Some Thoughts

On the first morning of the Food Stamp Challenge, I did a lot of thinking.

Here are my rambling thoughts that I dictated as I was cooking my oatmeal Sunday morning:

As I was cooking my oatmeal and making my coffee, I thought about how my aunt had made us oatmeal in Australia. While we were there, we also ate a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables (mostly fruit) that they had grown from trees in their yard. Bonus: their neighbor has an avocado tree. Fresh guacamole every day sounds good to me!

This little guy tried to eat all of my strawberries

While making my oatmeal, I also began heating the pot of black beans that had been soaking overnight. The bean experiment was also to help assuage my fear of cooking with dry beans. I’d had a disaster attempting baked beans at Mark’s birthday party last year. Nobody likes crunchy beans.

While cooking my oatmeal and heating the cold beans, it made me start thinking about other countries (the beans made me think of our trip to Mexico) and how they eat. It also made me consider the obesity epidemic in America. Why do we have such a problem and why are we so fat?

Taking the food stamp challenge has made me rethink a lot of food choices just for affordability. I think part of the problem that we have in America is that there is so much variety of food. You can get nearly anything anytime you want it, and we don’t tend to eat seasonally like a lot of other places. Germany has Spargelzeit - a season (and festivals!) devoted to asparagus.

If you travel in Mexico or other countries in the Caribbean, they eat a lot of rice and beans. They’re cheap and are a good source of nutrients. They also eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, and often grow them themselves. It seems that their fresh vegetables for some reason are less expensive than ours. At least if you shop in their regular stores: you know - the ones that tourists don't go in. Or the cheap roadside stands selling produce for next to nothing.

I was also thinking that this challenge would be easier during the summer when I can grow some of my own vegetables. However that is also a luxury that most people on food stamps probably don't have. I would imagine that most of them don't have access to grow their own fruits and vegetables.

It makes me think how more cities could offer Urban Gardening initiatives to help those on food stamps eat healthier.

Other thoughts on this challenge at the start:

Eating healthy on SNAP requires a lot of cooking.

I'm not sure how anyone who is working a full-time job with kid(s) or especially a single parent would have time to do this. This also brings back some memories from my own childhood. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were pretty poor when I was growing up. My dad also wasn't the greatest cook. I always joke that I grew up eating nothing but popcorn and sardines. It is the honest truth, at least at home. Our staples were sardines, popcorn (air popped, of course), bread (made with dad’s yard sale bread machine), Ramen (Dad never bought it unless we could get 6 packets for $1- that’s what he thought was a good deal), and of course fruit on the bottom yogurt which we mixed with dad’s special Life Extension MixPowder (oh the irony – my dad died at 58). Geez, this stuff is $60, no wonder we were poor!

Apart from that, we ate out twice a week. Monday night was two-for-one pasta night and usually Thursday nights we would go to McConnell’s for a 3 piece dark fried chicken meal, which we would split.

Dry Beans take a LONG time to cook.

They were finally done around 8 p.m. after an overnight soak and about 12 hours of low heat. I think next time I’ll do them in the crockpot.

I am incredibly fortunate.

I don’t feel like I need to explain this one. My husband and I both have good jobs and can easily afford not only life’s basic necessities, but can also afford to eat out regularly.

Jackie is Awesome.

Jackie is a friend who has been organizing a diaper drive for the past several years. Last year, she organized a drive that donated 18,186 diapers (along with other supplies) to St. Martin’s Barn. 

Currently, there is no program in place to provide diapers to low income families. I can’t imagine trying to keep Markface fed, let alone having a dry bottom while struggling to make ends meet.

And finally:

I already screwed up on the challenge. I blame Jay. He invited his cousin & wife over. When I heard they were coming over, I said, “Oh okay… are they coming over for brunch? I can make eggs benedict!” Jay replied: “No, they just want to hang out. They won’t be here long.”

Which of course resulted in our eating pizza that night because they visited for six hours. I started out okay – I already had my pound of cheddar cheese to put out for snacking, and a sleeve of crackers that cost about .50 if I needed to figure those into my budget.

If I had known, I would have planned accordingly. I was hoping that they were coming over for eggs benedict, because I knew that I could make it work in our budget, along with having ham for sandwiches in the week. Although some may consider it fancy, you can make eggs benedict for about $8.50 for 4 people. That comes to $2.12 instead of the usual $1.57 per person for meal, but it’s an incredibly rich dish and would be considered more of a dinner type meal.

Also, my dog ate half of my mozzarella when I walked out of the room after shredding, so I’ll be eating cheddar for my snacks instead. Jerk!

