Having gone from being around the poverty line, to quite a ways above, to considerably below seems to have turned me into somewhat of an armchair sociologist. It's definitely fascinating to observe the privileges that come and go, as well as the able-to-present-as-middle-class one that might be the hardest for someone to obtain and hardest to take away.
Today I've been pondering food pantries. For the uninitiated, food pantries are (at least in states where food stamp and welfare distribution is funded and functional) programs that provide nonperishable and small amounts of perishable food to individuals and families who are either waiting for government food stamp (SNAP) benefits or who make too much based on the government guidelines but have a financial need because of a situation that the government isn't allowed to take into account. Some of these are run on an entirely volunteer basis, through houses of worship and other community organizations. Others are run through nonprofits using some combination of paid and volunteer resources. Some require participants to sign up and demonstrate financial need, some require identification of some sort to make sure people aren't participating more than they can allow, and others are completely anonymous.
If you've read anything I've ever written, you know that obviously I'm in favor of programs that provide for the needy. I of course favor a government that provides a high minimum standard of living for its people, but that's neither here nor there. In terms of programs that are available to us in 2000s Boston, I have worked at programs that provide for the needy, I've donated to them, and I've benefited from them -- both government-run and privately run. I wholeheartedly support these programs continuing to exist and being expanded and made easier to use.
But what I'm not sure I support is the current model of food pantries distributing actual physical food. And I have some skepticism around why this model persists.
The resources that go into these programs is immense. The programs collect food, usually at schools, businesses, and houses of worship. It's transported to a storage location. The storage locations can be quite large, up to full-sized warehouses for some of the larger programs. The larger programs run through nonprofits have full-time staff who are in charge of determining whether people are eligible. The smaller ones have volunteers running them, who could be spending their labor elsewhere, so it's not entirely free. Nothing is free. The programs often also distribute groceries to people who are older, disabled, have small children, etc., and can't easily come get the items. Again, even when this is volunteer labor, it comes from somewhere. They have distribution dates and times in which they have staff present, in a building that's climate controlled and up to sanitary codes and all that, for people to come and pick groceries.
This must cost a fortune. Surely it would be cheaper to mail people a grocery store gift card every month. (And allow people without a fixed residence or ability to safely receive mail to pick it up somewhere.) And probably frankly cheaper to skip the eligibility routine. I can't remember where I read this and my google-fu is failing me, but requiring people to sign off on something or speak to an actual person is a pretty damn good deterrent against people taking modest benefits that they aren't entitled to. And it makes sense to me; I think that even just having people put their name and address on a sheet and sign off that they meet the guidelines would result in very little fraud. I mean, really, do you think very many financially secure people are going to go hang out at a food pantry to get a few bucks' worth of groceries?
So, why does the food pantry model persist? Is it more about making the donors feel good than about providing food? And how much does the whole "I get to choose what poor people are allowed to have" play into it? That's what I imagine this is really about. I'm guessing that plenty of people who say they are basically progressive would be fine donating foods to a food bank and supporting its existence, but if you asked them about just giving gift cards, they'd have some conservative excuse about how "those people" would just use it to buy crap, or "those people" would buy something that isn't food.
We used these programs when The Thing™ happened and we were suddenly without much income, and I noticed that the food people donate to food banks is largely status quo "healthy" food. Which, I was cool with this because that's a lot of what we buy, but still, people seem to donate canned fruits and vegetables, boxes of plain low-cal foods like plain rice, plain pasta, a lot of canned tomato products, plain cereals, plain oatmeal. A good proportion of it was organic and high-end brands, too. I pretty much never saw anything like crackers I'd want to eat by themselves, any sorts of cookies, non-plain cereals, cake mixes, or anything like that. Just plain, mostly organic, fruits, vegetables, whole grains
Again, good stuff, for my family who has proper pots and pans and enough expendable income to buy milk, oil, produce, spices, sugar, and other things to add to it. But having known lots of food-insecure people in my life (and having had periods in my young adulthood where I didn't have stable housing or income), I have always have made sure to donate higher-calorie foods and foods that don't require other ingredients to make a decent meal. If the food pantry haul is all you have for the week, you're going to be better off with things like Mac and Cheese or rice and beans packets that don't need anything but water added. Or cans of stews and higher-calorie soups. Oh, and ramen. Ramen is 400 calories for one packet, which cost 10-25 cents. I make a lot of it myself. I add veggies, tofu, and eggs when I can, but I absolutely buy ramen largely because it's cheaper than rice or pasta and it ensures that everyone gets enough calories.
