Now here’s the time in the challenge when I get a little negative. You see, as this challenge has progressed, I’ve come to realize that it really isn’t all that it should be. In some ways, it’s a game. Give a bunch of food bloggers a limited budget and see what they come up with. It’s not real. For all of our nutritious meals this week, and our calorie reduction from the norm, and our lack of any interesting spices, we knew that come Saturday morning, it would all be over. We could handle being hungry for a couple of days because we knew it would end soon. There are many people who are hungry all of the time. There are parents who go to bed hungry so their kids won’t. These are all problems that we just cannot understand only doing this challenge for 5 days. It’s fine for us to sit in our warm house with full freezer and canning pantry and talk about hunger, but all we did was really go on a diet for five days. We haven’t lived the life of someone truly hungry.
Now I’m not saying that I’m not glad we did the challenge. I’m not saying I’m not glad it exists. Anything that raises awareness of the problem of hunger in the world is helpful. We’re thankful that so many folks participated and we’re happy that we got to be a part of it. But in some ways this challenge goes too far (the no pantry rule) and in many ways it doesn’t go far enough (only 5 days).
We spent $60.68 for 5 days. We had food leftover. However, if we were on food stamps long term (or even short term, like a month), we’d shop differently. We’d eat differently. In fact, we’d eat a lot more like we do normally and a lot less than how we did for this challenge. We’d use some of our canning from the summer. We’d bake bread with our homemade sourdough starter and we’d forage. Our side yard is full of chickweed and dandelion greens perfect for a fresh salad. We’d buy butter, olive oil, and vinegar in bulk, we’d freeze extras of soup and casseroles so we wouldn’t be eating the same thing three days in a row, but instead would have leftovers for another meal in a few weeks that we could then just defrost for variety. We’d have purchased a lot more spices and flavorings from the bulk bins. Heck, even if we’d done the challenge for seven days and had an additional $24, we’d have purchased olive oil, more spices, butter, and more protein. We would have baked bread, had some different vegetables, and would have even possibly made crackers to go with our cheese.
We are lucky that we have the time to cook. Even though we both work full time jobs, and have the additional nearly full time job of Cook Local and Seasonal Cornucopia, we still make time to cook (though to be fair, cooking is part of the job of Cook Local). If we were working two jobs each, and didn’t have the flexibility of working at home or working some odd hours here and there, this challenge would have been harder.
The other part of this challenge that bothered me was that I actually had a couple items in my fridge go bad because I couldn’t use them due to the rules. Sure, I should have planned a little better and made sure the fridge was empty of perishables before the challenge, but that isn’t always practical.
So now that the challenge is basically over (we’ve already had dinner tonight), I’m glad that we participated. I’m glad it’s done. It’s helped us realize that we probably do need to cut down on our eating a little, though not as much as we did here due to marathon training (it is nearly impossible to train on 1300 calories a day). We also need to be better about eating as healthy as we did this week. We had a lot of veggies this week, which while common on our table, are not quite as much of a star as they should be.
We’re going to take the spirit of the challenge and run with it. Look for more farmers market price comparisons here quarterly, as well as at least two recipes a month that will serve dual purposes (like the roasted chicken that turns into chicken soup the next day). We want everyone in the Pacific Northwest to be able to cook local, no matter what your income level.
I agree with your frustrations with this challenge and the conclusion that in the end it is still worthwhile. Not foraging seems like a silly limitation. In the spring I sometimes have more trouble affording enough produce as we are between CSA seasons. We have lamb’s quarters often as I know great, even organic, places to find it. One of my close friends, who is on food stamps does the same.
One of the challenges I see is the disparity between eating processed and fresh food. The cheapest food in the grocery store is the processed food. For someone who wants to cook and eat produce etc it is more expensive.
-Robin
Hippo Flambe´s last blog ..French Crepes
I enjoyed doing the challenge last year, though i tweaked rules to fit my needs and avoid some of the headaches you mentioned. In particular, i used spices and perishables that i already owned, but priced out the right quantities from bulk bins and counted that in my “spend.” That was easier and avoided waste, but it also felt like a more realistic simulation of eating this way over a longer period. Maybe something to try if you do this again.
One question for you: 1300 calories a day is way below what i would need to maintain my weight at any activity level, let alone when exercising multiple times a week (as i am, and as it sounds like you are). Do you think you could realistically adapt this week’s diet to stick with your cook-local principles, stay under the cost limits, and deliver 2000-2500 calories per day? How?
Steve, that’s a good question. Knowing what we do now and knowing what we had left over, I think we could probably do 1700 calories a day and still be local and organic. To get higher than that though, we’d have to give up some of our reliance on the local foods.
I think that if John wasn’t diabetic, and thus needs a significant amount of protein, we might even be able to get as high as 2000 calories. I’d fill in the rest of the calories with emmer and rice and bread. All but the rice would be local. I’d also possibly make my own pasta.
To be accurate though, we’d also use a lot more of our canned stuff from the summer. We made at least 20 jars of strawberry jam for $20 last summer. A jar of jam would allow us to add at least 100 calories per day for about $1 a week. Pair that with the bread, and we’d easily get to 1600 right there. Plus, we had soup and tacos left over, so we could always up the tacos to 2 on the days that we worked out hard.
I definitely found it hard to exercise this past week and though I managed one six mile run, the rest of my week, while busy and active, didn’t have any concerted exercise in it. But then again, if I were in the situation of needing food stamps, I doubt I’d be training for a marathon (since marathons are expensive just to even register). I do hope that I’d still at least be running on a regular basis for fitness though.
[...] Cook Local gave some great insights about the week overall: “In some ways, it’s a game. Give a bunch of food bloggers a limited budget and see what they come up with. It’s not real…..Now I’m not saying that I’m not glad we did the challenge. I’m not saying I’m not glad it exists. Anything that raises awareness of the problem of hunger in the world is helpful. We’re thankful that so many folks participated and we’re happy that we got to be a part of it. But in some ways this challenge goes too far (the no pantry rule) and in many ways it doesn’t go far enough (only 5 days).” [...]
Awareness is probably the first step to combatting hunger. Thanks for using your “pulpit” to spread the word. Next step would probably be to get down and feed / eat with hungry people.
Nate @ House of Annie´s last blog ..Grow Your Own roundup #38