Lenten Lessons

After testing the limits of our creativity with budgeting, menus, and grocers, what did we learn on $14 a day? Did it change us?

First, we heard a lot about produce being too expensive for a budget, but I disagree. It's a matter of planning and priorities. Even before this year's Lenten experiment, we always wrote a weekly menu, then a shopping list based on the menu, then shopped in the produce aisle first. Using the same technique on a budget causes you to plan for nutritional foods like produce, so we were already ahead of the game.

Second, the exotic, psychoactive stuff like fine wine and high quality coffee is next to impossible on a budget unless you set your expectations low. $2 per bottle table wine and a big bag of Eight O'Clock Arabica Coffee was about the best we could manage, and it perhaps would have been better to leave it alone entirely.

When you're on a budget, convenience foods go by the wayside and you need to spend extra time cutting, trimming, cooking and generally preparing foods. As your dollar budget goes down, your time budget goes up to maintain the same level of nutrition and quality. I suspect this is a huge issue with poor nutrition in underserved neighborhoods - many people are overworked and can't or won't take time to prepare nutritious foods.

Eating in restaurants - fuggetaboudit. One second thought, that's not actually true - eating cheap food in restaurants is possible, maybe even economical in terms of time and money, but it's not the kind of stuff you want to regularly put in your body, so why even consider it?

If you look at the intersection of convenience foods from grocers and poor-quality menus from cheap restaurant chains, you find what might be called the 'industrial food complex,' pumping out sugary, fatty, salty food-like substances ready made for the most vulnerable: those on razor thin budgets, overstressed households with no time, and kids. I think it's hopeful that we largely avoided the pitfalls on $14 a day.

Finally, if you ever want to save a boatload of money for a good cause, for your kid's education, or to pay for those rising gasoline prices, your may find there's a lot of room for belt-tightening in a food budget without going off the deep end, if you're willing to be creative.

"...and, in the end, the love you take is equaled by the love you make..."

Soup, spices, carcasses, and cat food

This week we went to Food Maxx. A much bigger store than Grocery Outlet, with more selection. Total bill was $87, which included $12 worth of cat food. No, we have not resorted to eating cat food. That's really for the cats. Really. Point is that our food bill was about $75.

Menus this week have included vegetarian chili with cornbread muffins, corned beef (found a $4 brisket) and cabbage (about 18 cents a head), duck soup and biscuits., and lots of leftovers. I'm suddenly not sure our leftovers will really stretch until the next shopping trip. Could be some sandwiches and canned soup in our future.

This week's confession: I used an old frozen duck carcass to make the soup. I don't usually keep bird carcasses; just don't want to deal with it. But, for some reason, I put this one in the freezer a few months back. If not for our Lenten project, it probably would have sat there for many more months until I finally decided to toss it. I'm just too lazy to make soup from a carcass. Well, I'll tell you, I just tasted the soup and it is spectacular. I made the base with all the vegetables and spices (yes, I used spices on hand*) on Sunday. Today I've added some barley. I did all the fat skimming and removed all the bones and chunks of this and that. Reserved some of the meat. I think I'll find time for more bird soups in the future.

*I asked my friend, Debra, who works as a volunteer at a food program in Davis, if they give any spices with food packages. She said, no, other than some salt sometimes. Spices are expensive. Something else we take for granted. Fixing beans and rice, or soups, or other big-pot sorts of dishes without an assortment of spices would result in a lot of bland, uninteresting, unpalatable food. And, people would probably resort to salt, which is unfortunate. Onions and peppers are good sources of flavor, but so many other spices would be very hard to afford on a small budget.

And I am eating a LOT of leftovers. Lunches are leftovers, dinners are leftovers. We've always been pretty good about eating up leftovers, but this is getting crazy. We're not hungry, though.

We bought a big bag of really good navel oranges. I'm eating at least one a day as I have a new sense of not wanting anything to go bad and be wasted.

Thursday, I'll be picking up Sean from UC Santa Cruz. He'll be here for a week, so, I guess we get to be a family of 3 next week. Woohoo! Our budget went up $7 per day! I wonder if we can feed Sean on our original budget and I can use some of his $7 for a latte..... kidding.

Warren's mother will be here for part of the weekend, so we'll see how it goes feeding a guest within our budget.

Things I'm really beginning to miss: good coffee and good cheese. These items are just too expensive to even put on the grocery list.

Starting to think about what we'll eat on Easter, as we break this fast of sorts.

Finally, I'm starting to think about where to donate our savings. My estimate is that we're saving somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500 throughout Lent. That seems high until I start adding up the restaurant meals that are usually part of our weekly budget. Some has been donated to St. Andrew's for a feed-the-homeless project that happened in early March. I'm thinking Contra Costa Food Bank and Hillcrest Food Pantry, but will take suggestions for other good, Bay Area food program.

2 1/2 weeks to go.

