Eating Organic on a Food Stamp Budget

[12345]

i saw a link to this blog on another forum. i thought it was great. it explores a lot of questions about access to good food...

http://www.rebeccablood.net/thriftyo/

[xmas74]

1. Thanks!

I've read a bit but will bookmark the rest for later.

I'm always looking for inexpensive healthy recipes for my daughter.

[Clark2008]

2. You could fill your cart up with fresh veggies and it not cost an

arm and a leg.

I understand fresh meats cost a lot and are hard to purchase on a shoestring budget (I was a single Mom for five years, believe me, I know), but my son and I spent about $60 - $75 a week, if that, and ate mostly veggies.

[xmas74]

4. We do alot of veggies

but I want decent recipes that are not tired and haven't been used over and over again.

I want her to have a hand in cooking so she will learn to appreciate what she eats and how it got there. That, and I want to get rid of most of the meat in our diets. I just don't trust the hormones and such used nowadays.

[davidwparker]

12. get the book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (from library). It's very

thick with all kinds of delicious recipes.

Also, look for some at foodtv.com

[xmas74]

14. Thank you!

Will do so sometime soon.

[unpossibles]

5. I agree. The trick is to avoid most preprocessed foods

and buy fresh, and in quantity if it's something that will keep (like dried beans, rice, etc). It took me a couple of years to figure out how to eat cheaply, but there are many things you can do, and I still find myself looking at the price/ounce or per serving when I shop.

[Warpy]

11. You can do amazing things with beans and grains

You can do loaves, burgers, stews, soups, filled pastries, salads, you name it. Once you start exploring something beyond wheat and rice for grains, a whole world of possibilities opens up.

The veggies can be cheap, too. Root veggies, onions, cabbage, and squash are still a great buy.

You can do without meat and pricey stuff very nicely if you have to. It just sucks having to.

[unpossibles]

20. it sucked having to at first

eventually I got to the point where I decided it was better to go veggie than to buy cheap meats, and learned to enjoy it instead of seeing it as a hardship.

[kestrel91316]

23. Oh, but who has TIME TO COOK, waaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

:sarcasm:

You can't have cheap AND convenient. If you want convenience foods you HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM.

I get aggravated hearing how food costs so much, and then the list of foods complained about is ALL highly processed convenience crap that nobody should be buying or eating, IMHO.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Not here they're not...

and this is farm country.

Been eating on a shoestring for quite a while and now it's almost automatic-- stock up on what's on sale, freeze or can what you can, don't buy what you can make...

But, I've rarely seen fresh veggies, even at the farmstands, close to what canned and frozen go for.

[xmas74]

7. Exactly.

I live in rural Missouri and I can go to the local Aldi's and buy a can of peas, green beans, corn, carrots, etc for a quarter.

I can buy a can of asparagus for about .65 at Aldi's-sometimes even cheaper if there is a sale. And canned fruit is usually between .35-.99 (and the expensive .99 is a large can of a tropical fruit mix that would normally be around 1.50 a can at a regular store.)

I try to grow my own and I try to support farmers markets and produce stores but sometimes, when your budget is already hurting badly, Aldi's is the cheapest of all.

[Rosemary2205]

35. Canned fruit and veggies

My god, why would anyone put themselves through that. Ick. (especially the veggies)

It takes 4 cans of veggies to equal 1 pound of frozen veggies. If you are spending 25 cents a can then you are spending $1 a pound. Unless freezer space is a serious problem for you I hope you'll look in the freezer section and see what a 1 pound bag of your favorite veggies costs. The taste and nutritional values are just so much better.

The one advantage canned has over frozen, other than shelf life, is that they all contain liquid, consumable liquids that do come in handy in a crisis where potable water might be difficult to come by. (think natural disasters).

[xmas74]

36. Unless you want to buy the cheapest brand

(once again at Aldi's-one pound for $1.49 on green beans) then that's the way it goes.

The point is-people on this forum keep saying that fresh from the farmer's market is cheaper than buying canned. When it comes to someone on a fixed income, no it doesn't.

My family buys fresh or frozen but it's not the cheapest in my area-canned is. I can tell you right now that I spent $1.75 on 12 oz of frozen peas. A can of early June at the discount outlet mentioned above ran me 0.25.

We tell everyone that fresh is best yet many cannot afford fresh, no matter how much they'd like them. Food pantries usually don't give out fresh-they give out canned. Right now there are lots of folks living off the food pantry staples.

Even though I live in the middle of farmland veggies are expensive compared to the cost of living. Why is that? It's because most of the farmers around here ship their veggies to the East or West Coast and they don't sell them locally.

