I partly agree - they do not need to be chained to the vicious circle that is part of the hidden cost of cheap food, but they are at the moment, as are many people who are not low income. My 3 stage solution to this problem (and many others) has always been the same:

1) Education

2) Education

3) Education

[Shalmanese]

I'm very sceptical about your time calculations. Did you factor in the time taken to plant, water, weed, pick and can all your vegtables?

Did you factor in water, fertilizer or garden equipment costs?

[fiftydollars]

I was a bit confused about the premise and the accounting.

If I were starting out, as someone who only had $60.43 to feed myself and a loved one, it would take weeks before I could build up the pantry to put together simple meals.

Breakfast on day one would practically break me because I don't have a store in my area that will sell you "4 tbspn olive oil" for "$0.16," or "2 c flour" for "$0.30."

I would have to buy my olive oil in sufficient quantity to bring the price near the $0.04 per tablespoon, which in the example is $10 for a gallon and a whole lot of money to drop in a single week for someone on a $60.43/week food budget.

Finding olive oil at a reasonable price then becomes the difference between making it on this type of budget, or not.

If you didn’t find quality olive oil at $2.02/750ml, or didn’t like the quality of what that kind of money purchased for you in your area, and instead paid $0.26 per tablespoon at $13/750ml like I do, you would be spending $16.72 more per week just on olive oil according to the "Slow Food for the Poor Challenge" menus. That would mean skipping meals on a budget this tight.

Of course, I could try poaching for a change...

Edited January 6, 2005 by fiftydollars (log)

[John Whiting]

I think the summary is that while yes, it's possible, it's not exactly practical.

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So many such articles are thinly or thickly disguised demonstrations that the unhealthy poor have only themselves to blame. They remind me of the New Yorker Helen Hokinson cartoon of the matron saying to the beggar, "Why don't you go to Majorca? You can live there for practically nothing."

[John Whiting]

In regard to what NulloModo said:

yet another reason I have never bought into the theory that the lower class is chained into poor nutrition by fast food and etc.

I partly agree - they do not need to be chained to the vicious circle that is part of the hidden cost of cheap food, but they are at the moment, as are many people who are not low income. My 3 stage solution to this problem (and many others) has always been the same:

1) Education

2) Education

3) Education

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Just at the moment when education budgets all over the country are being cut to the bone and the bones pulverized. These food programs are invaluable for those who are already plugged into alternative lifestyles; but for the rest, they demand a total rejection of a lifetime's habits, including the probable scorn of their families and friends. By all means, make use of the resources that are available to you, but don't scorn those who are fenced in by custom and necessity.

[astrayacorazon]

Has anyone ever done this study for New York City? A quick search of advocacy articles turned up a figure for an average food stamp allowance of $80 a month per person and $240 per family. That's one third less than the Oklahoma allotment in a city with a higher cost of living. It underscores the difficulty of slow food on a tight budget - which may not be a universal possibility.

[Chris Amirault]

Has anyone ever done this study for New York City? A quick search of advocacy articles turned up a figure for an average food stamp allowance of $80 a month per person and $240 per family. That's one third less than the Oklahoma allotment in a city with a higher cost of living. It underscores the difficulty of slow food on a tight budget - which may not be a universal possibility.

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While not exactly a study, Jeffrey Steingarten wrote about this topic in The Man Who Ate Everything. I seem to remember that he wrote about this in NYC, but I could be wrong. Anyone have the book handy?

[John Whiting]

While not exactly a study, Jeffrey Steingarten wrote about this topic in The Man Who Ate Everything. I seem to remember that he wrote about this in NYC, but I could be wrong. Anyone have the book handy?

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Though witty and entertaining, the article is ten years old and bears little relationship to modern food prices and recommended diets. But at the end, he does make the point that American diets are meat-heavy, and therefore expensive, while French and Italian "peasant" recipes use modest quantities of utility meats as a condiment -- a flavoring agent for vegetables, grains and pastas.

[Jensen]

I was a bit confused about the premise and the accounting.

If I were starting out, as someone who only had $60.43 to feed myself and a loved one, it would take weeks before I could build up the pantry to put together simple meals.

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I'm pretty sure the article addressed this issue, didn't it?

Low and moderate income families should be encouraged to keep some of their household savings in the form of food. It takes a while to build up supplies, of course, but over time this helps low income households manage their food budgets.