Here is what we would have had for our meals yesterday that I had planned:

Breakfast:

Banana, Oatmeal prepared with milk and topped with about ½ cup of fresh strawberries

Lunch:

Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, orange

Dinner:

Baked chicken, rice, broccoli

Snacks: oranges, cheese, crackers

Breakfast was Markface approved

Monday is a new day. I have fridge oatmeal prepared and ready for breakfast. I just need to cut up some strawberries for the top. I’ll toast an English muffin and eat a banana. For lunch, I will have soup. Dinner will be my version of a burrito bowl: rice, black beans, tomato salsa, ground turkey, cheese, lettuce & sour cream. Hopefully there will be enough leftover for lunch on Tuesday. Dinner Tuesday will probably be the roast chicken that I planned to make on Sunday.

Food Stamp Challenge Starts Tomorrow

So the bulk of the food has been purchased for the Food Stamp Challenge.

Yes, that is Markface's little hand grabbing for the bananas.

One of the major impacts for me is my Rise Up Coffee addiction. It costs $15 a pound, which is nearly half of what one person would eat a week. Wow. We go through probably one bag every other week, but during this challenge I will be giving up my Rise Up. I bought some other coffee that will hopefully be palatable.

I decided to spend a little extra on my yogurt for the challenge too. One of my breakfast items is going to be fridge oatmeal, which I had started eating a few months back. It's filling and pretty healthy. 

Another larger purchase I made was cheese. I spent about $5 a pound on cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. I'll be cutting those up for snacks and shredding them for some planned dinners.

It was quite an interesting experience to be checking out in line and thinking, "Geez, this is really adding up. Maybe I shouldn't have bought that brand of yogurt."

I'm looking forward to the challenge and am also hoping that it will kick off better eating and spending habits as well.

Winter and Being Sick Sucks

But I’m going to do my best to overcome it and do something positive.

I’ve been stuck in a funk because I’ve been sick. A lot.

I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty healthy person. I got maybe two or three minor colds a year… the occasional stomach virus. The usual. No big deal. I get migraines, but those are knocked out by injectable Imitrex quickly.

I don’t know if it’s because my kid now shares all of his germs from daycare or what, but this winter has been brutal. I got sick two weeks before leaving for Key West in late November/early December. Then I got sick again a few days before leaving for Key West. On the plane, I thought my head was going to explode, and I couldn’t hear for two days after we arrived.

Then I came down with the flu on January 2^nd. It was like I got hit by a bus. I’m one of those people who rarely miss work due to illness… it’s something I pride myself on. Well, I missed nearly an entire week. I tried working from home and got a few hours in here and there. What I should have done was not attempt to do anything and just slept to get better. Three weeks later I wasn’t feeling much better, so I went back to the doctor. I ended up with a steroid injection in the ass, a breathing treatment, and a hefty dose of antibiotics. That finally seemed to knock the remnants of that crud out.

At the beginning of February, I ended up with either food poisoning or a stomach virus. Another day of work missed. Things weren’t right with my digestive tract for probably a week. It was not fun. Then we went to Arizona and I seemed to have recovered from everything! Then I came home. Last weekend I got to hang out with a bunch of girlfriends for our annual Galentines Day celebration. This time, at Turnbridge Point. The company and food was spectacular. And then I started getting stuffy and sore throaty again. Markface was also congested, so I am thinking that he was the vector of my illness yet again.

Last week before I started feeling craptacular again, my acupuncturist  mentioned that she was participating in the Food Stamp Challenge for Talbot County.

My plan is/was to give it a go. I was trying to get Jay on board with doing it too, but he said that he knew too many people that take advantage of the system. Including of course, members of his family (although to my knowledge this is no longer the case). I may have reported aforementioned person to the fraud office when they posted on Facebook that they could get people half price food. ;-)

Fraud notwithstanding, I can’t imagine having to feed my family for $33 per person per week. So my plan is to do it for as many meals as possible. The challenge starts this Sunday, on March 6^th.

I’m still trying to come up with my budget for the week, as ours will be a bit convoluted since Jay is gone 2 days of the challenge and will mostly just be eating my challenge dinners, since he doesn’t want to participate.

Fingers crossed that I will find the time and energy to blog about my experience. If I can finally stop being sick, I'm sure that will help a lot!

Week in Arizona

The pictures just don't do the Grand Canyon justice.

I'm planning to post more about my trip. Maybe. Okay, probably not.

But it was amazing. My SIL Colleen planned an awesome itinerary for us and we had a blast. Also, traveling with a toddler nearly 1.5 is not for the faint of heart. I'm glad that we don't have any other major trips planned with him for the next few months or possibly year, because he is a bit dangerous at the moment. 

Back to Blogging

I swear it's going to happen this time.