(Just to add-I looked up the sale prices for a local grocery store online. For the store brand of the frozen veggies-and believe me, they taste cheap so I try to buy a better brand-it's 32 oz for 2.25. A can measures out to 15 oz and that doesn't include the weight of the can. What's really interesting is that this week I can get 10 cans of Libby's organic canned veggies for 9 dollars. The store brand isn't organic-I know, I asked before. In this case I would consider purchasing the Libby's to keep around the house instead of the store brand frozen veggies.)

[Rosemary2205]

39. A tip

BTW, I agree with you on fresh markets. I also live on a shoe string budget and more often than not processed fruit and veggies are much cheaper than fresh. This isn't as true for "winter" veggies - potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage and apples though. And yes, the folks living off the food pantry are going to get canned because of the shelf life.

A can of peas/corn/greenbeans/carrots I found to be more than half liquid by volume but more than 3/4 liquid by weight. I personally found I saved more money by going with frozen, but that's just in my market. Your's might be cheaper with canned -- You could try measuring the volume of peas you get out of a can once the liquid is drained off and compare that to the same volume of frozen and do the math to see which is cheaper. -- though I have to add, more than 3 months in the freezer and frozen can get freezer burnt.


BTW, I also wanted to add -- if you have access to a Kroger -- they often put their Kroger brand veggies on sale around here for $1 a 1 pound bag. Kroger and Private Selection frozen fruit and veggies are actually Birdseye.

If you are near a Publix, their store brand is actually PicSweet brand and is often on sale quite cheap.


Anyways, I feel for you. I think a lot of people who talk about how cheap food is forget those of us who have to shop with the calculator. :)

[xmas74]

40. I wish I had those stores

but I don't.

And that is a big problem around here-many don't think about shopping on an extremely tight budget. I do all the time, especially when I volunteer at the local pantry. I meet people w/ an even tighter budget than mine.

As to the winters-I buy those fresh. And our pantry has given them fresh to folks in the past.(Before they started closing some of the local pantries, of course). They keep well in any cool, dry space for quite a long time.

[shanti]

33. farmer's markets

great places for fresh, wholesome fruits and veggies. here in sacramento, we have lots of them. i've found tho, that you must eat them in a timely fashion, because they don't really keep as long as store bought produce.

[xmas74]

37. Farmer's markets in my area cost more than the

grocery stores do.

I shop at one as often as I can afford it but it does cost quite a bit more. And for someone on a fixed income (such as food stamps) they could not shop there. Most farmer's markets do not accept food stamps, WIC vouchers, etc.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I notice she has a food co-op that...

not too many of us have.

[My Good Babushka]

8. home gardens

It used to be when you were poor, but had a little yard, you could grow a lot of your own food. I don't know if I would trust the soil in my yard for growing edibles. It's been contaminated by industry and the neighbors' chemical fertilizers, and who is responsible if you can't cultivate your own property? Nobody!

[Shallah Kali]

9. You could check with your cooperative extension service to see how much it would cost to test

I wish this lawn obsession would die. lawn is the #1 irrigated crop in the USA not to mention all the toxic crap people put on it to kill everything but the grass. Then they fertilize the grass to make it grow then have to mow mow mow to get RID of that growth. Think of all the people that could be fed good healthy food if even 1/4th of lawns were turned into veggie gardens!

Kiss Your Grass Goodbye!
Victory Gardens an Idea Whose Time Has Come—Again
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/victory_gardens_an_idea_whose_time_has_come_again/C108/L108/

She went looking for data on how much of this country’s terrain is decked out unnaturally in close-cropped green but found nothing. So, by using the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Land Cover Database and NASA’s satellite information, Cristina and fellow researchers, beginning in 2003, painstakingly extrapolated from all developed areas in the nation a ratio of impervious surfaces (rooftops, asphalt) to open land and conservatively estimates three times more lawn acreage than irrigated corn in the U.S. At 128,000 kilometers, lawn ranks as the number one irrigated crop in America.

snip

More than twenty million Victory Gardens were planted during WWII, by nearly one-half the adult population not serving overseas. Gardens were planned and planted cooperatively, providing a variety of local produce that was eaten fresh or canned and then shared throughout the community and with the troops.

snip

Seventeen percent of this nation’s petroleum consumption is dedicated to on-the-farm food production. Add on processing, packaging, refrigeration and transport of edibles and food takes a big bite out of affordable oil supplies.Domestic food as basic as lettuce we could grow in front yards most of the year, and green houses in winter, travels up to 3,000 miles from field to table.

This doesn’t factor in our ever-expanding international appetites. According to Worldwatch Institute, we’re eating food requiring up to 36 times more energy to produce and transport than is provided by those morsels in calories consumed.

[China_cat]

10. So you build raised beds and fill

with good soil, compost and manure. Or grow in containers. That's what I'm doing. Of course, if I get caught I'll get a $500 fine for doing it because we're allowed only landscaping plants, not food crops. My rosemary, lemongrass and a few of the other herbs, as well as my 'ornamental' peppers are ok but the tomatoes, bell peppers, garlic, onions, etc are no-nos.

