[Food Stamp Food] Thanksgiving and beyond

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a bit.I think I just came out of my Thanksgiving Coma.

We pulled off Thanksgiving dinner and basically have lived off of leftovers since.

We had turkey, of course. Sweet potatoes( $2.50 for 6 lbs), cranberry sauce( made w/ fresh cranberries), cauliflower-feta bake and a very failed mushroom-spinach roulade (this killed me…it used a lot of eggs & cheese, not to mention spinach & mushrooms). And pumpkin(2 fresh pumpkins for $5…with lots left over to bake muffins & such) & apple pie.

My mom brought Ambrosia Salad. Ya’ll know what Ambrosia Salad is? I mean besides gross? Marshmallows with a little fruit. And sour cream & coconut. My kids were trying SO hard to be polite about it. My Mom asked if they liked it. One says,”Welll….I don’t like coconut,soo…” . My Mom says,”Well, I probably could have left the coconut out”. Kid says ,”Well, the marshmallows…..there’s too many of them. And I don’t like to eat marshmallows except in s’mores”. My mom thinks a minute and says,”Well, then all that would be left is mandarin oranges and pineapple!”. Daughter says,”That would be a perfect salad.” Of course the one person who loved the salad was the diabetic hubby. Der.

There were pictures of the Thanksgiving dinner but I haven’t the slightest idea where they wandered off to. You’ll just have to believe me – it was delish.

 

Yesterday I boiled the turkey carcass to make stock…today,I shall scrounge together stuff to make a soup. I have some beans soaking and I think I even have some fresh kale left in our little potted garden.

About $20 left on our food stamp card until December 9th. Fun times.

Food Stamp Food- 11/16-11/20: Planning for the holidays,using leftover carrots and more

One of this week’s most popular search terms that brought people to my blog: “extra food stamps in November  and December”  or more directly,“Can I get extra food stamps for the holidays?”. Sorry…it doesn’t work that way. If you really need help putting together food for your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, contact your local food pantry or call your food stamp caseworker for a list of organizations that distribute food. In my area,for example, beside the food pantries there is a network of people & groups who rescue food and distribute to those in need. When I say “rescue”, I don’t mean they picked out of the trash. They have an arrangement with grocery stores,caterers,restaurants and other food service to collect food that may otherwise go in the trash for some reason or another. There’s nothing wrong with this food – it truly would be completely wasted if not for food rescuers.

You could also try calling a local youth group ,such as 4H to see if they’re organizing anything for families in need during the holidays. My daughter signed up this week to sort canned goods and bake goodies for families (ironic ,I know).

For those on the opposite side of the food scarcity dilemma, especially those who garden, Growing a Greener World’s  episode 220: Gardening for the Hungry  has a wealth of information about growing food for the hungry and how to get it where it needs to go. There’s also a great post on GardenHelp.org on Feeding the Hungry from Your Home Garden. If you do contribute in some way, make sure you tell The Gay Vegans about your do-gooding.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we have our turkey. 48¢ a pound. Nope, not the most ethically grown turkey,as I would prefer but it’s a turkey. Someday, we’ll raise our own.

My family has decided (not the family in my own house but extended fam- my mother,aunts,,uncles,etc) have decided to not have Thanksgiving at a family member’s house and instead , “Let’s all go to a nice restaurant for Thanksgiving!”. Um, no. Not only can I not afford to take my 9-person family out to a restaurant but I have a toddler. Toddlers don’t necessarily mean you can’t eat out but at this current stage in his life, he doesn’t do restaurants. We went out for brunch this week and he was much more interested in checking out his surroundings, which meant I had to chase toddler instead of actually eat…and when I did eat,I was trying to hurry so we could get out of there and didn’t really enjoy it.

So, we’ll be at home, which actually sounds nicer to me than spending Thanksgiving in a restaurant. Besides, who wants to eat out and miss all those awesome Thanksgiving leftovers? Not I!

