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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Meeting the food stamp challenge with local foods.
  • Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:23:58 -0700


Meeting the food stamp challenge with local foods.
from RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com

I thought y'all would like to see the results of this frugal eating
experiment.

Robert Waldrop, Oklahoma City

MEETING THE FOOD STAMP CHALLENGE WITH LOCAL FOODS

Slow Food for Low and Moderate Income People

This page is available on the internet at
http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/foodchallenge.htm

In November Sharon Gordon posted a "food stamp challenge" in the Community
Food Security listserv (comfood-L): eat for a week on a food stamp budget. We
decided to do this using as much food as we could from local farmers so we
expanded the challenge to show how the combination of (1) frugal supermarket
shopping, (2) preparing meals from basic ingredients, (3) buying local foods,
(4) gardening, (5) food storage, and (6) home preservation of food could add
up to a healthy, affordable, practical, and environmentally sustainable meal
plan, even though the local meats, eggs, and dairy products are typically
more expensive than typical supermarket fare. And the food had to be
satisfying and taste good too, otherwise, what's the point? Call this the
Slow Food for the Poor Challenge.

I am happy to report that we succeeded on all accounts. Here's the summary of
our results:

Total spent on food for week:
$60.43

Food stamp allowance, 2 people 1 week
$61.87


amount under budget
$1.44

Food cost average amount per day
$8.63

amount bought from farmers
$44.18

amount from supermarket
$16.80

percent of local foods
73%

percent of supermarket foods
28%




Besides coming in under budget, we have at least 2 more meals of leftovers in
the fridge. We have apple pie filling in the freezer for later. The detailed
table, showing the meals, ingredients, and prices, is at
http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/challengetable.htm .

The meats we ate during the week were buffalo, 100% grass-fed beef, and pork.
Yes, we ate a lot of ground meat (sausage, beef, and buffalo) but we also had
a great pot roast for a festive weekend meal. The meats ranged in price from
$2.95/lb (ground buffalo wrapped in butcher paper) to $4.50/lb for the
buffalo round roast.

We ate ground meat nearly every day, and some might ask, "Wasn't that
boring?" No, because we fixed it many different ways. We had Redneck
Salisbury Steaks (ground buffalo patties browned in a skillet, and then
cooked in gravy in the oven), homemade spaghetti sauce with ground buffalo
and pasta, rice pilaf with ground buffalo, and beef stew made with hamburger.

Ground meat can take on many different flavors, depending on the herbs used
with it, and we made liberal use of our garden-grown dried herbs this week.
If we had tried to eat unseasoned hamburger patties for a week, that would
have gotten boring very fast. Instead one day we were south of the border,
and the next we were dining in Italy and the day after in southwest Oklahoma.
We were liberal with our use of herbs, onions, garlic, hot red peppers,
habanero pepper salsa, and chipotle peppers, all from our garden with us-ens
doing the processing (smoking for the chipotles, boiling water canning for
the habanero pepper salsa, dehydrating for the peppers, curing for the onions
and garlic). All of that work was done earlier, in the summer and fall, now
we get to eat these items all year thanks to a couple of hours of work in the
summer or fall.

Our eggs were from certified organic, free-ranging hens, bought directly from
a farmer through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, costing $3/dozen. As the week
went on, I slowly scaled back the number of eggs we ate for two reasons. One
was to stay in the budget, the second was we were running out of farmer eggs
and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative monthly delivery is not until this coming
Thursday. On Sunday, Sean and I were a bit dubious about 1 scrambled egg
each, but it turned out fine. The sausage we scrambled with it added to the
bulk, and the homemade hashbrowns made with leftover baked potatoes further
filled out the meal, and the apple cobbler for breakfast dessert was a true
treat.

Every day we had home baked rolls or biscuits made with 100% certified
organic stone ground flour, made with Oklahoma wheat. I used the opportunity
to try a couple of different recipes and we decided that the most recent
version was undoubtedly "our best 100% whole wheat rolls ever". (Recipe is
included below, of course.) We baked biscuits or rolls every day, but I only
made dough twice during the week, making enough dough for several bakings,
and keeping the unused dough in the refrigerator.

We made intelligent use of leftovers, by design. Sunday's supper was a
delicious hearty winter soup. It had leftover cabbage and the broth from
cooking the cabbage, leftover beans and bean soup, some of the rice pilaf,
and the gravy from the pot roast, simmered for a couple of hours, and served
with fresh baked whole wheat rolls. There's enough of that soup left for
today, and we're glad about that because it was very good, rich and complex
flavors.

