What You Can Do: Help strengthen 3SquaresVT so that Vermonters can get the nutrition they need all day and all month long. Tell your lawmakers in Washington DC to strengthen, not cut, 3SquaresVT (called SNAP at the national level). Tell them it doesn’t make sense to cut benefits that are proven to decrease hunger and improve health, especially during a recession. For more information on this message, go to www.frac.org.
Taking the Challenge?
Post a comment to this entry below and tell us about your experience!
Here are instructions on how to post:
Click on the text that say “6 comments” below (that number will go up as more people post—so it may have a different number before “comments” by the time you are reading these instructions). This will take you to the field below the existing comments where you can post your own Challenge experiences. Please type in the box below “Post a Comment” and select either “Anonymous” or “Name/URL” from the “Comment as:” drop-down menu. If you select “Name/URL”, you don’t have to include a URL if you don’t have one.
Feel free to contact Alida at Hunger Free Vermont (802-865-0255/ aduncan@hungerfreevt.org) if you have any trouble posting and she will walk you though it! Thank you!
Tonight is the benefit night for Hunger Free Vermont at the Skinny Pancake. I had originally saved $14 in my budget for this event, however, I ended up spending about $6 more in food early in the challenge to contribute to a friend's potluck. I'm afraid I might go over my remaining $8 budget tonight between food and tip. I am reflecting on how living on a limited food budget can limit social situations and be a bit stressful. I socialize over food quite a bit and holding dinner parties or pot lucks with my friends is one of my favorite things to do. However, living on a 3SquaresVT budget would make this difficult.
ReplyDeleteI am actually living the challenge on a daily basis, not just this week. So we have about $55 for 2 of us for each week - our monthly grocery budget (this includes household supplies and toiletries too) is $240.
ReplyDeleteWe do our best to eat healthy, including fresh fruits and veggies, but it isn't always possible. I try to make most meals homemade to save money. I don't buy any soda or chips or heavily processed foods (not that I like them anyway or want my child to have them). And we're making it work.
But I agree with the comment above about the social aspect. This is the part I find the toughest - in fact, psychologically, it's much worse than just "difficult." It's downright horrible. I've had to turn down invites to go out to restaurant dinners and potlucks, despite really wanting to hang out with friends. I don't think people realize until you have to say "no" how much our cultural activities revolve around food and how much it's just expected that we contribute to that. Even at "free" events in the community, usually the food isn't free, so why should I take my child there and then have to say no to what she sees other kids eating? It really just isn't fair...
Still, I try to be grateful for what I have, that at home, we are able to eat healthy most of the time, and that I know there are a lot of people with less, struggling more than us...
My husband and I participate in the Intervale Food Hub CSA. The veggies cost roughly $26 per week and the winter share includes vegetables, apple cider, and apples. Our CSA has been helpful this week as part of our overall $58 food budget. This season the Intervale Food Hub is offering some low-income families the chance to purchase this same CSA for $5 per week. Doing the challenge has made me extra thankful to the Intervale Center for offering this great option for families. Otherwise it might be hard for families to eat locally on a 3SquaresVT budget.
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts from last week, just THINKING about taking the Challenge
ReplyDeleteNovember 5, 2011
Felicia:
We don’t have to start the challenge --- or the blogging – for over a week. But I pushed Anore to have us start early because we are already in full freak-out about what we’re going to eat, what it’s going to cost, and how (whether) we’re going to make it. I have already spun through about 5 different scenarios under which I would cheat by eating something I technically couldn’t afford on a 3 squares budget. I have also already planned a semi-cheat, starting the very first day of the challenge: I will be traveling back from an academic conference in Atlanta, eating at the hotel and in the airport. Does that have to come out of our weekly food budget? We decided that it didn’t, since I will be reimbursed by my employer – although it’s hard to imagine a 3 squares recipient who would be reimbursed by her or his employer for meals during work (maybe no more than it’s hard to imagine a 3 squares recipient who would get to go to Atlanta and listen to scholarly papers for 3 days on the company dime).