So, while the study may not have been perfect in that respect, I think it does show that it can be done. It's all well and good for us to sit here and criticise the specifics of Mr. Waldrop's pantry but, if you go and read the article and look around a bit at both websites listed, you will see that this is something he is living with and working with on a daily basis, year in and year out.

I say "Good for him" for conducting the study and for trying to get the message out.

[fiftydollars]

I do agree with the idea that preparing food at home is the healthiest and most economical way to eat.

I agree with the article's conclusion.

But I also felt the article concentrated too much on trying to convince you how easy this is and missed an opportunity to be a little more accurate.

Edited January 7, 2005 by fiftydollars (log)

[MarketStEl]

There is somewhere out there on the 'Net a web site that touts a method for taking a huge whack out of your grocery bill -- for a fee, they will sell you a system whereby you can implement their sage advice, but based on the free come-on, it sounds like their method boils down to "Turn your pantry into an annex of the supermarket." In other words, load up on nonperishable staples or other items with long shelf lives (e.g., unopened jars of mayonnaise) when they're on sale and use future sales to restock these items, then use the bulk of the rest of your food budget each trip to buy whatever perishables you want that are attractively priced. (Here, a large freezer is also your friend, as you can then do the same thing with frozen foods that you do with perishables in the pantry. Apartment-dwellers like me cannot take this next step.)

The same method would probably work for a "slow food on food stamps" system--the problem is phasing it in while continuing to feed your family on your modest allotment.

It would seem to me that (as another poster said upthread) with a little education and planning, you could shift over to a slow/local/fresh food regimen while not shortchanging your day-to-day needs. It might consist of purchasing one or two staples in a large size (for instance, a gallon can of olive oil, which is quite pricey but will keep a while) on each trip until you have your basic arsenal of staples filled out. Along with those would come the smaller quantities of other items each trip.

[Robert Waldrop]

I'm very sceptical about your time calculations. Did you factor in the time taken to plant, water, weed, pick and can all your vegtables?

Did you factor in water, fertilizer or garden equipment costs?

←

The time calculations were for food preparation time only, but another popular myth is that gardening takes a lot of time.  Well, like any other human activity, it can take as much time as you want, but I prefer the less work garden methods.  Generally during the growing season I spend about 15-20 minutes/day gardening.  This time of year I spend zero time in the garden.  I suppose it would be possible to calculate the share of annual gardening time that is representated by the home-grown foods I used during the challenge week, but the amount of time that represents is so small it hardly even merits notice.  For example, I have 3 peach trees.  Several years ago I spent maybe a half hour each planting them.  Since then there is maybe an hour each year per tree of fussing with them, spreading some compost around them, a little bit of pruning.  Total harvesting time for each tree is less than an hour (much less, they are semi-dwarf trees).  2 hours to make jam.  So 3 hours/year investment in my rack of peach jams, out of which we would have to then calculate the time involved in producing a tablespoon of jam for my morning biscuits. 

I use the square foot gardening method, www.squarefootgardening.com , which is the least work garden method that I know of.  It takes about 1 hour to make a square foot garden bed, and once made, it's made, it doesn't get remade every year, just a new top dressing of compost.  No tilling, very little weeding if set up right from the beginning.

I water sparingly, and not enough to make an appreciable difference between my winter and my summer water bill. I use thick mulch, which helps conserve moisture. I don't buy any fertilizer, I have a compost pile, and that is my fertilizer. My garden equipment consists of 2 shovels, both of which I bought used at a garage sale several years ago, 1 rake, also bought used. The lumber for my garden beds was scavenged, and cost nothing. So there's not much expense there to account for. Sure, a person can spend a lot of money on equipment if that's what they want to do. I could have bought an expensive shovel for say $30 at an expensive garden supply store, but I don't have that kind of money. So I paid $2 for a shovel from a garage sale and I think it pretty much works as good as the $30 version. The other tool I use is a digging stick to poke holes for seeds, but that is just a stick from the branch pile by the compost pile.

Edited January 7, 2005 by Robert Waldrop (log)

[Robert Waldrop]

I was a bit confused about the premise and the accounting.

If I were starting out, as someone who only had $60.43 to feed myself and a loved one, it would take weeks before I could build up the pantry to put together simple meals.

<snip>

If you didn’t find quality olive oil at $2.02/750ml, or didn’t like the quality of what that kind of money purchased for you in your area, and instead paid $0.26 per tablespoon at $13/750ml like I do, you would be spending $16.72 more per week just on olive oil according to the "Slow Food for the Poor Challenge" menus. That would mean skipping meals on a budget this tight.

