Food Stamps
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Seven Limes
This is what a week’s worth of groceries for one person looks like, if you’re Gwyneth Paltrow on food stamps. She’s not on food stamps, but has attempted the one-week Food Stamp Challenge. My longtime readers know I did the June Food Stamp Challenge* in June of 2010 — 30 days of the food stamp budget for my family of 5. That ended up being about $450 for the month, and we made it — barely. The budget averaged to about $25 per person, and half that for our son who was with us only half the time that summer. (Read more here about my JFSC, all 30 days.) We…
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Notes from the Poor House
Well, it’s a tough scene, but this is the scoop. Mr Husband is out of work on disability while we wait for back surgery, and a layoff shimmers on the horizon after that. We’re moving very quickly to a smaller, cheaper house (apartment, really) and have been packing, sorting and donating carloads of stuff. Cash flow sucks. I’m both trying to earn more as a freelancer while trying to move us single-handedly. So it looks like all that fun stuff on the June Food Stamp Challenge of a year and a half ago will come in handy…Just thinking about some of the techniques (if they can be termed as such)…
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fresh fruit & veg
One of my favorite weekly outings is to the Alameda Farmers’ Market — we’re lucky enough to have a twice-weekly market about a mile or so from my house. Yes, it’s a bike ride away. I take my own bags, fill up the panniers and pedal home again. Easy peasy. Even better, none of the produce that I buy at the farmers’ market has even one of those stupid fruit labels on it. Plastic! ptooey! There was a funny Rhymes with Orange comic printed a few years ago that cracked me up: The lady is sitting in front of an x-ray machine and the doctor sees all these fruit labels…
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Sunday musing
One of the pleasures of a Sunday morning (besides a tasty bowl of cereal) is the newspaper, that fat bundle lying like a gift on the front step. I (heart) the Sunday paper. The nice delivery person, a mystery visitor to our home once a week, leaves the paper on the front step, so close to the door that I could fetch it bare nekkid and still be OK. So why does s/he feel the need to wrap it in plastic? Not just on rainy days, but every week? Note to self: contact San Francisco Chronicle and have the plastic bags stopped. The worst thing that could happen without the bag is…
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Just one more screed before bedtime
When I was a wee single mom some 6-ish years ago, with three daughters in three different schools in two different towns (part of the fun of a divorce), I applied to get my daughters in the free breakfast and lunch program. I filled out the USDA paperwork and then descended into the 9th Circle of Hell at one Alameda school as we tried to make good on the program. My daughter (12) went to the lunch line, they told her to “go fill out the papers” and sent her away hungry. I called the school and complained. The next day — repeat. The third day they sent her away hungry again and I blew…
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