How about I challenge you Mario Batali give me your food income for a week and see what I can do!

Poor Mario Batali subsisting on foodstamps for a week....might do the robust chef some good. When I read this I was like, "really". At first I thought wow 31 dollars a week for his family thats not a lot at all. I read he and his kids were eating things like lentils and PB and J... then I read it was 31 dollars per person for his family of four..and that is 124 dollars a week multiply that by four and thats roughly 496 dollars a month. Then I got a lot irritated with him...really a chef had a hard time feeding his family! Must not be that creative. Thats a lot of foodstamps to this single momming it momma of 2... I get an allotment of 331 dollars or $1.10 per meal per person and that helps me out a lot... we occasionally eat take out or treat ourselves to a u-bake pizza LOVE PAPA MURPHYS. For the most part our food is purchased with foodstamps. I just received them this month after being off of them for 6 months..but when I was spending 120 to 150 dollars a pay period on food every two weeks, bills started piling up. So I reapplied and it took a whole 45 days to get approved a long time to someone like me. I had fallen through the cracks because my caseworker assigned to me was out ill. That six month period was hard.. we ate a lot of hamburger and pasta...but we ate. So when my foodstamps arrived on my EBT card I bought New York strip steaks topped with sauteed mushrooms, onions and bell pepper, 16 dollars for a pack of four, a little pricey but oh so good when paired with 98 cent box of scalloped potatoes, green salad and french bread...it was a birthday meal for my daughter that would have easily cost 100 dollars at the steakhouse in town. By the way we fed five and 1 half people with this meal at a cost of approximately $4.10 cents a person. Of course we don't eat steak every nite so our meals are balanced out. It also helps that I do a lot of my cooking from scratch. I'm not grinding corn mind you, but I know how to shop and plan meals. So while I feel for the chef I also feel like hey chef let me have your income for food for one week and let me show you how this Momma would feed a block of people. It is all about creativity and planning. I know I am lucky to live in the bread basket to most of the world, the Central Valley of California. No lack of fresh foods here or organic produce, last year an organic farm Whole
Foods and Revive Cafe https://www.facebook.com/WholeFarms in Fresno California sold specifically to foodstamp recipients, through a grant from Roots of Change.http://rootsofchange.org/ Gardening is also a luxury I have available to me although I will say I have not planted one yet....yikes.
While I appreciate that Batali did this as a way of protesting cuts to foodstamps and the Farm Bill  and he says it was not a publicity stunt but a way to start conversation..I am saying good. Start conversation, better yet connect with people who have to subsist on aid, give them the tools they need to make healthier eating habits. It's sad when its almost cheaper to eat fast food then it is to eat a well balanced healthy meal. It also sad when in the same week as I see Batali in the news taking the challenge I see a Newsweek magazine with a baby on the front holding french fries and the headline says "When I grow up I will weigh 300 pounds" that is also something the government needs to think about before they make cuts to programs like foodstamps or school lunches or Farm Bills.
Food is a big passion of mine and I have been blogging about it for a year on and off and have shared some of my recipes that have been purchased with foodstamps....I started it a year ago and while I wish I could devote more time to I have not been able to. Internet or food but now I am able to get online more often so hopefully I will add some new recipes. You can visit my site at http://noturtypicalgmacooks.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html
In the end all it really boils down to is that we need to eat the right food to fuel our body and whether we buy it with cold hard cash or foodstamps we should all be grateful for it. There are plenty of people and families that are just shy of qualifying for foodstamps by sometimes a dollar. Imagine how they feel when they go to sleep at night wondering about how they will feed their child the next day, should they miss work to get a foodbox or forgo a meal or two. That is the reality for many families today. I hope to share with you how I will budget my next allotment of foodstamps and that you will follow me and my family as we live the FOOD STAMP CHALLENGE DAILY.

dinnertime convo with the kids episode 1

This was filmed yesterday after we made enchilada casserole...just us being us this is the stuff my kids and I talk about at the dinnertable...just randomness hope you laugh....stay tuned  for more dinner theatre!



SO YOU THINK PEOPLE ON WELFARE SHOULDN'T OWN CELLPHONES?

