Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Food used after 1 week:

Adding up what I have used for food since last Tuesday, I have arrived at an estimate for food expenditures of $36, including some vegetable sushi I ate before teaching my GRE class last night. This doesn't include the pizza on Saturday and sandwiches on Sunday, plus soda and chips, which would have pushed my food costs beyond $37.

Sarah shared with us the Food Lifeline food stamp challenge of $21 for a week. People I know who have been on food stamps got considerably more ($30-37.50/week) as single people *with* enough other income that they probably didn't need that whole amount in order to eat well. I would like to see stories from food stamp recipients about this, not that I'm saying they're not true, but maybe food stamp allotments are so capricious in terms of who gets how much money that it seems unbelievable to me. I'd like to hear more stories from people who really do live off of food stamps, and I hope Food Lifeline will make this a part of their challenge.

I'm going to be trying to stick to the food stamp challenge in future days, but it may not be logistically possible at present. I'm going to be bouncing back and forth between homes over the next week, which I wasn't doing during the first week. I'm sure I've not learned as much as I could just yet, but if I'm able to stick to this without too much logistical difficulty, I will, and if not... then hopefully I can rejoin in a week or two.

I'm considering doing the $21 challenge starting May 19. Kinda wondering if I even should. I am insufferable when it comes to being hungry. On $21 for a week, I'm not really sure how I could avoid being hungry, or at least extremely dissatisfied with my diet and possibly tired and listless. Just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests, if I don't get my need for food met, nothing else matters until I do. At that level, I understand how miserable living off such a small food budget can be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You write very well.