I never posted about our five year anniversary reunion in Key West. It was a bit of a bust, although parts of it were fun. The best part for me was the diving, even though the visibility wasn't great. We saw two dolphins and two rather large reef sharks at Looe Key. I'm looking forward to getting back in the water this year. We'll probably check out Lake Phoenix this summer to brush up on our skills. I would love to do a trip out with our dive shop to the Outer Banks this year, but we'll see how that goes. I don't know if I'll be comfortable enough to go to the depths that most wreck diving involve. Not to mention my dive buddy's excessive air consumption! But maybe a few weekends of diving at Lake Phoenix will cure some of our problems.

Here are the last few months in photos...

Markface eating rocks at the Waterfowl Festival

Our annual post-Thanksgiving walk to the persimmon tree (aka the permission tree)

Markface showing off his latest moves

We had a sweet van for our group from Miami to Key West

Ryan and Jay pushing Markface's stroller... this trip we stayed pretty far north, in the quiet White Street district. I liked being a bit of a haul from Duval Street, it made for some impressive Fitbit stats!

Markface being adorable at the Conch Republic Seafood Company

Markface trying to feed me something

Shark wrangler

This will forever be known as the Tomato Soup incident. It was one of the low-lights of our trip.

Markface passed out on Duval after the boat parade

Jay and Brian attempting to wash off a sandy Mark at Bahia Honda State Park

The flight home was much better than our flight down

Setting up our tree. Mark was trying to put a cracker into the tree

Feeding the chickens... Mark calls them cluck-clucks

One of his newest tricks - getting on top of the table

Jay took Mark on an impromptu trip to New York to see friends and family... this is in Long Beach

And we got a bit of snow a few weeks back. Mark was a big fan and probably would have stayed out all day if he hadn't gotten cold.

We are off to Phoenix tomorrow to visit Colleen (yay) and for some R&R. 

Plans:

Survive a 7 hour flight with an active toddler.

Visit the Grand Canyon.

Attend the Ren Faire.

Attend some Beer Week festivities.

Eat at Sassy's Cafe and visit Melody from Holiday Baking Championship.

Since I followed Steve so closely during the Holiday Baking Championship, I feel like I personally know everyone that was on the show. I figured that while we're in AZ, we definitely needed to check out Melody's place. The funny thing is that Steve and Rob will actually be arriving in Phoenix the same weekend that we are leaving. Sounds like there may be a bit of a HBC reunion going on out there. I'm sorry to miss the fun!

Wordless Wednesday

On this World

I wanted to rant on social media about this, but the blog is a much better outlet. I don't know whose mind I would change at any rate. But seeing people post awful things is breaking my heart. Closing borders? Really? So apparently they'd like us to be like North Korea? No disrespect there, DPRK and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, please don't show up on my doorstep.

I keep thinking of Sam and Frodo's exchange in Mordor from LOTR:

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.

On to what I wanted to post on Facebook:

I have seen so much hatred, racism, and xenophobia on social media these last few days (years if I'm being honest). I'm not saying that I'm perfect or PC all the time: after all, I live with white privilege and was born in the USA. I don't have the same perspective as others.

I'm glad that we live in a country where we can question our government and each other without the fear of being imprisoned or stoned to death. So many of our fellow Citizens of Earth look with envy to our elections where leaders are changed regularly, without bloodshed. I'm glad that we all get a vote in that process, even if I don't agree with you. And if you don't vote, shame on you! 

Our fellow Citizens of Earth want what we all want - a chance at life and happiness.

Yes, there are those that wish us harm, but there are plenty of those people who were born here in the good old USA. It's true, like some psychopaths here, some of those "outsiders" have evil hearts (well, mental illness at least.) Others' hearts and minds have been twisted by promises that they or their families will be taken care of if they attack innocent people. If you can't afford to feed your family, what wouldn't you do for them?

Today, I choose hope over fear. I choose to live my life instead of fearing that which I don't know or understand. Why should I let terrorists steal my joy? Their entire purpose is to instill fear in our hearts. 

We can't let them.

Despite many people's beliefs that we are going in the wrong direction, I think future generations are going to do great things. I see evidence of it every day. The high school that I attended just crowned two Special Olympic Athletes to be their Homecoming King and Queen. These kids are inspiring. They are making this world better.

Make a decision to live and not exist. Help others where and how you can and remember that we are all part of the Human Race. 

Today I was feeling powerless to do anything other than speak up when I saw a social media post that I didn't agree with. I got home from work to find an aptly timed letter from VGIF looking for donations. I can't solve the world's problems, but I can write a small check that will actually have an impact on another person's life. Having been involved with their organization, I can attest that their funding truly does make a difference in recipients' lives. If you're feeling powerless, and can afford to donate time or money, I encourage you to donate to VGIF or a similar cause.

There, I feel better already.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. - Max Ehrmann, Desiderata