As you see by the title of my blog page, yes, yes I am a welfare mother. There is a misconception that all people on welfare are lazy, drug addicted, uneducated, dregs of society. Well I am here to tell you that misconception needs to be changed. The simple facts of the matter are that many people like me on welfare are single working moms. I make no excuses for the choices I have made, like being in love with a drug addict, or that I played a role in my own demise from a bright future. I have made a lot of irresponsible choices along the way to this somewhat happy stage of my forty-something life. Choices that led me to be on and off of welfare for the last 18 years. I have also worked or been in college for those last 18 years. I work at a job that pays me 11.00 dollars an hour and I have benefits. Benefits that I cannot afford. According to the poverty guidelines our state has set for welfare recipients I still qualify for full coverage Medi-cal and Foodstamps. I have two children that are on my welfare case. Not ten...

The thing that got me writing this blog was, well believe it or not, Facebook. I was Facebooking it on break from my job and I ran across a status that an old high school friend had posted. Something to the effect that she was irritated that someone getting their medication from the pharmacy she works at with Medi-cal benefits had a cell phone with better apps than hers. Well of course I was reading this on MY cellphone. She went on to say that people on welfare had no business owning cellphones.Well this really got me thinking  how whitebread that statement was. Whitebread is a term Iwill frequently use for people I view as conservative. So I had to post a comment back. It basically said that I was sorry she felt that way and that she must feel that way about me, because I too received assistance and worked. I went on to say that my cellphone is my only phone and that I had commented via my facebook application. Well, if that did not ignite a firestorm. I will admitt that throughout the morning I checked for any notifications regarding her status. She went on to comment later that, It was ok if I had a cellphone, OUCH, just not people who abuse the system. Like I needed her approval  to have my cellphone, hah Cricket didn't even do a credit check! During the day I kept track of comments left and the women who did respond all agreed with her. The last person to respond commented that she had just left a Von's grocery store and was in line behind a woman with a multicolored weave and a Juicy Couture track suit, with Rockstar nails and Coach shoes and a Gucci bag. This lady in front of her was complaining about the size of the cereal box she was getting according to the commentator with her "foodstamp card thingy". She went on to say that she and her husband who are school teachers work very hard and that they have a budget blah blah blah blahzooo. I imagined her voice sounding  like the Peanuts schoolteacher as I read this, "WAAAH WAAAH WAAAH WAAAH." So me, being the type who has to have the last word, commented back.

I explained in my post that what that lady was complaining about was probably the WIC program  because with Foodstamps you can get any size of cereal box! I went on to say that her multicolored weave was probably a "kitchen weave" and her namebrand clothes, shoes, and purse were all probably knockoffs found at the local flea-market, and the "Rockstar" nail polish could be found there too! I then explained that the WIC (go to this link to learn more www.fns.usda.gov/wic) or Women Infants and Childrens program were vouchers for specific healthy foods for pregnant, and lactating women and children under five. The Foodstamp program found via this link www.fns.usda.gov/snap  is funded by the USDA as is the WIC program. Then I closed with this little thought, I told her to take a look at her students in whatever school she was teaching in and try to guess which one would go without any dinner that night. A meal most of us take for granted. Maybe their parents let pride stand in the way of getting assistance, maybe they worry about the people that would smile in their faces, and then grumble behind their backs in that grocery store checkout line. People like her. I did this all from my handy dandy pre-paid Cricket cellphone. So I had the last word I think because I received no other notifications. So thanks friend, and friend's friend for inspiring my first blog! I love to inform misinformed people, think of it as community service for the assistance I get!

Right now so many people are going without, sometimes because of misinformation, sometimes because of pride. The economy being what it is I don't see less people on aid anytime soon. Working class poor, people who live paycheck to paycheck like myself, will make the best of  it. That is after all what we have learned to do, or do without.  I will feed my kids whether I pay cash or use my benefits because we know all to well what it is like to be hungry. I try to be a no nonsense kind of shopper (it helps that I am a great cook that is another blog though) but every once in a while we eat a steak bought with foodstamps. The hardships I and my children have endured, everything from hunger to homlessness, have made us who we are today. I do not live with regrets because anything I have lived and learned has been well worth it. Now I have the opportunity to write about it...... on the computer I own with internet service. Something else people on welfare should not have. OOOPS...