On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America

by Christopher Greenslate

  By the time I got home, I was surprised to see Kerri there; usually I arrived before her. Walking into the kitchen, I saw that she had already prepared the prescribed snack option from the plan for that day: chickpea dip. Despite the fact that she had followed the recipe provided by the Thrifty Food Plan, the dip wasn’t what I expected. When I see things like “chickpea dip,” the foodie in me thinks: hummus. This was not the case. The gritty consistency was a far cry from the smooth lather that I had become accustomed to in Middle Eastern restaurants and store-bought brands. I spread the concoction over a slice of bread and took a bite; not bad. I poured myself the ration of juice that had been meant for lunchtime, and asked Kerri, “So what’s for dinner?”

  She inspected the meal plan and raised her eyebrows.

  “Beef noodle casserole, lima beans, banana and orange salad, and half a cup of milk.”

  “That’s a strange combination,” I commented.

  Before dinner we went over the Thrifty Food Plan menu, and I saw how Kerri had decided to mix up some of the offerings, as we would end up having enough leftover casserole that evening for lunch the following day. Moreover, there was no way I would have been able to prepare the crispy chicken for lunch. The recipe was far too complex for the amount of time I had in the morning. In order to make it before work, I would have had to get up at four thirty a.m., an hour earlier than usual. I could have prepared the vegan equivalent that night, but Kerri would be busy making dinner, and our kitchen isn’t built with lots of counter space, nor do we have enough dishes for two people to develop large meals simultaneously.

  The reorganizing of the meal options was an absolute necessity because otherwise our fridge would be bursting with leftovers, and because the time allotted for preparing lunches is totally unrealistic for working people. We wondered if this plan was developed for the stay-at-home parent, or if the USDA was encouraging working less so you could stay home and play domestic engineer. Adjusting the menu made it difficult to guarantee that we were still eating in line with the food pyramid. We did our best to modify things in order to ensure that we were getting the prescribed amount of protein, calcium, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables each day.

  However, as the week wore on, we noticed that many of the meals started to taste the same. Lots of casseroles, lots of pasta, lots of meat and dairy, and of course the daily regimen of orange juice. Snacks like biscuits, dips, and pasta salads were peppered throughout the week, but Kerri was already beginning to grow weary of the plan.

  For me, things were great. I loved the saucy beef pasta and the turkey cabbage casserole. I rejoiced over my morning juice and nightly half-cup of soymilk with dinner; it reminded me of my childhood, when milk with dinner was mandatory. The meals were a strange journey into my earlier eating life, and much like visiting an old familiar place, I felt a welcome note in every bite. The only mildly challenging experience for me was the cooked rice cereal. Traditionally, rice is something you eat as a side dish with dinner, and maybe sometimes in pudding. Even that was rare, considering I’ve only had rice pudding three times in my entire life. I couldn’t see rice as a breakfast food unless it came with three little elves named Snap, Crackle, and Pop. After a gloopy month of oatmeal, the prospect of another mushy breakfast was not appealing. Cooked with milk and flavored with sugar and cinnamon, this hot porridge was edible, but thankfully it appeared in the plan only once that week. We could cope.

  9

  Confessions

  Kerri

  When I worked at a grocery store—where I made over minimum wage, got two weeks of paid vacation, sick leave, and medical, dental, and vision insurance—I often worked until ten or eleven p.m., but my schedule changed every week. This would leave me little time to plan or prepare meals. On evenings when I ended work late, I would grab fast food from a nearby restaurant on the way home. Exhausted, having been on my feet most of the day, the last thing I wanted to do was make dinner. In my job now, although I’m also on my feet for hours, I’m not pushing carts or doing any heaving lifting. Still, I’m tired when I get home and have to muster the energy to make dinner.

  Christopher and I enjoyed our free time on Sunday. In fact, at six p.m., I awoke from a forty-five-minute nap on the “magic couch,” so named because it is impossible to read on it without falling asleep. I rolled off the couch and wandered into the kitchen to prepare dinner. I reached for the box of bowtie pasta stored in the cupboard and discovered that we had only about one cup of pasta left, while the meal I had planned to make called for 6 3/4 cups. We had eaten a late breakfast and skipped lunch, as we tend to do on the weekends, so when dinnertime rolled around, we were ready to eat.

  “Guess what?” I groaned to Christopher. “We need to go to the store.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Is there anything we can make instead?”

  “I’ll look,” I said, “but I doubt it.”

  The problem was that we couldn’t just run out for pasta. We also needed to consider what else we required for the week so (in theory) we would not have to go again. After almost forty-five minutes of digging through the pantry to see if we could substitute ingredients, poring over the Thrifty Food Plan, and exchanging a few tense words about whether or not we were meeting the nutritional guidelines for a balanced diet every day (we were not), we set out for the store.

  On a tip from a friend, we went to a different store than we had on our first shopping trip. Upon hearing where we went the first time, Spencer claimed that another store, which thankfully happened to be closer to our house, would have cheaper prices. He was right: We could have saved a few dollars if we had shopped there in the first place. I was surprised by the deals in the pasta aisle. I could buy ten bags of pasta for ten dollars. I was equally in awe of how inexpensive junk food was. A large end-cap display held two-liter soda bottles, also ten for ten dollars. As we walked by, several people were taking advantage of this sale.