←

The rules for the challenge (which i didn't write, this originated in the Community Food Security Listserv) was that you could use items in your pantry as long as you accounted for their cost and it was within the weekly budget. This is not unreasonable in a test for a food stamp budget menu, as food stamps (actually they are EBT cards now) are given once a month, and many people who receive food stamps do all or most of their shopping once a month, on the day their benefits arrive.

In Oklahoma City, I generally pay $9/gallon for olive oil. It's not extra virgin, but it seems to suit my peasant tastes just fine. If olive oil had been a lot more expensive, then I would have made other choices. I think I note in my comments that this challenge was done in a specific place, Oklahoma City, which has very reasonable prices for locally produced foods like buffalo and grass finished meats, and has very competitive prices on other supermarket items like olive oil.

We encourage people with low and moderate income to keep some of their household savings in food. The less money you have, in fact, the more important it is that you keep some of your savings in food. This helps insulate you from the regular mood swings of supermarket pricing. One week canned goods are cheap, but meat is expensive, the next week, meat is cheap but canned goods are expensive. If you have some of your household savings in food, you don't have to buy canned goods when they are expensive. You can wait a week or two until the grocery store slot machine shifts around and canned goods are cheap again.

So part of the point was to show how food storage is useful for low income people as a grocery budget management tool.

[Robert Waldrop]

Has anyone ever done this study for New York City? A quick search of advocacy articles turned up a figure for an average food stamp allowance of $80 a month per person and $240 per family. That's one third less than the Oklahoma allotment in a city with a higher cost of living. It underscores the difficulty of slow food on a tight budget - which may not be a universal possibility.

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Food stamp benefits vary based on family size, income, and housing expense. the basic figure we used for 2 people is a national standard, and is the maximum, assuming that the family has zero income.

[docsconz]

While this may not be easy for everyone to adopt, the good news here is that it is possible. Kudos and welcome to eGullet to you, Robert Waldrop!

[Robert Waldrop]

But I also felt the article concentrated too much on trying to convince you how easy this is and missed an opportunity to be a little more accurate.

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I confess I wrote in an "advocacy voice", but I don't know that I left anything out big enough to make the article "less accurate". It was very accurate in terms of figuring the cost of the foods. I ended up developing a spread sheet with the price of ingredients like 1 tbsp sugar, in order to calculate the prices of each meal.

The one thing not discussed in the article is the learning curve it takes to get up to speed to the point that a food lifestyle like this is easy. I've been baking bread for 20 years, so I don't work from a recipe unless I am trying some new, and making bread rolls is something I can do second nature. I wish I had kept a food diary over the last 20 years, then I could say something like "well, after I had made 250 loaves of bread, it was so easy it stopped being work", but that last brain cell rattling around my skull fails me at that level of detail regarding events of 20 years ago.

My suggestion is that people do one thing at a time, and gradually increase their inventory of skills (and the literal inventory of their pantry) and the size of their garden. I started my garden seven years ago, and it started out about 24 square feet, 3' x 8'. Now my lawns are in full flight, fleeing ahead of on-marching peach trees and blackberry thickets and tomato trellises. Gardening is like compound interest, add a little bit each year over time, and you end up with a lot more than you started with.

[Robert Waldrop]

While this may not be easy for everyone to adopt, the good news here is that it is possible. Kudos and welcome to eGullet to you, Robert Waldrop!

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Thanks for the welcome. This is really a very astonishing nook of cyberspace. I have been reading at the eGullet online Culinary Institute, and have already learned a lot. I have no formal food education, but am an avid amateur cook, so while there are some things I do very well, there are other aspects of cooking that I would like to work on and I hope to learn many useful things here.

[lovebenton0]

I'm very sceptical about your time calculations. Did you factor in the time taken to plant, water, weed, pick and can all your vegtables?

Did you factor in water, fertilizer or garden equipment costs?

←

The time calculations were for food preparation time only, but another popular myth is that gardening takes a lot of time.  Well, like any other human activity, it can take as much time as you want, but I prefer the less work garden methods.  Generally during the growing season I spend about 15-20 minutes/day gardening.  This time of year I spend zero time in the garden.  I suppose it would be possible to calculate the share of annual gardening time that is representated by the home-grown foods I used during the challenge week, but the amount of time that represents is so small it hardly even merits notice.  For example, I have 3 peach trees.  Several years ago I spent maybe a half hour each planting them.  Since then there is maybe an hour each year per tree of fussing with them, spreading some compost around them, a little bit of pruning.  Total harvesting time for each tree is less than an hour (much less, they are semi-dwarf trees).  2 hours to make jam.  So 3 hours/year investment in my rack of peach jams, out of which we would have to then calculate the time involved in producing a tablespoon of jam for my morning biscuits. 