We would not have had such nice treats (apple pie and apple cobbler) if we
had not preserved apples during the summer that were given to us by a friend
who had picked and preserved so many for her family she was out of room in
her freezer. So we sliced, dipped, and froze several bags of apples and each
month we have apple treats.

We did not cut any corners on quality. We used olive oil and butter, not
shortening and margarine. We buy olive oil at a locally owned supermarket for
$10/gallon. They don't have it at that price all the time, so when it is
cheap we buy several, and then we don't have to buy it for quite a while.

Our garden and home preservation skills made a major contribution to our
diet. Home grown and/or preserved items we used during the week included
spaghetti sauce, corn on the cob (bought from a farmer in the summer and
frozen), green beans, peach and plum jam, chipotle peppers, habanero salsa,
dried herbs, cured onions and garlic. We had fresh greens (chard) from the
garden. Food processing techniques that contributed to our menu this month
included jam making, boiling water canning, dehydrating, freezing, smoking
peppers, and curing of alliums. .

The meats were bought through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, pork from the
McGehee family of Okemah and buffalo from the Stepp family of Hinton and
Dennis Garret of Eufaula. I think it is likely that folks in other areas
would have a hard time finding locally produced meats at these prices, but
that of course was one of the reasons I started the organizing process to
form the Cooperative. Oklahoma needed a way to conveniently buy food from
farmers, and voila, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative was born. Our meat and egg
prices are higher than supermarket fare, but they are lower than what is
generally found in health food stores and natural groceries.

Supermarket items included pasta, white flour (for thickening gravies and
sauces and for the pie crust, the cobbler was made with whole wheat flour),
sugar, salt, rice, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, celery, dried beans, canned
tomato sauce (we used the last of our frozen sauce this week, sigh), butter,
and milk. We are hoping to add carrots to our list of "we grow all we eat"
items next year but in the meantime we buy them at the supermarket.

Food storage proved its utility, in that I didn't have to buy anything except
cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and celery, everything else was on hand. I did
make an extra trip to the grocery store to check some prices, however, as I
charged myself for the supermarket items I had on hand based on the price
this week at Buy for Less at NW 23rd and Penn in Oklahoma City for the items.

PREPARATION TIME

Someone sent me a private email suggesting that I keep track of food
preparation time. I did this but was keeping that in a separate document
which got corrupted and so I lost the second half of the week. Generally, not
including cooking time, these meals averaged 15 minutes preparation time. The
pot roast extravaganza was the most involved menu. The dough making took
about 20 minutes for each batch, including the kneading time. The pie was 20
minutes prep time, the cobbler was about 10 minutes. The first time I made
dough of course it took a lot longer than 20 minutes, but I have been making
bread for going on 20 years so unless it is something new I don't have to
read the recipe, figure out what I am going to do, etc. I have everything I
need for baking organized in one place, so I don't have to go find stuff when
I am ready to bake. If anything, during this week cooking took a little
longer because I was measuring everything with spoons and cups that I usually
"measure by sight" so I could fairly account for the price of the ingredients.

It should also be noted that this is not an exceptional menu for us, it is
basically the same kind of food we eat every month, so these recipes were not
new recipes to me, I have prepared them many times.

One of the real time saving techniques we used was planning leftovers. The
most complicated meal was the pot roast, but we ended up with a second meal
that evening from the leftovers, and then the rest of the roast and the gravy
went into the Sunday night soup. We had more than one meal of burger helper,
but the subsequent meals simply required warming it up. My busiest day was
Wednesday, I am at church from the morning until late at night, so I prepared
all three meals at breakfast, and then packed my lunch and dinner.
Remembering the descriptions in Laura' Kitchen cookbook about how she
prepared her husband's lunches to take to work, I got out a picnic basket and
filled it up, the rest of the staff at work thought it was a great touch, and
it was. A re-usable picnic basket is much better than a disposable sack.



