Friday, February 13, 2009

Food Stamps

I have spent the past five or six days (six if you count today) on a Food Stamps budget. It's an assignment for my class. I've been mostly silent this week because of the massive changes that SNAP (Food Stamps are now called SNAP) brought into my home.

The first recommendation people typically make, once they know you'll be 'on Food Stamps,' is: carbs, carbs, carbs. Pasta, rice and beans, bagged dry beans, etc. Unfortunately, I don't do carbs. I went to Rosebud in Malden for their wholesale-priced produce.

I then went to Market Basket for my protein. There is no Market Basket (yet) in Gloucester, my hometown. I found some great sales on chicken, pork tenderloin, and ground turkey. I bought regular-price frozen tilapia filets because they're such a deal, and less than half a pound of very thinly sliced pepperoni because I remember with love a recipe from the 1980s.

Today, my boss asked me how the Food Stamps diet was going. I said fine; I had needed to stretch my lentils and my chicken farther than I expected, but it wasn't a great hardship. She said, "And what do you have for lunch today? Is it totally boring?" It wasn't. What I had for lunch today was jerk-marinated chicken in an onion sauce over riced cauliflower, with sliced raw radishes and a tangelo.

Four recipes from the week, now ending, that I would heartily recommend:
Mini Turkey Meatloaves
Jerk Chicken
Sarah's Fennel Ragout
Sarah's Lentil Soup

I'll post each in separate instalments soon.

3 comments:

  1. You're using pre-existing spices!

    Evil Cheater-head ;p

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  2. I was =allowed= to, but in fact, I did not. I bought two 88-cent spice bottles (Five-spice powder, and curry) at Ocean State. I'm tracking every teaspoon. Prof said. So there.

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  3. Oh, and I used some soy sauce and gravy browning, but again, the prof said we could. I "costed" them.

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