Anyway…

Here’s what we’ve been eating:

Wednesday 11/16

I felt like crap all day and the toddler wasn’t quite feeling up to par,either. I don’t quite remember eating much of anything. I made dinner ,though. I had 5 lbs of ground beef to use up (it had already been frozen and thawed) so I made meatloaf with some of it. It was all I could do not to hurl while cooking. I’m not a huge fan of beef but then feeling ew… not good. It was basic meatloaf with mushroom gravy. Used up the last of the potatoes for mashed potatoes and cooked carrots for a side dish. They were honey-glazed. I don’t normally sweeten veggies but I hate carrots so I’ll do anything to make them more palatable to me. Carrots are the only food I really don’t like at all.

Thursday 11/17

Remember how I broke my front tooth ? I called every dentist  in the area to see if I could make some arrangements to pay monthly. Without insurance, no one would see me unless I agreed to pay 100% of the bill at the appointment. So, Thursday I went and applied for Medicaid . Very heavy sigh. I just didn’t know what else to do. The sad thing is , even if I get approved, it’s no guarantee I’ll be able to see a dentist .

We had to take an early bus into The Little Big City for my appointment. We had hours to kill before my appointment so we ran errands and went and ate waffles for brunch. Obviously, not a food stamp transaction…cash money but it was frugal.

Dinner that night:

I had garlic scapes, thanks again to the Veteran’s Sanctuary.

Nobody was very excited about eating these,except for me. but then? Some chicken breast, feta cheese and the garlic scapes tossed with pasta and some herbs – yum.

Some roasted red peppers on top for garnish. By the way… go visit Red, White & Grew to see her Roasted Veggie Spectacular.

Friday 11/18

Kids had the day off from school for some conference thing. Pookie made pancakes for everyone, all by herself. Lunch was a combo of leftovers and tuna fish sandwiches.

For dinner, I made a pizza that some cooking mag I have refers to as Pizza Bianco. It’s a sauceless pizza topped with a combo of ricotta & mozarella and basil, then topped with mushrooms,garlic & onions.

yum.

Saturday 11/19

We ate pretty crappy all day. The toddler hasn’t been feeling well and Saturday was the worst. I personally didn’t cook anything all day…older children made eggs & toast in the morning, then PB & J for lunch. My oldest son made dinner….leftover cooked pasta from Thursday with some browned ground beef,salsa & cheese thrown into it.

Sunday 11/20

Kids all went out to breakfast with Grandma and I didn’t feel like anything besides coffee in the morning.

My fabulous hubby made these sandwiches for us for lunch:

They’re pitas stuffed with ground beef (did I mention we have a ton of ground beef to use?), cukes,tomatoes and sprouts w/ a greek feta dressing drizzled on.

I had intended to make sweet rolls for breakfast that morning but with no one around,I just made them later on. Earlier in the week, we had carrots. I was waiting to see if they go gobbled up like the other leftovers but no one seemed too crazy about them. I swear, I try very hard to keep my disdain for carrots to myself for fear of infecting the kids with it. I know adults who tell me they never ate certain foods as kids because their parents didn’t like them. If my kids end up liking carrots, that’s awesome.

I hate wasting food so I needed to figure out how to use up the leftover carrots (a little less than  1 cup ,originally honey-glazed ) .I hate a lot of suggestions for what to do with them (as a dip,in soups,in cake,muffins,etc)  but I think most  required more carrots than I had .Someone passed on a recipe for sweet rolls, made like cinnamon rolls but filled with a carroty-mixture. The dough was straightforward cinnamon-roll dough but the filling called for an entire container of cream cheese, a box of vanilla pudding, a jar of baby food carrots & a whole half cup of sugar. Wow. And that’s for just 12 servings. One thing I notice with a lot with recipes is that they’re WAY too extravagant ,both with calories & finances.

So, here’s what I substituted for the filling:

mashed cooked carrots

1 cup of ricotta cheese

3 tablespoons cream cheese ( because that’s all I had left)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

I blended this and spread it on the dough , just like when you make cinnamon rolls. Over the mixture,I sprinkled brown sugar . not a ton, just enough to cover the area lightly. Instead of making these super sweet I let the cinnamon & nutmeg dominate and the sugar accentuate.