People rarely donate these things though. I rarely see any processed foods with a decent amount of calories that can be consumed on their own. I see organic, expensive, minimally processed foods. My only conclusion is that the people donating honestly think they're doing something really great for the poor people. They're thinking that they're providing healthier foods than we usually have. I mean, on some level they are; I don't often have organic $8 steel-cut oatmeal. But think about how many of the families using the food pantry don't have a fully stocked kitchen, only can afford the food the food pantry gives them, and would benefit more from the box of high-fructose-corn-syrup-arrific instant oatmeal packets. And think about how many more calories they would get for that $8 if they instead got several boxes of oatmeal packets.
I do really think the problem is that the people who do most of the donating, while well-intentioned, aren't thinking in terms of what they would want in the same situation. If I think about what people in this household have needed recently, we've had an adult who needed lunches to take to a workplace with a microwave but no fridge, kids who've needed to take a non-refrigerated, non-smashable-in-backpack snack to a day camp, and an instance in which someone needed to bring a celebratory item to share. Listen, our family is pretty happy with being unconventional, but even so, there is just no way we're going to send a bowl of plain oatmeal to an end-of-the-season celebration, or bring along a can of plain beans to microwave at work, or send a container of room-temperature pasta to camp when everyone else is bringing chips and granola bars. We make do with minimalist food at home, as you've seen here, but let's get real. We managed to provide for camp and work and all that with items we coupon for, but there's just no way we
would have been able to do this on food pantry items alone if that was all we had access to. Yet the idea seems to persist that poor people don't need "junk food" like noodle packets and granola bars, and I'm sure we didn't need "fancy food" like the $3 package of seaweed I used to make cucumber sushi rolls for my kid's team.
I would love to see research as to 1) whether people would donate the same amount of money they spend on food pantry donations if they didn't get to control what people end up eating and didn't get the sense of altruism that they provided organic healthy foods to those poor people who don't know any better and 2) whether some of the people would donate at all, or whether they'd make snide comments about how "those people" would just buy junk, or sell the card, or whatever.
I mean, really, people could just as easily sell the food from the food pantry, right? If someone is really in that desperate of a situation that they're selling either food
or their gift card, doesn't that mean that the people who are in a position to donate are in a much better place, and should have compassion for them? And what are we assuming poor people are buying if they do sell their card? I've heard that selling food stamps to buy diapers or pay for child care is fairly prevalent. Should this offend me? Yes, it does, but only in the sense that there are people in the wealthiest country in the world who are needing to do this.
And really, if someone
is using any funds they can find to gamble or use substances, is the solution that we cut them off further from food so that they (and their dependents) are hungry too in addition to whatever illness they have? And as far as people buying junk, or buying fancy stuff, how does it affect me? Does it affect me any differently if I donate $20 a month and someone buys their kid a birthday cake instead of organic oatmeal? Especially because nearly all of what I donate would be going to feed a family, instead of the cash running the program and the organic oatmeal going to people who might prefer other things. I would love to know if someone has looked into moving food banks to a cash/gift card model instead of the current model, and what conclusions they came to.
As I'm sure everyone knows by now, I use coupons and stacked coupon deals to feed my family within my means. One of the things that's annoying about this though is that the manufacturer's coupons have to be printed out and handed to the cashier physically. I've heard that stores in other regions have systems of putting them on your store card like you can with store coupons, but this isn't here yet. So, for now, I'm using a lot of paper, which costs money and is wasteful.
I noticed the other day that I had a huge surge in page views, but I didn't dig further.
I just did the Hollar offer on Swagbucks. If you make a $15 purchase, it gives you 1250 Swagbucks, which is worth $14.20 if you redeem in batches of 2200SB for $5. This means you end up paying $0.80 once you get the Swagbucks, but you do have to front the $15 on your debit card. 
This deal is on Swagbucks today. 350SB (about $3.97 if you redeem your SB in batches of 2200SB for $25) for joining Gwynnie Bee for a free trial month. Then another 4900 ($55.70) if you pay for another month once your month is over. The cheapest plan costs $49 per month. If you buy things on Amazon anyway (or another store that Swagbucks has giftcards to), you can essentially pay $49 from your debit card and put $59.67 onto your Amazon account, plus rent clothing for free for two months if that appeals to you.
This check showed up in the mail, for a generous $23.30. It took me the longest time to figure out what it was. I couldn't recall joining a class action suit with anything called News America Marketing Digital, but then, the same is so generic that it could have been anything. I did finally figure out that it's a reimbursement from Checkout 51, not a class action settlement. Checkout 51 still sends paper checks like it's 1964 or something. Hey, I guess it cuts down on people actually requesting them, since a lot of people probably don't bother, so if it keeps the program up and running, I'm happy to deal with the paper check nonsense. 
A couple days ago we harvested the last batch of veggies from our garden before everything gets frozen and ruined. The only thing left out there are herbs, which we leave since they tend to come back in the spring. We were fortunate to have enough tomatoes and peppers that I didn't have to add anything from the store or from cans. I would have preferred more than one onion for a pot of chili, but not enough to go out and buy one.