[Warpy]

13. You're prevented from growing anything you can EAT???

Good gawd, homeowner's associations have really gone around the bend.

You can't paint your house, you can't put a "for sale" sign on a vehicle you want to get rid of, you can't hang your laundry outside....it's hardly worth living there, is it?

I guess if you want to live green, you have to stay away from those "nice" housing developments.

[China_cat]

15. This isn't even one of those ritzy subdivisions

that have all those covenants. We bought this house because it was in an area where you could pretty much do as you wished with your property. Then we got annexed into the city. We don't have a homeowner's association, we have the city 'code enforcement'. They can fine you for not trimming your bushes, growing food crops, not mowing, not having your house number in the specified location and in the specified size, letting your house get dirty, not washing your windows...hell, they can ticket you for anything the person wants to. (This is the city that also taxes us for getting rained on)

I got a warning once for not picking up my dog's shit the minute she finished. In OUR yard, our FENCED yard. The one with the padlock on the gate. (Yard gets poop scooped once a day) I was expected to be there with a shovel under her ass.

[Warpy]

16. Where is this Fascist Disneyland?

I want to avoid it.

[China_cat]

17. North Charleston, SC

We were one of 4 families on this street that objected to the annexation and refused to sign the petition. Our garbage was not picked up for 6 weeks in retaliation and we got a notice saying that if the annexation didn't go through, this is what we could look forward to.

[iconoclastic cat]

19. How is that even legal?

Exactly what gives the town the right to pull that kind of crap? Can you sue?

[China_cat]

21. Nope. They've got it all.

Try to buck them and you start getting visited by code enforcement on a daily basis and they WILL find something to ticket you for.

The only time I really threw a fit was the year they sent notices that they were going to be inspecting all properties to make sure they were in good shape (supposedly to eliminate absentee landlords) and that they'd also be inspecting INSIDE your house to make sure you were hooked up to the city sewer system. I wrote city council a letter telling them that I couldn't stop their enforcers from seeing the outside of my house but that I wasn't a criminal nor a parolee nor suspected of a crime that would result in a search warrant and without one they weren't coming into my house and they could check the public works to see if we were hooked up to the sewer...that we'd certainly been paying enough for it if we hadn't.

I guess I wasn't the only one on that one because they changed their minds about coming in.

That was before my husband ended up with a 2 year layoff. We were looking for another house someplace less fascistic when that happened and then there was no choice but to stay. Now we're digging ourselves out of the financial hole that 2 years caused, with nothing extra to help us get the hell out of here. Believe me, we'd go if we could.

[mondo joe]

22. Wait - you're saying in North Charleeston SC it is illegal to grow vegetables in your own

garden, on your own property?

[Lex]

24. Sounds like the subdivision's Restrictive Covenants to me

not something that applies to the whole town.

[LostinVA]

27. Me too

[China_cat]

28. Nope, we don't have an HOA

the subdivision is about 60 years old (built for military returning from WWII) and WAS in the county until annexed a few years ago.

[China_cat]

26. In this section of the city, yes.

Down the road, closer to the county jail, it's ok. One area allows you to have farm animals like goats and chickens...but you aren't allowed to have fences. It's really ridiculous.

[Lex]

29. So this is a city ordinance then?

[China_cat]

30. Yes. They couldn't fine you for it if it wasn't.

[Lex]

31. You'd think they'd put such a thing in your code or zoning ordinances

but damned if I could find such a thing listed:

http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=11354&sid=40

[China_cat]

38. There's lots of stuff that isn't in there

or is in such limited wording that it's easy to miss. In case you didn't notice, none of the sections carries all the relevant legislation.

The landscaping portion of the appendix is what they use to decide whether or not you can have or keep certain plants. While it seems to refer only to new construction, the fact is that we have to have permits to do any kind of work on the property, including landscaping and then it's up to whatever inspector you get whether you'll be allowed or not. My containers are illegal on 2 fronts...the type of plants and the fact that I didn't get a permit for them.

Section 9-16 gives the code enforcement officer almost unlimited powers to decide what is and what isn't a violation.

[kestrel91316]

25. If you amend your soil with good compost and grow in raised beds,

soil contamination is not an issue, IIRC.

Check out Square Foot Gardening ofr how to grow in small spaces.
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

[My Good Babushka]

41. If I could afford to

build a shangri-la of hanging and raised gardens, I would probably just go to the store and buy the food, instead. Luckily, I can have a garden in my yard as our industrial blight is only moderate.

[iconoclastic cat]

18. Wow, very cool. Thanks!

[nam78_two]

32. kick.nt

[12345]

34. One surprising thing for me was

that my food budget for a family of 3 qualifies as a food stamp budget.

[12345]

42. a good website for info about farmers' markets, csa's, etc...

http://www.localharvest.org/