CONCLUSIONS:

My conclusion is that depending on the access to local foods, feeding your
family a high quality diet using many local ingredients is absolutely
do-able. This experiment integrated frugal supermarket shopping, use of many
local foods, preparing meals from basic ingredients, food storage, gardening,
and home preservation of foods. Each of these six areas was essential to our
ability to stay within the food stamp budget.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Based on this experiment, encouraging/helping low and moderate income people
in these areas seems to me to be most promising of success. I think people
should start with their situation as it is, and over time add the six basic
areas of food security until they all work together. People will be better
able to take advantage of local foods, for example, if they have already
learned to prepare meals from basic ingredients.

+ Skills. Our grandparents knew how to do all this stuff, but there has been
a tragic collapse in the transmission of heritage food information across
generations in the United States. Classes are needed to help people learn how
to plan menus, garden, preserve foods, cook meals from basic ingredients. And
people need to talk to elders while they remain with us and conserve as much
information as they can. Oral histories are a great way to do this.

+ Equipment. Help people acquire home food preservation equipment, including
freezers, canning jars, dehydrators. For about $200 (internet catalog
prices), a basic set of new equipment could be bought including a boiling
water canner, dehydrator, grain grinder, pressure canner. For about $1500,
larger equipment could be bought (including a pasta maker and oat roller)
that could be loaned for use by individuals or groups or maintained at (for
example) a church kitchen and made available for use by people wanting to do
home preservation of foods but who don't have the equipment.

+ Improving access to local foods. If I did not have access to the Oklahoma
Food Cooperative, it would have been much more difficult to meet this
challenge. Low income people in cities are not going to have the time or
resources to be running around in a hundred mile radius stopping at farms
along the way to get their groceries. Structures need to be established to
efficiently and conveniently link urban consumers with rural producers. It is
my opinion that those structures should be organized and controlled by those
who use them - the producers and the customers.

+ Frugal supermarket shopping. The easiest of the five areas to start with is
frugal supermarket shopping, preparing meals from basic ingredients, and home
food storage. That was where I started. Low and moderate income families
should be encouraged to keep some of their household savings in the form of
food. It takes a while to build up supplies, of course, but over time this
helps low income households manage their food budgets. Supermarket prices
often have violent "mood swings". If meat is cheap, canned goods are
expensive. A family with food storage can buy what is cheap, and avoid what
is expensive.

+ Gardening. Gardening is another area to "start working on early", and
helping people learn how to garden is essential for food security - also
helping them to find the resources they need,

including seeds, bare root plants, tools, and land.

RECIPES

The recipes used the week can generally be found at
http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/2004index.htm , the 5th edition of the Better
Times Almanac.

BOB'S IMPROVED 100% WHOLE WHEAT BREAD DOUGH

This recipe is loosely based on a recipe I found in John's Bread Book,
recently given to me by a friend. It is a "sponge" bread method. The night
before you want the bread, you mix all the liquid and make a batter using
about half the flour. You let this sit overnight and then finish the recipe
in the morning.

About 8 cups whole wheat flour | 2 cups water | 2 cups milk | 3/4 cup olive
oil | ½ cup honey | 2 teaspoons salt | 4 tablespoons yeast | 5 tablespoons
vinegar

Combine the liquid ingredients, salt, and yeast. Add flour until it is the
consistency of a thick pancake batter, about half the flour or a little less.
Add the flour one cup at a time so it doesn't get to thick. Using a mixer,
beat this batter for 10 minutes (you can also beat it by hand if you don't
have a mixer.) Cover it, and leave it in a warm place overnight. The next
day, add the rest of the flour, knead for ten minutes, make into loaves or
rolls and bake as usual in the oven.

In my opinion and experience, you want whole wheat dough to be stickier than
is typical with white flour dough. It helps if you oil your hands before
kneading, and keep a saucer with a little oil on it to refresh the coating as
you knead the bread. Flours vary in their ability to absorb moisture, and the
humidity also impacts this, so always add the flour one cup at a time and
towards the end maybe only a half cup at a time.

I found the tip about adding vinegar to whole wheat bread dough at the Walton
Feed website, and we tried dough with and without it this week and we like it
with the vinegar. Lemon juice can be substituted for vinegar (we used
homemade vinegar given to us by a friend).

TIP FOR POT ROAST GRAVY

If you make a miripoix to put the pot roast on (and you should), be sure to
include all of it in the gravy. The gravy we made with our pot roast this
week was unanimously agreed to be my "best gravy ever". Miripoix details are
in the Better Times Almanac page on "Roast Beast".

Robert Waldrop

President, Oklahoma Food Cooperative

Founder, Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City







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