I was happy to see this when I walked into Stop and Shop a couple days ago. This is the Jackson Square Stop and Shop. I haven't yet noticed if others do it as well, but I'll be looking out for it.
Here's my haul from Stop and Shop yesterday. Everything was done with online printable coupons and phone apps.
Stop and Shop has a great deal that ends on Friday where if you buy $20 worth of certain frozen items, you save $10. SuperPretzel and Outshine have coupons available right now, which it let me use in addition to the store deal. SuperPretzel is also on SavingStar this week. Outshine has been on various coupon deals before, particularly at Target. For a while, they only made huge bars that came six to a pack. They were good, but they were kind of ridiculous. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they now make small cylindrical pops that come 12 to a box. 
It mainly features taxidermied animals. It also has dinosaur and other prehistoric skeletons and models, a huge whale skeleton, blown glass models of marine life, and an interactive ecology forest geared toward toddlers and preschoolers. It's $12 for adults, $8 for kids, free under 3. So, like half as much as most of the museums in the area. Admission to this museum gets you into the Peabody Museum as well. They have two free days for Massachusetts residents, Sunday 9am-12pm and Wednesday 3pm-5pm. It's also free for K-12 teachers and active duty military families. Passes are also available at public libraries, which admit up to 4 people for $6.
This article and accompanying chart is an interesting way to think about eating cheaply. I think I would have guessed the highest was rice or peanut butter, or possibly ramen, not flour or white bread. I was also surprised that pasta and oats were so high up there on the list. Of course, some of these things require cooking, so there's labor and energy costs that aren't factored in; you can't really eat flour and would have to at the very least mix it with water and cook it to make it into noodles or flatbread. Still, the list is useful. I imagine I'll refer to it when I get anxious about finances, and remind myself that it is in fact possible to stay alive on a couple hundred dollars a year. Assuming we're in the urban U.S. or somewhere similar, we would surely get enough other foods even if all we were purchasing was rice or white bread. Think about all the places the average person eats for free -- samples at stores, work events where food is provided, free talks that have a snack table, and so forth. It wouldn't be optimal nutrition, but it would be enough to keep us from getting scurvy or whatever it is people who only eat one food get.
When I brought this Fair Foods haul home, someone in my household immediately said, "apparently today they gave us stew." (That yellow item is a yellow tomato, not an orange.) So, yeah, this wasn't a hard one to figure out what to do with. I'm tagging it as WTHDIDWTV anyway though, because it's still something we figured out to make with produce that was available at Fair Foods, rather than something we decided to make and then acquired ingredients for.
This was a particularly great Fair Foods bag, because we literally didn't have to add anything to the vegetables to make a desirable meal, except for the lentils that I chose to add to make it more filling. The bag included enough tomatoes that I didn't need to add any tomato products, and enough onions and potatoes to make a nice well-rounded stew. The bag also included a bunch of bananas and some crusty bread, which we ate with the stew. Not bad, getting several meals for $2, with bananas to spare. 
As for what I ended up buying, I got a bunch of Everyday Shea products. They were less than half the price they are at Whole Foods, which is the only place I've seen it. Hair and skin products are the area where our family really can't go with the cheapest stuff, because in our family we have eczema-prone skin and hair textures that need added moisture and oil. Everyday Shea is generally cheaper than Shea Moisture or Curls Unleashed or any of those, but it's high enough quality that it doesn't contain mineral oil or petroleum jelly, which is pretty much where I set my bar for what I'll put on our bodies on any sort of regular basis. And at $7.95 for 32 ounces of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion (so, twice as big as a normal bottle), it's barely more than buying a low-quality grocery store brand.
I made these muffins. Or energy bars. Or something. They're really good, whatever they are. And they were easy. Someone gave me a huge bag of rolled oats and a huge bag of dried cherries. I took this as a challenge.
This was one of the easiest things I've made recently and one of the cheapest. I had several huge zucchinis from my garden, even after I gave a bunch away to anyone who would take some. I also had onions, jalapeños, and habañeros from my garden, plus green peppers, avocados and limes from Fair Foods. I wasn't planning to use the peppers, but ended up needing them because Old El Paso and I have differing ideas about what constitutes "seasoning." Maybe I should start a class action suit. Just kidding. Mostly.
I did another google search for cucumber recipes, because they're continuing to take over. We keep giving them to people and eating them ourselves, and there keep being cucumbers. This was a quick and easy lunch; cucumbers, dill, and cottage cheese, served on toasted pumpernickel from Fair Foods. It's a little hard to eat, because the cucumbers slip off, but it was really good. Except notice how a whole lunch only uses six cucumber slices. There just is no way to get rid of these things! Argh!