The result was a slightly sweet rolls with a very slight carroty flavor.

My daughter was half finished eating one and asked what was in it. “Carrots”, I told her.

“But I hate carrots! But these are actually ok”. Yay!

For dinner, I made chili in the crockpot.  Using the very last of that ground beef. Thank the gods… I was getting tired of that ground beef.

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I’ll be using hashtag #foodstampfood when I tweet about food. If you use food stamps to eat, feel free to use it,too.

Food Stamp Food: 11/13-11/15

Note to self:  Remember to take pics of food BEFORE everyone eats instead of looking at an empty plate and saying,”Oh,shoot..I forgot to take a picture!” . Blogging fail.

Pictures or not, we ate:

SUNDAY 11/13

Sunday brunch, the twins had a friend over. Thing 1 wanted to make Banana Waffles but her friend said she didn’t like to eat bananas unless they had peanut butter with/on (hey, I can’t judge. The only way I can eat a carrot is if it’s in a cake). So, we decided on Peanut Butter Banana Waffles   .We did not follow ←that recipe to a tee…we used real dairy ingredients but they turned out nice.The whole house smelled like peanut butter cookies.  I didn’t change the amounts at all but obviously for my crew, I had to double the recipe. Normally I’d be feeling anxious about using that much milk for one meal but I had 3 WIC checks that needed to be used before the 14th, and each had 1 gallon of milk on it. I haven’t been able to use the WIC checks because , like an idiot, I lost my WIC ID and had to wait for a replacement before I could use them

That evening, I made macaroni and cheese. Just basic homemade mac -n-cheese.

MONDAY 11/14

Breakfast: bagels & cream cheese. 3 of the kids decided to eat breakfast at school that day.

Lunch: Normally, it’s only me eating lunch at home and I typically have leftovers.  I had 2 sick kids home so I made us some wraps…. whole wheat tortillas filled with sauteed mushrooms,melted cheese, a little salsa and a dab of sour cream. Hubby ate lunch out w/ his Mom, her treat.

Snacky: Kids ate grapes after school.

Dinner: Spinach & Black Bean Egg Rolls  and some quinoa-tofu thing I whipped together. Thinking about it now, the quinoa dish was protein overkill. Not that that was a bad thing but it had quinoa ( a complete protein source by itself), sunflower seeds (27g per serving)  and sugar snap pea pods (3 g) . The peas had been in the freezer for quite some time so they really needed to be used up. They were looking on the verge of freezer burnt. I like using quinoa now at least once a week  - my hubby is diabetic and it’s a good source of fiber & plant based protein for him. A bag is around $4.75 and goes a long way.

TUESDAY 11/15

Breakfast: bagel & cream cheese again

Lunch: Um…. hmmm. I think I ate a banana? Hubby ate at work.

Snacky: Pookie cooked tater tots with cheese after school.

Dinner: So, I don’t know who Julie is but her Noodle Casserole caught my eye in an old issue of Family Circle (free box at the library snag).

This is exactly what it looked like:

The only change I made to the recipe was I didn’t use cottage cheese….I used about 1 cup ricotta instead. Also…I forgot to add the marinara and it was just fine without it.

There was a head of cauliflower that needed to be cooked. I was inspired by this recipe from Rachel Ray for Cauliflower-Feta Pasta Bake…except my main dish had pasta so I just excluded the pasta from this. It was awesome. I did not use all the feta the recipe called for and it was still great.

Foodie Fail of the Week: The remaining  black beans I cooked on Monday for the egg rolls got left out somehow. by the time I discovered them, they already smelled fermenty and there was no way I could risk saving them. Into the compost they went. It was only about a cup of beans but on the other hand,it was a whole cup of beans.

Other food stamp related bits:

Michael Nolan’s Food Stamp Challenge  has ended. His final thoughts.

Religious leaders have issued a challenge to lamakers: Eat on a food stamp budget for one week. The article says there are a dozen democratic Congressmen (persons?) taking part in the challenge. I would love to see a follow up .

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I’ll be using hastag #foodstampfood when I tweet about food. If you use food stamps to eat, feel free to use it,too.