Taste Combos

My first post was a midnight ramble, but had some nice thoughts. Now let's talk recipes.

We have a lot of jam on hand, much of it gifted by friends. It's good stuff. In an effort to use some existing ingredients, I did a take on the Monte Cristo sandwich by layering jam, swiss and thin ham on multi-grain bread, grilled, with tomato basil bisque soup. Tasty and simple.

I eat a lot of fruits and a mix of raw vegetables for lunch, and found that cucumber sections are a nice departure from broccoli in the mix. I have a bit of cream cheese on hand, so I think there's a cucumber sandwich in my future. Very English.

I made chile verde on Saturday using boneless pork roast, $5 at Grocery Outlet, cubed and browned with garlic and onion, then simmered with ~8 oz of leftover green sauce on hand, a fresh chopped Pasilla pepper, 75 cents with tortillas, homemade guacamole and refritos. Nice.

Tomorrow is Patti's middle-eastern feast after I return from a meeting at Allen Temple Baptist Church in east Oakland. I can already taste it.

The Thin Line Between Cleverness and Piety

Lenten observances are reflections on sacrificial compassion. We seek changed lives, or to change the lives of those around us, even if only slightly. The spiritual overshadows the merely practical efficiency of $14/day.

One can approach the $14/day discipline in so many different ways: Is it appropriate to cleverly squeeze the budget for every advantage, creating the most rich and tasteful diet possible within the limits available? Or should we shed desires because they’re unbecoming of the observance, even if they fit into the limits? Can shrewdness and reverence get along?

We limited meat at the beginning - it is expensive. Now we are finding opportunities to add meat back into the menu. Good drink is probably one of the more expensive parts of any food budget, but it can enhance the simplest of meals. It’s a guilty pleasure to discover it’s possible to share wine or brew in moderation on a frugal budget.

I’m reminded that Jesus and the disciples shared food, wine and good company, but had virtually no wealth. Meals and celebrations are part of the Gospels, the subject of miracles and profound messages: water into wine; feeding of thousands with one basket of food; a man that had been dead cooking fish over a fire on a lakeshore; having dinner with prostitutes and collectors of the Roman tax; feasting on the best head of cattle from the estate to celebrate the return of a reckless son; nets so heavy with fish they can’t be lifted into the boat; bread and wine shared with friends to symbolize a final confrontation.

The stories are less about food than about God and us. Just to participate in the discipline and have the discussion transforms us, makes us closer, meditating on the problems and inconsistencies, even if we can’t agree on the answers.

We discover Grocery Outlet

One week down.

Warren made a huge pot of minestrone soup early in the week, and I've had that for at least 3 lunches and a dinner. Still some left. Had spaghetti with jar sauce one evening, and have leftovers from that. Had grilled ham and cheese with tomato soup one night. Very thin sliced ham. Stretched one small can of tuna into 3 lunch sandwiches.

Breakfasts haven't changed much. I eat a yogurt or a piece of fruit and have my Taster's Choice. Lunch, though, has been interesting. Just remembering to pack one is a start. Sandwiches, carrots, fruit. All good. And much less than I'm used to eating for lunch, since I usually eat out. I do get pretty hungry by the end of the day, but eating less lunch is probably a good thing.

I had a working lunch with a colleague from outside my office on Friday. She asked if we could meet over lunch and I had to explain what I was doing and that I'd have to bring my lunch. We had a lovely, productive meeting outside at Yerba Buena Center. She brought her lunch, too. And she even brought me a bag of limes from her tree. Before giving them to me she asked if it was within our rules to accept them, and the answer was a resounding "yes."

Conversations at work continue to be interesting. One topic that keeps coming up is how hard this kind of budget would be if we had dietary constraints. As it is, we can both eat just about anything. But, what if one of us were diabetic, or lactose intolerant, or had to eat gluten free, or low salt? I think it would be a challenge, but I also think that if we were really in poverty, we may not even realize we had food issues for lack of health insurance. I mean, how do people figure out they have food allergies, tolerance issues, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure? They go to the doctor. So, until something manifested itself in a serious way, we'd probably be clueless and go along eating to sate our hunger without thinking about other health issues.

This weekend, we discovered Grocery Outlet. Well, we didn't exactly discover it. We'd driven by it often, and my friend, Debra, said we should check it out. So, Saturday, with some skepticism on Warren's part, we stopped into the store in Concord. And were amazed. We spent $75 for our weekly supplies. Menus this week include fish (frozen whiting at $4 for a large package we'll be able to get about 3 meals out of) with beans and rice, chile verde (with pork roast that cost $5), falafel (from canned garbanzos). We bought a lot of produce, tortillas (to serve as bread for many meals), yogurt, milk. Great deals on cereal, which we thought would be out of our budget ($2.50 per box for huge boxes of raisin bran and frosted mini wheats). Even had room for some beer and wine in there. Unfortunately, I do not like the style of beer we bought (rye saison), but that's probably just as well. We'll be back there.