  We made our way through the store as quickly as possible with our rumbly tummies guiding the way, but this “quick” shopping trip dragged on longer than our patience could handle. We needed to run to another store for a few items that we couldn’t get at the first one. On the way home, we stopped at a third store so I could run in and get a cheap pitcher, since we needed another one for the plan. By the time we got home and made dinner, we had spent another $43.79, and it was nine p.m. before we finally sat down to eat. The most frustrating part about this experience was the fact that there was no one to blame but ourselves. We had planned poorly.

  During the dollar-diet project, one phenomenon that surprised me was that our refrigerator always seemed full of food, but we were eating so little. Of course that food lasted us for several meals, and we did much of our preparation for the week during the weekend. Likewise, in the second week of this phase, I had noticed that we again had a full fridge. Because of our small portions, plenty of leftovers remained. There was a container holding the remains of a can of peaches, leftover casserole from Sunday, a partial container of orange juice, a carton of soymilk, a head of cabbage (neither of us liked cabbage, but as it was an ingredient in a couple of recipes, we agreed to give it a shot).

  On our shopping trip that evening, we purchased some of the ingredients for the menu for the second week on the Thrifty Food Plan, but not all of them. Again, due to the fact that there were two of us—not four—we needed to make our food last longer. For now it seemed as if there was an abundance of food in our fridge, but we realized that we needed to make it last. Because we were supplementing the SNAP average ($3 per person each day) with our own funds ($1.13 per person each day), we still had $90.41 remaining in our food budget for the month, in addition to the food in our cupboards to get us through the next couple of weeks. However, had we not been able to supplement, and had to spend only $180 for the month (an average allotment for two people), we would have had only $20.90 remaining.

  The meals recommended by the plan aren’t bad. Again, I longed for a little more variety than Chr
istopher did, but we both warmed to the menus. The initial three recipes I made had the same first two steps: Chop onions, then sauté with either ground turkey or ground beef. One recipe required tomato sauce, another required a can of tomato soup poured over it, and they all used either pasta or rice. The recipes lived up to the promise of being easy to make, but they weren’t always fast, and I wondered about how healthy they were. Most of the ingredients were inexpensive, and it made sense to simplify shopping by incorporating similar ingredients into several different recipes to minimize waste. I was happy with the inclusion of produce, but we were eating far more in the way of pasta and meat substitutes than we typically do. Our main fruits and vegetables included oranges, orange juice, canned pears or peaches, and green beans. It was better than not having fruits and veggies at all, and despite the lack of variety, we were much more satisfied after eating these meals than on our dollar budget.

  Because our new budget was over four times more than that of our dollar diet, and given the fact that we weren’t focusing on our daily totals as much as our total cost, Christopher and I both felt like we could “get away” with more. Early in our second week, I left my water bottle at home. Around the end of second period, my work period, I was snacking on my lunch and needed something to wash it down. The nearest water source to my classroom is a bathroom; I had no intention of getting water from there. I have a little change container in my top desk drawer, so I counted out its contents to see if I had enough for a soda from the teachers’ room. I had forty-five cents. That wouldn’t get me very far. I dug out my wallet and shook out the change. It rained nickels and dimes. As I counted it into my hand, I debated whether or not I should actually use it. After all, we were supplementing with $1.13 per day, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend half of that on a soda. Not to mention the fact that there is too much sugar and no nutritional value in soft drinks, and I typically prefer my caffeine in the form of coffee. Of course, I rationalized this by comparing it to the $1.25 it would have cost to get a bottle of water from a different vending machine. The cheaper option didn’t seem like the best choice, but I decided that one soda wouldn’t blow the whole experience.

  One thing I did worry about was what I would say to Christopher. I would need to tell him something to explain why seventy-five cents had been added on from nowhere. I started having flashbacks to the cookie argument during September that could have ended our relationship (or just left us pissed off for the day). I worried, too, about opening the floodgates: If I have a soda today, will I want one tomorrow? Twice I thought about turning back, but I made excuses. I had to go down to the copy machine anyway—the teachers’ room is on the way; not only would it cost $1.25 for a bottle of water, but that machine might eat my money (which it is known to do), and that would leave me still thirsty and $1.25 poorer. Then I went for it. As soon as the ice-cold can dropped into the tray, I felt guilty—it was as if I was stealing food from Christopher. But as I cracked open the can, tipped it back, and felt the cool bubbling sensation on my tongue, there was no more guilt. I swallowed the first gulp and enjoyed every drop.

  Several times during the afternoon, I thought about how I would break it to Christopher. I decided to play up the fact that I was thirsty and in need of a drink, while playing down the fact that I made a poor nutrition choice. When I got home, Christopher was on his computer. We chitchatted for about twenty minutes before he decided to get dinner started (i.e., reheating what I had made the night before), and I finally confessed my transgression. I was relieved when he said that it was no big deal. I felt I was off the hook. Seconds later, he confessed that he had been snacking all week on the oatmeal cookies that he had made for one of our meals, and now there were none left for our lunches. While his cookies had to be made as part of the Thrifty Food Plan, they wouldn’t cost us more, but the mutual admission of sneaking food was enough to keep both of us watching each other from then on.