I just went shopping and spent almost $200 at Healthy (Wealthy) Living – thinking wistfully the whole time about how hard it’s going to be to manage vitamins (I stocked up: maybe I don’t have to report it?), guacamole (bland vegetarian food has to be tasty, right?), beautiful, plentiful produce, precious local items like Vermont Butter and Cheese goat cheese and I’m-not-sure-I-need-it-but-maybe foods, like that tub of hummus I tossed in the cart just before wheeling to the cash register. To say nothing of the bottle of flavored seltzer, which I just finished off. Where food is concerned, I feel a bit greedy, but mostly happily over-indulged – and where 3 Squares is concerned, I don’t know how people do it.
Some thoughts from last week just trying to plan for the Challenge:
ReplyDeleteAnore on 11/5/11:
Felicia just got back from doing our weekly grocery shopping—Healthy Living this week. Sometimes, I go to Hanafords to stock up on items because it is cheaper there. And, we also go to Adams’ Farmstand, which is just down the road from our house in Williston. We are vegetarians, and we prioritize buying local products and organic products as much as possible. Mostly, I’m struck with the conflict of our ideals and what we truly believe is best for Vermont (buy local, eat lots of fruits and veggies that are in season, shop at locally-owned stores when possible) and the necessities that will be forced upon us in a week when we are feeding ourselves for 7 days on just $58. We won’t be able to shop and buy in a way that benefits our whole community. We will just have to be out for our own survival.
Also, I’m worried about how I’m going to be able to keep on participating in my community while living on a 3SquaresVT budget. Tonight, for example, we are going to have dinner with friends. We are bringing a fresh green salad, and they are making a main course. But, the cost of making even a very simple salad of lettuce, carrots, and bell peppers for 4 would require us to ration food for ourselves at home if we were living on a 3Squares budget this week. I don’t know about you, but I was raised that you never, ever accept an invitation to dinner at someone’s house unless you are able to bring something to contribute to the meal. Food is so consistently and intimately tied to sociability is our culture (and in every culture), that I feel sure Felicia and I would be much more isolated at home if we couldn’t afford to contribute to communal meals with friends and colleagues. Nearly every social event we attend is a potluck.
So, no problem, we’ll just be isolated for a week. I’ll just be selfish and focus on my own family’s survival from the 13th through the 19th. After all, survival comes first, right? Except that every Monday at Hunger Free Vermont, one staff member makes lunch for all 16 of us—it’s the one day each week when we all try to be in the office at the same time, and as anti-hunger activists, we know the power of feeding one another as a way to bond our staff together. It’s part of what makes us such a close-knit and effective team. Well, Monday the 14th is my turn to make this lunch! How am I going to manage a meal, however simple, for 15 extra people and still make sure Felicia and I eat for the rest of the week?! Yet, my situation is just the same as that of a mom or dad whose turn it is to bring the snack to the PTO meeting or to provide the lunch for their child’s birthday party. If you live on a 3Squares food budget, I’m learning, you start worrying about these things way ahead, but that doesn’t necessarily make the problem any easier to solve. And, what is the alternative? Is the message we want to send to the low income members of our communities that they should stop participating in the PTO? What kind of democracy is that? What I’m realizing just from writing this is that food insecurity can start a whole chain reaction of embarrassment and shame that can help explain why it’s the privileged among us who run everything, and then we say that low income parents just don’t care about their children’s education!
Anore:
ReplyDeleteI spent most of Sunday planning, calculating, shopping, and cooking lentils and rice and quinoa for the week and for our two potluck obligations - it was exhausting and stressful, and I needed a math degree to get all of the proportions right! I never plan out my food this carefully or watch my food budget this closely. It made me anxious and irritable--after just one day! After 3 days, the monotony is really getting old. I'm eating the same thing meal after meal after meal. And I know I'm not getting enough vegetables. They were the thing we couldn't afford with our $58.
Felicia:
I know I'm cheating, but I don't know how I would make it otherwise. Yesterday I had extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar on my vegetables, and I know I couldn't afford that on 3Squares. Today I had an illicit orange -- only bananas and apples are part of our fruit allotment for the week. I can't help thinking about the people for whom this is their only source of income.
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