Day Four - Emily Baer

Emily Baer
Student and Neighbors Project Student Coordinator for Special Events

I've been really, really good about sticking to the challenge so far this week. On Monday, I had homemade mushroom and onion pizza with spinach salad, and on Tuesday, I had garlic roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, homemade yeast rolls, and roasted asparagus. I've been eating eggs with toast, yogurt, and bananas for breakfast and lunch (with some leftovers thrown in).

It's only been three days, but I've already learned several things - most importantly, the flour and yeast I bought have turned out to be the most cost effective purchase I made. so far, I've made bagels, pizza dough and dinner rolls with them. I bought three packets of yeast for 19 cents with a coupon and the flour was on sale for $1.75. Unfortunately, there's little nutritional value in white flour and yeast. And I'm getting really sick of white bread. Every meal I have is pasta or bread based.

I've been really good about not cheating so far, but in the spirit of full disclosure, my mom and sister are complete cheaters. They've both had coffee out and my sister drank some orange juice we had in the fridge, even though it's not included in the budget. As for me, I can't say I haven't thought about it. I miss buying coffee out. I miss vegetables. I've only been able to eat them once a day and I have such a limited supply. And I miss not having to think so incredibly hard about where my next meal is coming from. I have spent so many hours planning and cooking (and when that's done, a little more planning). My head hearts.

Finally, I want to mention one last thing my mom brought up during dinner last night. We're rationing our food right now to make sure we have enough. I don't know if we will in the end. But what would a single parent do who had to ration the food her young children ate so that they would have enough for the week? Ask her children to starve? Give up her portion? What if it wasn't enough? As a single mom herself, my mom always thinks about things like this but it may not be the first thing that comes to most people's minds. She know our situation is a lot better than other people's - the challenge is like a gift in this sense. It's no coincidence that Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week is the week before Thanksgiving. As we celebrate next week, know we will be more grateful than we've ever been for the way we are able to live our lives.

Retail Therapy: My Love Affair with Costco [Timothy Kane, Director of the Office of Community Service]

Timothy Kane
Director of the Office of Community Service

Resistance is futile! After 48 years of being bombarded with skillfully crafted advertisements from the US marketing industry via television, radio and news print, my ability to withstand messaging that ties my personal happiness to my ability to consume is crumbling. I surrender...yes, I do feel better about myself when I buy things! There...I said it. But, now how do I live with this reality? Well, I figure that I could still satisfy my "acquired need" to consume (and thus feel good about my personal worth) by buying food. Hey, I have to eat, right? Ahh... but during the Food Stamp Challenge I can't buy food as I usually do via a weekly trip to Costco... so, will my feelings of self-worth take a hit this week? How much will I miss that wonderful feeling that my partner and I have every week as we re-stock our fridge and kitchen cabinets with jumbo quantities of fresh fruits and veggies bought from Costco? Even our kitties feel the excitement when we come home with our food stash... and usually end up playing in some of the boxes we use to lug our super-size bounty into our condo. Is there a substitute for my retail therapy? Can I quit cold turkey my love affair with Costco? To be continued...

Day 1 - Ally McDougal, Student

Ally McDougal
Student and Neighbors Project Student Coordinator for Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty

It is 5pm on Saturday night and I am already dreading tomorrow.

I feel my first blog is best laid out in bullet points because that is how my brain thinks:

1. Coffee. What am I going to do at 4pm in the afternoon, everyday, when I need coffee that I can not afford to spend $2.00 (or nearly half of my days allowance) on a cup of coffee. I might implode
2. I have been on food stamps before, but not like this. I spent a year doing Americorps in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was eligible for food stamps because I was only making $200 per week minus taxes and rent was $400 per month. When you really have food stamps, you receive a debit card and a certain amount of money is put on it at the beginning of each month. I was able to eat just fine because the lower Louisiana prices and cost of living. That was $87.50 per week or $12.50 per day - nearly triple the amount I am able to spend in a day in DC AND DC is more expensive. How does anyone survive on $4.11 per day in DC and why should anyone have to?
3. With food stamps, you have to buy unprepared, uncooked food. That means no precooked chicken, slices of pizza, etc. However, I could go into the Whole Foods in Louisiana and buy sushi, which seems ridiculous to me, because it is not cooked. You can buy all the raw ingredients that you want, but you can not buy pots or pans to cook them in. If you are homeless and have food stamps how am I supposed to cook without a stove?
4. This is the busiest week of the year for me: I am coordinating Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week events, I am a student with 6 classes, I have a huge application due on Friday and Sunday I am organizing a Thanksgiving Feast for St. Mary's Court. So for me the challenge is being able to find time to make my own food at home and transport it EVERYWHERE because I am never sure when I will have time for my next meal.
5. Finally, I am interested to see what it is like being a vegetarian on food stamps, since I was not the last time.

Thanks for reading, I will let you know if I survive or if I end up stuffing my face with leftovers from the Hunger Banquet (being held November 18th from 6pm - 8pm in the Marvin Center Grand Ballroom).