I use the square foot gardening method, www.squarefootgardening.com , which is the least work garden method that I know of.  It takes about 1 hour to make a square foot garden bed, and once made, it's made, it doesn't get remade every year, just a new top dressing of compost.  No tilling, very little weeding if set up right from the beginning.

I water sparingly, and not enough to make an appreciable difference between my winter and my summer water bill. I use thick mulch, which helps conserve moisture. I don't buy any fertilizer, I have a compost pile, and that is my fertilizer. My garden equipment consists of 2 shovels, both of which I bought used at a garage sale several years ago, 1 rake, also bought used. The lumber for my garden beds was scavenged, and cost nothing. So there's not much expense there to account for. Sure, a person can spend a lot of money on equipment if that's what they want to do. I could have bought an expensive shovel for say $30 at an expensive garden supply store, but I don't have that kind of money. So I paid $2 for a shovel from a garage sale and I think it pretty much works as good as the $30 version. The other tool I use is a digging stick to poke holes for seeds, but that is just a stick from the branch pile by the compost pile.

←

i would have to agree with Robert Waldrop here. It takes no longer for me to can a set of my own vegs or fruit (say a gallon of tomatoes or a basket of peaches) than it would for me to make a trip to the store to buy them. For me, much less time than it would take for me to go to a farmer's market to procure the food. And once you buy that $2 shovel it don't have to do so again for a long time. Negligible time outlay for food that will feed the family for months. Composting is a next to no time activity -- you're going to have to put that garbage somewhere. Laying out the garden and planting is the work of a morning or afternoon -- again not appreciably longer than a trip to the grocery. With no gasoline expended there either. I do factor in the cost of the plants/seeds. That is afar less initial outlay than food, ashelter costz.efor much the food

[John Whiting]

And once you buy that $2 shovel it don't have to do so again for a long time. Negligible time outlay for food that will feed the family for months. Composting is a next to no time activity -- you're going to have to put that garbage somewhere. Laying out the garden and planting is the work of a morning or afternoon -- again not appreciably longer than a trip to the grocery.

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The tricky bit for most of those who worry about where their food is coming from is not paying for the shovel, but acquiring the garden.

[fifi]

This is not precisely on topic but I think it is related.

Over the holidays, my daughter and I were hosted by my son. On one of the nights before Christmas, he scheduled us to spend a few hours at a local food bank where he is a regular volunteer. This is a small operation but well run. The drill is that the clients come in and fill out a "shopping list" for the week. As newby volunteers, we were most useful in filling the shopping carts, keeping the shelves stocked and hauling out the trash. I was struck with what they had available for that evening. Fresh vegetables and fruit: oranges, bananas, onions, potatoes, cabbage. Frozen meats: pork chops, various chicken pieces, cornish hens. Staple starches: pasta, beans, rice, bread, bagels. Assorted canned goods that were mostly fruits and vegetables. About the only "processed" foods were some little hams, cheese slices, nutritional drinks (Useful for "old folks.") and the boxes of milk. Fresh eggs were available. Someone is doing a good job of putting together a pretty good selection of donations.

Here is what struck me. As I was filling the carts, I started a mental game of "what would I cook with this?" I actually came up with some ideas that sounded pretty tasty in my head. (I did comment that they needed to get some canned tomato products on the shelves.) I also factored in that some of these folks are working a lot of hours so that any of my mental meals had to be quick and easy with minimal equipment and minimal pantry required. I still got to some tasty stuff.

So . . . What is my point, you say. What I don't know is if these clients really know what to do with all of this mostly-real food? Most of us here are pretty accomplished cooks and wouldn't have a hard time with this at all. But, I didn't see a program to make simple recipe and meal suggestions based on what was available for that week. I don't think it would take much to get that kick-started. I wonder how many of this operation's clients do know what to do.

I read somewhere that here in Houston, one of the big food pantry operations does have a program where chefs come in and give demonstrations and all of that. I am thinking on a much smaller scale here . . . like a handout sheet of ideas and very basic instructions for what is available that week.

I agree that the budgeting and strategies in the article are an excellent first step. But the next phase . . . I am calling it "Now what?" . . . might be something to be considered. If you are among the urban poor and were brought up going to McDonalds, you might not have a clue.