30 September 2010, Thursday

Living on $20 a week for food—to rewrite a relatively new proverb—isn’t for sissies. You just might be able to squeak by on $20 a week if you’re strong of mind (planning my food purchases took hours and hours this week) and strong of body (shopping took me five only occasionally painful hours on foot this week), if you’ve got an extended social support network, if there are no surprises (sickness, an accident), and if you never need anything else.

This week, I’ve literally walked (and walked and walked) in the shoes of someone on social assistance. No. That’s not quite true. I’ve walked in the shoes of someone on social assistance in only one aspect of that person’s life—his or her relation to $20 a week for food. But that’s not quite true either. I’ve merely followed in the footsteps of someone on social assistance as he or she shops for $20 worth of food. Even in this exercise this week, I’ve been advantaged in my own well-constructed walking shoes.

For me, this week’s exercise in excessive walking and limited eating has also been an exercise in the art of seeing. Hunger is largely invisible in our community. But I’ve learned to see clues all around me. The tipped grocery carts abandoned on street corners. The women with bundle-buggies, men without helmets on bicycles. The mothers on sidewalks pushing infants in strollers, trailing toddlers. People waiting for busses. People shopping the food aisles of dollar and discount stores. People laden with shopping bags on the streets. Are they all hungry? Probably not. But too many of them are.

In Nightlife, published as an insert in today’s Record, the restaurant reviewer concludes: Dinner for two a very reasonable $150.

If one evening’s dinner for two people at $150 is considered very reasonable by a large percentage of us living in Waterloo Region, surely $20 a week for food for a person living on social assistance is very unreasonable.

It’s also unacceptable.

Those living on social assistance in our community are among the most creative and adaptable and resilient among us when it comes to eating. We’ve given them handles without hammer heads and told them to pound in nails. They’re also among the bravest. Week after week, they try and try to pound.

Can you imagine what such creative, adaptable, resilient, brave people would be able to do to improve their own lives and our lives in community together with $25 extra dollars for food a week, $100 extra dollars a month?

Please join us in asking the Ontario Government to implement a Healthy Food Supplement of $100 a month for every adult receiving social assistance in Ontario—a mere two-thirds of that very reasonable dinner for two.

29 September 2010, Wednesday

I say I’m not hungry. But I’m thick. Had to be called to a 1.30 p.m. meeting yesterday, even though it was staring at me from my open daytimer. And I’m slow. Everything is taking longer. I want to sleep, in spite of seven hours of mostly uninterrupted, dreamless sleep last night. And I’m tea-logged.

A colleague walked past with a Tim’s. The fragrance of forbidden coffee!

This evening, my husband and I will pool resources for macaroni and cheese. I’ll bring my macaroni and cheese, celery and onions (always celery and onions) for the pot; he’ll bring his macaroni and cheese and something else, to be determined. I’ll cook. I’ll also make a cabbage and apple salad (we’ve been given more apples by a friend who works in an orchard) with no name salad dressing (omnipresent in my food this week). My treat. I have cabbage and salad dressing to spare this week, and the apples were a gift.

28 September 2010, Tuesday

Two cooks, two different dinners, one small kitchen, amiable chaos.

An idea—I’ll make scrambled eggs and veggies for both of us if you’ll contribute your own, equivalent ingredients.

I brought oil (my treat), two eggs, celery, onion, and cayenne to the frying pan; my husband brought two eggs, cherry tomatoes (he didn’t have celery, thank heavens!), onion, and mixed Italian spices. We each brought a piece of bread for toast.

Cherry tomatoes! Mixed Italian spices! My first tastes of difference in a week.

Breakfast

Toast

Tuna salad

Lunch

Bread

Peanut butter

Macaroni salad

Apple

Dinner (see above)

27 September 2010, Monday

Odd. For the past three days, I’ve found myself eating less and less. All of the joy has gone out of it. This food is functional, but it’s not beautiful. In a world in which people are hungry, what a luxury (what a sin?) it is to want food that’s beautiful! But I also find myself divorced this week from the social aspects of food, aspects that are far more important than aesthetics—food as emblem of family, community, nation, food as nurture, intimacy, friendship, celebration.

My husband and I are still managing to eat our morning and evening meals together, in spite of having to do a perpetual dance around each other in our tiggy-winkle kitchen as we each make our own breakfasts, our own suppers.

