Thursday, August 25, 2011

Living on a Food Stamp Budget Month 2 Day 21

The Huffington Post article about one week of my life on this budget has hit. Read it here.


Praise and condemnation in fairly equal measure. As is typical on the net, many of the comments skimmed, rather than read and know not of what they speak. I answer a few and clarify a couple of assumptions. Despite the choice to live on this budget I am who I am. I don't apologize for that.

It is almost noon and I have only had coffee. My e-mail box overflows. Some critical, some lovely, but that is to be expected.

I finally fried the rest of the chicken I had purchased the other day. I knew it would be okay to overspend because I have an event tonight and dinner will be served.
Chicken 2.66
Garden Salad .10
This mornings coffee .30
Total 3.06

I spent the day in a meeting and the evening at the Chef's program at ECS. It was graduation night.

I talked to a lot of the students. One of the most inspirational is a woman who spent 30 years on the streets as a heroin addict. With the help of ECS she stayed clean and learned a trade. After 6 months she is ready for the job market. How can you not love people who have come from all kinds of hardship and still manage to work hard, learn a trade and do so without being bitter?

The article I referenced in the first paragraph has taken on a life of it's own. Right now I can't even begin to address all the comments and e-mails it has generated.

In two days I have to cook for 12 hours, so it is time for sleep. I will factor in the rest of my food and nutrition tomorrow.

Y'all take care now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't let all the ugly and hate on the Huffington Post get to you.

A lot of it is thinly disguised racism.

Kate Si said...

Getting food for free is not cheating. That's how it works when you're poor. If someone offers to give you food you TAKE IT. If your work is having a pizza day or sandwich day or something, you take leftovers. You eat the samples at the grocery store and you go to street festivals in case there are more free samples there. A stranger giving you cream or bread is the right thing for them to do.

When my friend was on WIC, they didn't provide her with any vegetables or meat coverage. It was basically 2+ gallons of milk a week, crappy cereal and 4 POUNDS of cheap cheese. She used to trade the milk and cheese for veg, eggs and meat with neighbors. Supposedly they've improved their crap idea of a balanced diet but who knows.

Anyway, taking what's offered is NOT cheating.