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I’m fortunate to have access to a microwave, refrigerator, and sink at my work. This means that it’s pretty convenient to bring a variety of food, store it, and heat it when I am hungry. Last night, after a mere 10-hour day at work, I was home early enough to make a pot of black […] Due to my work, which at this time of the year has me working on grant renewals until late at night, I haven’t cooked any black beans. I’m now in the fourth day of the challenge, and the diet is getting decidedly dodgy. Last time I talked about the food I had on hand, I […] …or “lateria,”* as one Latina farm worker described the kind of food she finds when she needs to access community food banks after her monthly allotment of food stamps runs out. “What do I do with canned beets?” Although it’s a statement that might potentially raise the hackles of any number of people […] Sunday was a good start to my $21 week–I got free food! My friends Misty and Lindsey, who know about the food challenge and are fellow social services gurus, watched as I made three trips to the snack table at Quaker meeting during social hour and filled up on cheese and crackers. I spent the […] I gathered my receipts from my most recent trip to the grocery store and made a chart of the food purchased on those trips that I plan to consume this week. Their costs are subtracted from the $20 remaining in my budget, after I took $1 off the top for random condiments like salt, pepper, […] This shouldn’t be too hard for me; for one, I have a pretty good grasp on nutrition, know how to cook from raw ingredients very well, and have actually lived on less than this amount a week for food for extended periods of time. I remember a lot of weeks of eating only rice when […] Shortly after learning about the food stamp challenge, I passed the word along to my co-worker, Chris. Like me, he was a little hesitant–it feels a lot like going back to college, for some strange reason. Regardless, he’s signing on too, so we’ll be accountable if one of us shows up to work with a […] Oregon Food Bank‘s April Advocacy Alert arrived in the mail at work today. It included an article entitled “Take the food stamp challenge,” which asked for volunteers to sign up to live on a $21 food budget per person for a week, the average food stamp subsidy in Oregon. Starting Sunday April 22, many Oregonians, […] |