Day 1 - Emily Baer, Student

Emily Baer
Student and Neighbors Project Student Coordinator for Special Events

It is 10:30 am on Sunday and I am exhausted and starving. I have just spent the last three hours shuffling between 3 different grocery stores buying groceries for the week and I have not had any coffee or breakfast. I am miserable and the challenge has not even officially started.

My cooking load for the week is intense. I have planned five dinners and I am hoping I will have leftovers from all of them to cover lunch the next day and the two missing meals. On Sunday, I made homemade bagels (my budget did not cover buying already made ones), baking rigatoni with sausage and pizza dough for later in the week.

After I came home and put away all of my groceries, my mom looked at me and said "where is my protein?!" When she discovered the only meat I could afford to buy was chicken breasts and sausage - neither of which stretched very far - she told me she never promised me that she would not complain. She then compared the food I had bought to a "carbohydrate heaven." And it is - ever single one of my meals is built around a central carbohydrate with for the most part, very few vegetables and proteins to supplement it. Oh, and the coffee I was forced to buy...I have found that it tastes better when I do not smell it. Lets just leave it at that.

Also, in case you have not noticed from the picture, I did not plan for snacks or pretty much anything outside of meals. And MILK - I did not buy MILK. It did not even occur to me though I actually drink it pretty regularly. So instead of buying snacks, I am buying a gallon of milk...

What did you have to give up today?

Why The Food Stamp Challenge Came to GW Emily Baer, Student

Emily Baer
Student & Neighbors Project Student Coordinator for Special Events

Back in September, I proposed that we challenge GW to a food stamp challenge during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. And to be honest, I did not think it would actually happen. It was not a reflection of GW - I just did not think there would be that many people who would actually volunteer to have their freedom restricted so much. The best part about going to college is the feeling (perhaps a facade?) of absolute freedom and food stamps don't exactly mesh well with this. But the challenge is a great way for the GW Community to learn about hunger by actually experience it first hand. Over the next week, you can expect to read about the experiences students, staff, faculty, and administrators as they embark upon the challenge. I'll be one of them.

Surprisingly, I am not expecting the challenge to be that hard. While I've never lived on food stamps, I grew up in a single parent household with three sisters so I'm used to stretching our food budget pretty thin. I've been clipping coupons, planning weekly menus and cooking since I was nine, so that part won't be hard. Instead, I am dreading giving up my coffee habit -- it's my one vice. When I get stressed out or I'm feeling tired, I cheer myself up by buying coffee out. I don't drink folgers or maxwell house and I spend at least $10/lb on coffee (I drink a lot of coffee) to brew at home, not including buying coffee out. Obviously, on a food stamp budget, it will be the first thing to go!

To prepare, I've started looking at what is on sale and planning what I'll be eating for the week. Honestly, I am just glad I do not have any exams or tests next week because I could not handle them without good coffee.

Let me break down my week as I currently see it - Because I am living at home this semester, I am cooking for my mom and sister. This means that my Food Stamp Budget for the week is $86.25 (28.75 X 3). They are no looking forward to it but I think that they want to prove to themselves that they can do it. I do too --- but I also recognize that the average person on food stamps can not devote as much time as I will to planning their weekly food budget and meals. And I do not have a full time job and children to care for. So even though it is a challenge, I can not pretend that it completely replicates the real life experiences of a person on food stamps - It is just my small window into their lives. I hope you will join me!

Boxes...Boxes...Boxes... [Timothy Kane, Director, Office of Community Service]

Timothy Kane
Director, Office of Community Service

OCS staff are often amused at my odd ability to relate almost anything and everything that happens at OCS and GW to a Seinfeld episode...and my participation in the Food Stamp Challenge (FSC) is no exception. Remember the episode when Jerry starts off with a monologue about moving and about how we all suddenly become obsessed with finding boxes during a move? Got to find boxes...any boxes here?...I know you have boxes...boxes, boxes, boxes! Well, suddenly, I feel the same way about free food and the FSC. Got to find free food...any free food at MSSC?...I know SASS has some free food...free food, free food, free food! This strange obsession also occurs in an even stranger backdrop...that is, my having ample "food reserves" (i.e. body fat) to last for weeks! What is it about how our personal insecurities interface with our environment to cause such "interesting" manifestations? Do I really think that I will starve to death during the FSC? Am I that afraid of feeling hungry? Will my concentration at work or at home be so disrupted if I don't feed myself as I normally do? Hmmmm...let's wait and see! To be continued...

Food Stamp Challenge Preparation - Timothy Kane, Director, The Office of Community Service

Timothy Kane
Director, Office of Community Service

Even before I embarked upon the Food Stamp Challenge (FSC), I was already thinking about ways to "cheat the system" and consume roughly the same amount and quantity food that I was accustomed to eating. How pathetic is that! For example, I remembered that I had a previously arranged a dinner date for the week of the FSC, hosted by a GW colleague and friend. I informed him about the FSC but intentionally did not ask him to participate because I did not want to forfeit the free meal he was planning to prepare for us! And to share my own frailty via the FSC Blog is another exercise in humility...or in reality...since being a flawed human being who is sometimes noble and sometimes selfish is who we all seem to be deep down inside anyway...to be continued.