Breakfast

Toast

Peanut butter

Green tea

Colleagues at work asked how things were going.

If I brought in a bottle of homemade wine, would you be able to drink it?

Tempting.

May I share my lunch with you?

Very, very kind of everyone, but technically, this week, I don’t have colleagues.

Lunch

Tuna salad

Macaroni salad

Apple

Green tea

My husband picked me up after work. What could we do that didn’t involve food and drink?

We walked the St. Jacobs antique stores.

Dinner

Spaghetti

Spaghetti sauce

Cayenne pepper

Oregano

Cheese

Green tea

A certain sameness. And I’m getting a headache from too much green tea.

26 September 2010, Sunday

Up at 5.10 a.m. I was just about to put the kettle on, when the fire alarm rang. Drat, drat, and double drat! My husband and I put on shoes (always put on shoes when a fire alarm rings—you never know when you’re going to have to climb down a ladder), threw coats over T-shirts and track pants, grabbed keys and glasses, and headed 11 flights downstairs. We stood outside in the chilly air. I wondered, What if the clothes I had on my back—these clothes—were all I had after a real fire? What if a fire were to leave us homeless?

Heard later that a Toronto high-rise apartment fire on Friday has left thousands homeless.

Twenty-five minutes passed. No fire trucks. The closest station is three blocks from our building. Clearly, the alarm hadn’t sounded at the station. Cell phone calls from other bed-headed, bathrobed, morning-breathed residents to 911 and our building’s emergency number.

A car pulled up. A man who delivers newspapers to our building every morning in the dark. One of the invisible men in our lives suddenly visible. He put the papers in the lobby. I wondered, What is his story? Where does he live? Does he have enough to eat?

Someone told him that we’d been waiting for the fire fighters for 25 minutes.

Minutes later, there were fire trucks, our newspaper delivery man’s car hard behind them. He’d driven to the fire station himself to sound our alarm. But he’d inadvertently left his client list with the newspapers in the lobby. Invisible again, as fire fighters secured the building. He couldn’t get inside. But I need my list. I need my list.

Breakfast

Toast

Peanut butter (four teaspoons rather than three—much better)

Green tea

Took teabags to church so that I could have tea afterwards. But I didn’t have lunch at coffee hour because I didn’t walk to church. Today’s Gospel reading—the story of the rich man and Lazarus, a man who was hungry.

Lunch

Toast

Onion

Cheese (grilled)

Cayenne pepper

Cabbage

Salad dressing

Cayenne pepper

Green tea

Decided not to walk half an hour each way for a third $.67 can of tuna. I’ll try to make do with what I have.

Dinner

Oil

Eggs (2)

Celery

Onion

Cayenne pepper

Oregano

Toast 

Green Tea

For lunch tomorrow, tuna salad, bread, and an apple—until I counted my remaining slices of bread. Not enough to last the week if I have bread with lunch. For my lunch tomorrow, tuna salad, macaroni salad, and an apple.

Tuna salad

Tuna (1 can)

Celery

Onion

Salad dressing

Pickle relish

Cayenne pepper

Oregano

Macaroni salad

Macaroni (1 cup)

Salad dressing

Cayenne pepper

Oregano

25 September 2010, Saturday

Challenge Day One.

Rearranged the refrigerator when I got up—food that I wouldn't be allowed to see on one side, food that I'd be allowed to see on the other. Inadvertently licked the spoon of one of the invisible foods when I transferred it to a smaller bowl. Drat. Technical violation before I'd even started.

Breakfast
Toast
Peanut butter
Water (Drat. Forgot to buy tea yesterday.)

The toast dry. Tomorrow, I'll try a little more peanut butter.

Shopping Day Two. Fall weather—11 degrees Celsius when I went out after rain.

It took 1.5 hours to spend $7.06.

Dollar store
1.00    Green tea
1.00

Zellers
0.67    Tuna ($.02 less than budgeted)
0.67    Tuna ($.02 less than budgeted)
1.34

Sobeys

1.69           Cabbage ($.70 more than budgeted)

0.99    Celery hearts (a substitution—cauliflower was no longer priced at $.99

          a head)

2.68

I was almost angry at the cauliflower for ceasing to exist at $.99, not only because its non-existence required me to scramble, to rethink my Grand Plan, but also because the cauliflower—the very same heads of cauliflower—that had sold for $.99 had simply been moved to another bin and assigned a higher price.