So, again, we seem to be a little ahead of budget, but I have to fess up. On Friday we are headed to Santa Cruz to hear Sean sing in a concert with the UCSC Concert Chorus. We'll be staying over night at a bed and breakfast. My guess is that the breakfast portion of that might be well over our daily food budget. We are planning to take sandwiches for Friday night dinner and then be home for lunch on Saturday. For us, that will be a pretty frugal approach to a road trip.

So far, we're eating well (plenty of fruits and veggies, a little bit of meat). Feeling a little hungrier than usual. We're putting a lot more thought into our menus and time into our shopping trips. Biggest challenge so far continues to be loss of convenience.

Back from vacation and on with the program

We got home from an amazing trip to Alaska on Sunday evening and went shopping on the way home. Warren did some more shopping on Monday. Total spent on food that's supposed to get us through Saturday lunch: $79. So, we're ahead of our $98 per week budget, right? Not really....

Officially, that $79 only covers from Sunday dinner through Saturday lunch. We're 3 meals short. We're also haggling over things like, is it OK to use the rice we have on hand? What about the Pop Tarts that Sean left behind? Or the wine? Frozen leftovers? How about the jams and jellies people have given us? Hmmmm.

It feels wrong to eat things we have a supply of, but it would be silly to buy more rice or butter or eggs rather than using what we have. On the other hand, beer and wine and Pop Tarts are not something we should be buying with our limited dollars, so it doesn't seem fair to use those. It surely seems within bounds to use the gifted jams and jellies.

What's the solution? I think we need to estimate the cost of anything we use and charge it against our budget. Warren's not convinced, but we'll continue to sort it out this week.

So, what kinds of stuff did we buy (don't worry, I won't go into such detail every time we shop)?
Fresh: carrots (same price for peeled, cut as for whole bulk--go figure), bananas, apples, broccoli, tomato, spinach
Frozen: peas
Dairy: milk, yogurt, cream cheese, Swiss cheese
Canned: green beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, soup, pasta sauce
Dry: spaghetti, penne pasta
Baked: bagels
Beverages: OJ, box wine, 6-pk beer
Meat: thin sliced ham lunch meat

The bagels and cream cheese were for Warren to take to share at work, so maybe that makes up for some of the use of pantry supplies.

And what have we pulled from the pantry?
Bread, tuna, one bottle of wine, one beer, mineral water, Pop Tart, butter

And I'm drinking about 15 cents worth of Taster's Choice each day.

A really good thing has come of this already. This morning I was desperately trying to track down containers to pack my tuna sandwich and carrots, but couldn't find anything in our messy cupboard. I was motivated to clean out said cupboard. Found all shapes and sizes of containers. Things we never use: donate. Lone containers or lids: trash. Cupboard is neat and everything has a matching lid.

The numbers

Many have asked where we came up with the $13-a-day rate for our poverty level. I originally worked it out a month or so ago, so decided to revisit and document. I have to admit that I hope something comes out differently and we actually end up with more money, but, alas, I suppose we could end up with less. But, here goes.

I googled things like "federal poverty level," USDA poverty," "bay area poverty" and such. I always like to get to the history of these things, so was happy to find this article: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/hptgssiv.htm. Back in 1963-64 a Social Secruty Administration employee named Mollie Orshansky developed the first poverty thresholds. Basically, starting with USDA data on what was described as an "economy food plan" she estimated that a family of 3 or more spent about 1/3 of their income on food, and so arrived at a factor of 3 to determine a total income poverty threshold based on the food budget.

Nowadays, the Census Bureau calculates poverty thresholds and other agencies translate those into eligibility criteria for various programs. The Department of Health and Human Services publishes Poverty Guidelines each year in the Federal Register. Here is the 2012 version: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12fedreg.shtml. This was not available when I did my original calculation.

One thing I had not realized is that the levels for Alaska and Hawaii are higher than for the rest of the country. There are no finer divisions to account for high cost of living in particular cities. That means, for example, that although the cost of living is very high here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have to use the guidelines for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. The FR Notice includes interesting comments about how it's not clearly defined whether "income" means before or after taxes. Different programs apply different rules.

So, looking at the 2012 guidelines, the poverty level for a family of 2, based on annual income, is $15,130. Which is about $1260 per month; $290 per week. I haven't found a clear way to tease out food from that, so I went back to Mollie Orshansky's approach and divided the threshold by 3 to arrive at $97 per week, or about $14 per day! Hey, that's a dollar more than I got with the 2011 numbers. So, we'll go with that.

Today, I bought some Taster's Choice instant coffee, on sale at Walgreen's. With that, I can get coffee for about $.07 per cup vs. the nearly $4 per latte I usually spend. I suspect that in a few weeks I'll be weaned from coffee.....