  When I reminded Christopher that I would be going to my school’s play on Thursday night, his first response was, “What will we have for dinner?” I told him that he’d have to be responsible for cooking, which was translated into him heating up leftovers, as it often does on nights when Christopher cooks. The problem became that the leftovers were supposed to be lunch on Friday, and without a new meal prepared, we were left with pathetic lunches. Friday morning turned into a scramble to figure out what to eat. In the end, I sliced up some cabbage for coleslaw, and Christopher packed up grapes and tossed an apple into each of our lunch bags. That day I couldn’t complain about not having fruits and veggies in our diet, but it did leave me less than full. I was frustrated by the lack of forethought we had put into planning our meal the night before, and I was annoyed that if I wasn’t the one to cook, then little cooking would take place.

  When I got home on Friday, I was tired and hungry. I walked into the house to find Christopher snacking on a bag of barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds. We had purchased these prior to starting the Thrifty Food Plan, but, since they weren’t given to us, we had to calculate them into our total as well. That was another ninety-nine cents poorly spent. While I was disappointed at the use of our money, I wasn’t shy in partaking of the treat. If we both had to pay for it, I might as well enjoy it, too.

  That wasn’t all I had to look forward to that evening. I was hungry, but excited that I didn’t need to cook that night. For this project, we decided that we would take free food whenever it was available, and that night we were going to get a full meal. We were headed to a free weekend conference called “Cultivating Food Justice.” As it tied in so nicely with what we were trying to learn about, we were eager to attend. The conference was organized entirely by volunteers in the San Diego area, including San Diego Food Not Lawns, Seeds at City, the California Food and Justice Coalition, San Diego Sustainable Roots, and the International Rescue Committee. The conference would have guest speakers and sessions devoted to food justice issues facing Californians and those in the rest of the United States. Included with the conference was free dinner on Friday night, provided by eleventh and twelfth graders in a culinary arts program at a local high school, and free breakfast and lunch on Saturday, provided by a San Diego chapter of Food Not Bombs.

  Despite the fact that we had been talking about issues related to food for months, I wasn’t entirely familiar with the phrase “food justice,” and I wasn’t sure what this conference would be like. When Christopher and I arrived at City College in San Diego, we followed the hand-painted signs and arrows that pointed us to the cafeteria-style room where the keynote speakers would be. We registered and took the bowls and silverware that we brought from home and got in line. Dinner included vegetarian chili, bread, and a garden salad. After having had such a small lunch earlier in the day, I couldn’t wait to dig in. We loaded up our bowls and took seats near the front of the room. I greedily ate my chili, but not wanting to take advantage of the hospitality of the organizers, I didn’t have a second bowl. I did, however, let Christopher go back and get a second slice of bread for me.

  According to the program, “Food justice means that everyone must have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity.” While we ate, I looked around the room, curious about what type of people would attend such a conference. I wanted to see who the people were who believed in this issue. There were several college-aged kids helping to serve the meal and a few more scattered throughout the audience, but there didn’t seem to be more of any particular age group than another. There were people who appeared to be my parents’ and grandparents’ ages, along with the high school students who stayed after the meal to hear the speakers.

  Due to Los Angeles traffic, the first speaker arrived a few minutes late. While we waited, one of the organizers put in a documentary called The Garden about the fight for the community farm in South Central L.A. When our speaker Rufina Juarez arrived, we learned that she had been instrumental in
creating the community farm documented in the film, and eventually the farm that replaced it. She spoke passionately about the needs of her community. Many of the issues were ones that seemed to be themes for the weekend. There is a belief that people in poverty need food, but that quality food is only for people who can afford it. She spoke of the illusion of choice when we go to the grocery store. While we believe we are making decisions about what to put in our baskets, Juarez argued, we don’t have control over what is available to us. “Somebody else is making that choice for you,” she asserted, referring to the food industry. The community farm she helped to start was eventually evicted from their location in South Central and they relocated to Bakersfield. The farm’s eighty acres have up to three thousand visitors on Saturdays, and provide approximately thirty tons of food a year. That food is taken to the South Central Farmers Market, which is one of the only sources of fresh quality food in the area.

  The next speaker, LaDonna Redmond, is a community activist from Chicago who got involved in food issues when her child was diagnosed with severe food allergies. Redmond has been instrumental in working to get junk food out of schools in her area and developing urban agriculture. She echoed Juarez’s commentary on the lack of choice in our food system, and went a step further to attack the myth that people won’t choose to buy fresh food if it is available and affordable. Christopher and I had learned before about “food deserts,” areas where there are no grocery stores with healthy food available. These tend to be areas with several liquor stores or small corner markets that may have a few groceries, but at a higher price than a supermarket charges. Redmond looked at these areas differently. She preferred the term “food apartheid” because it better described the system. We left that evening with quite a bit to think about, and five zucchini from a box marked “free.”