A case of knowing that grocery specials change every week but thinking naively that $.99 heads of cauliflower would cost $.99 until the last one sold.

Sour grapes department. I don’t really like cauliflower without broccoli, and celery hearts will be more useful.

Shoppers

2.04    Eggs ($.05 more than budgeted; I bought a plastic bag as carton

          insurance, backpack protection)

2.04

I was also almost angry at bread at Shoppers. There they were—Friday’s $.99 loaves of bread, in the same place, priced $.80 higher on Saturday.

It took five hours yesterday and today to spend a grand total of $19.20. I have $.80 to spend at my discretion.

Fortunately, it didn’t rain.

Lunch

Toast

Onion

Cheese (grilled)

Cayenne pepper

Cabbage

Salad dressing

Cayenne pepper

Green tea

Dinner

Oil

Onion

Celery

Spaghetti sauce

Cayenne pepper

Oregano

Spaghetti

Cheese (grated)

Green tea

Dinner wasn’t a happy experience. Don’t think I could bear another sauce like that one. The fault of the celery and the thin, thin sauce. Couldn’t finish it. Might have to invest an hour walking and my remaining $.80 in another $.67 can of tuna tomorrow (its last day at that price). I’d wanted to spend it on fruit.

24 September 2010, Friday, Supplementary

A man, wearing a crushed brown hat, wrinkled black shirt, red suspenders, and psychedelic sunglasses, hair and beard salt and peppered (I've changed aspects of his physical description for this post), was shopping the food aisles of the dollar store. He passed me on his bicycle on my walk back to the bus stop. I see him differently now. Wondered about his story. Before this week, I would have seen only his sunglasses (Were they really going round and round in fast, orange swirls?).

Waiting for me when I got home--a fall catalogue from H. Halpern Esq.: Are you stylishly casual by day, and elegantly dressed by night? Or are you sartorially splendid at business, and casually attired when the sun goes down? Whether beneath the moon or under the sun, no matter what your personal style of dress, we have the shirts, ties and accessories to suit.

Overwrought shirts from $198 to $278, ties from $98 to $128, and socks from $14 to $38.

24 September 2010, Friday

Shopping Day One.

Travel--a kind of chosen poverty--prepared me a little for this day. I have good walking shoes and Tilley travel socks and a rolling backpack (advantages that a person who is poor doesn't likely have), and I used them and two bus tickets to get around.

It took 3.5 hours to spend $10.65.

Zehrs
4.99    Cheese
1.79    Onions 
6.78

Dollar store
0.69    Macaroni
1.50    Peanut butter ($.50 more than budgeted)
0.69    Spaghetti
2.88

Shoppers Drug Mart
0.99    Bread ($.80 less than budgeted)

And I was exhausted. Actually welcomed the 35-minute wait for a bus. Saw an old friend on my rounds--I red-faced, sweating profusely in the 28-degree heat, he taking a leisurely stroll on his lunch hour. How does a person who is poor manage shopping in winter?

Some foot discomfort, in spite of good walking shoes and Tilley travel socks, and unaccustomed knee pain. How do people without good shoes and socks manage their shopping? How do people with chronic pain?

Went to bed at 9 p.m.

The Shopping List

 1.79    Bread, Shoppers Drug Mart
 0.99    Cabbage, Sobeys 
 0.99    Cauliflower, Sobeys 
 4.99    Cheese, Zehrs / Valu Mart
 1.99    Eggs, Shoppers Drug Mart
 0.69    Macaroni, dollar store
 1.79    Onions, Zehrs / Valu Mart
 1.00    Peanut butter, dollar store
 0.69    Spaghetti, dollar store
 1.47    Spaghetti sauce, dollar store 
 1.00    Tea, dollar store
 0.69    Tuna, Zellers
 0.69    Tuna, Zellers
18.77
01.23    Discretionary 
20.00

The Pantry
Challenge Team members are assumed to have various pantry staples already...and will not need to purchase these basics.

No Name Peanut Oil
No Name Light Whipped Dressing
No Name Sweet Green Relish
Cayenne pepper
Oregano
Salt and Pepper

 

23 September 2010, Thursday

My colleagues have been helpful this morning.

Don't buy six eggs at Sobeys for $1.89!

But I've got to get protein from something this week.

Buy 12 eggs at Shoppers for $1.99.

While I know that some Shoppers Drug Marts carry food, I didn't know that Shoppers promises low prices on staple items like milk, bread, and eggs. Shoppers is another place within walking distance of home.

And don't buy produce at the Kitchener Market. Produce is cheaper in grocery stores this time of year.

I had a vision of great deals at 2 p.m.--bushels of fruit and vegetables offered for almost nothing at market closing. I may still go.

*

Grocery flyers came with today's paper. I poured over them. I've researched 10 different places within walking distance. Researching food prices this week has taken hours. Shopping for food this week at so many different locations will take hours.

The food I'm supposed to be consuming is consuming me. Finding food that's cheap has been hard enough. Finding food that's balanced and healthy has been even more challenging.

But I've finally got a working draft of my shopping list--what, how much, where. Shopping list as Work in Progress.

In some ways, I'm lucky in what I don't eat, don't crave. Don't have to list milk (allergy). Don't have to list meat (I eat red meat three or four times a year, have many vegetarian days). And I don't have a sweet tooth.

*

One of the speakers at the event kickoff this afternoon told us that his meal yesterday--he used the singular--was a can of tuna, a can of tuna for which he was grateful.

Because I'd taken public transportation to the event, I stopped into a nearby Valu Mart and bought no-salt-added tomato sauce for $1.49, two cents more  than tomato sauce at the dollar store. My first purchase.

*

At church this afternoon (I have an office job and a church job), I filled two empty water bottles with tap water.

No bottled water next week. No flavoured water. No vitamins. No mints. No coffee.

*

My husband brought home a gift of apples from a friend who works at an orchard. Eight apples. I've taken four. I wouldn't have had fruit this week if this gift hadn't come from the blue.

 

22 September 2010, Wednesday

Twenty dollars. The newspaper said this morning that we were going to be given $20 for the week. A knot of something like fear in my stomach. I'd been told that we'd have between $20 and $25. I never thought I'd find the loss of five imaginary dollars so distressing.

Twelve minutes to the plaza (dollar store, bulk food store, and grocery store). Took out notebook and pen in the dollar store and began listing prices.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? Store manager red, swollen with anger.

Comparing prices. But she had shaken me.

Oh. She began to unpuff, unredden.

I told her about the challenge.

Oh, she said again. Almost gently.

The bulk food store clerk was helpful, measuring out 100 grams of dried lentils for me (at $.28 per 100 grams) so that later I could eye what I could afford.

Lentils? Dried lentils? What am I thinking? I've never cooked anything with dried lentils in my life. I know that beans and rice are healthy in combination (iron, vitamin B, protein, and all the essential amino acids). Nutritious staples for millions in the developing world. But I can't imagine buying beans and rice when I shop on Saturday. I'm more likely to go with what I know.

Maybe everyone is.

Which might be a problem. 

21 September 2010, Tuesday

The Social Planning Council's Put Food in the Budget / Do the Math Challenge arrived in my e-mail box yesterday. I decided to undertake it because I'd undertaken a similar social justice challenge a few years ago without entirely respecting its parameters. I want to make up for that. 

I've never been in the country called Hunger (they do things differently there). Glad I'm not visiting in winter.


I'm also lucky. There's a grocery store within a few minutes' walk of my home, a dollar store, bulk food store, grocery store, discount store, and farmers' market within a few minutes' walk of my place of work. I have time to prepare for my week of poverty, doing comparison shopping at different places before the first day of challenge begins (scoped the discount store this morning).


I'm also able to fly back to More Than Enough when the week is over. Thousands in our community aren't.

 

Questionnaire for Food Challenge Participants

Name    
Sheryl Loeffler

Occupation     
Director of Philanthropy, YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo

Favourite food     
Pasta

Guiltiest food pleasure
Wine, salty snacks

Family size
Two

How much do you spend on food in one week?
$75 each


Why are you participating?
Because no one should be hungry in The Most Intelligent Community in the World


Why is the issue important to you?
Because I believe in social justice.