Food Stamp Food: Nov 10-12

Since I  “came out” as being a Food Stamp recipient , I’ve had quite a few people encourage me to share my food throughout a month. I’ve decided I will. I actually had to think about it a little bit. I wondered what the point would be. I couldn’t see any reason to do it unless I could find a purpose.

Here’s the reasons I came up with:

1. Food Stamps aside, sharing how to eat healthy and well on a limited budget is never a bad thing. It doesn’t matter where the grocery money comes from, frugal shoppers really thrive off of the knowledge & experiences of others.
2. To represent the families on food stamps that aren’t eating nothing but junk (not that I think they all are but some do) and maybe to show that you don’t have to eat any processed, pre-packaged crap at all when you get  SNAP.
3. To show that it’s seriously impossible to eat surf & turf on a food stamp budget, unless you plan on only eating that one meal & ramen noodles  for the entire month.
4.  There are quite a few bloggers and even journalists out there who have done Food Stamp Challenges. These people aren’t on Food Stamps , just demonstrating what it looks like to take an allotment given to a family who qualifies for SNAP and eat with it. Listen, I know there are people blogging out there who are living on food stamps and something prevents them from saying,”Hey, I’m living on food stamps and this is what it looks like.” Is it shame ? Embarrassment? I’m not sure but I do know that the shaming that is done to people living on any kind of assistance needs to end. Keeping quiet about it gives them their power to condemn. It also does not serve to open up much needed dialogue about food privilege and food scarcity.

Our food stamp month starts on the 9th of every month. Right now, we receive $490/month. in the weeks prior to our food stamp re-certification, a co-worker of hubby’s died. Filling in since they were understaffed, hubby got a lot of extra hours until they hired someone and therefore, more pay. At recert, they only look at your last 3 weeks pay, which just happened to be during that time frame. So, in September it dropped from $570/ month to $490.  Sucks but we’ll deal. We also have extra people to feed at the moment , since 2 of the older adult children are using our house as a temporary place (one is either going to do AmeriCorps or WWOOF after the New Year and the other is trying to join the Air Force). This past month, we had to spend some cash on groceries for some basics, like milk & such but it wasn’t terrible.

So, here’s how the food stamp month of November has started for us:

THURSDAY -11/10

I made a  Chickpea-Butternut Squash soup that was more like a stew….I used leftover butternut squash from the previous night’s dinner, pureed it as the base and added enough liquid to cook the chickpeas (I used dry garbanzos , not canned). I seasoned with cinnamon,cumin and curry. oh..and threw in about 1/2 cup of barley I had in the cupboard. We had a nice loaf of brown bread with it that hubby had picked up from the day old bin at a local shop.

I don’t know how much we paid for this particular butternut squash but mid-October, I bought one at the Farmer’s Market for 50¢ .I can’t imagine them being too expensive anywhere. This one fed us for 2 meals. Not bad.

FRIDAY -11/11  

For breakfast, we had Baked Oatmeal with Apples. I basically just throw the oats in a baking dish with twice as much hot water/milk as oats…throw some cinnamon and vanilla in there with some diced apple (only takes about 1 apple for the whole thing). Sprinkle with a touch of brown sugar and bake until the apples are sift. Done.

Lunch? leftover chickpea-squash stuff

Dinner was spaghetti. Two kinds of store bought sauce, both Wegman’s (store brand): Parmesan Romano (99¢) and Grandpa’s Sauce ($1.99). Two kinds of pasta: Whole wheat Super Pasta (only 99¢ w/ coupon) and angelhair pasta ($1-something). Cheddar cheese for topping. Pookie had a friend over so we had 10 people at the dinner table that night. We had enough pasta & sauce leftover for someone to have for lunch the following day.

I also made garlic bread.

If you go trick-or-treating at the Veteran’s Sanctuary on Halloween, they might give you a  handful of garlic. That’s where I got this fresh garlic:

I have a recipe for “40-Clove Garlic Bread” from the Ladle,Leaf and Loaf cookbook . I didn’t want to have bread quite that garlicky (I know at least 2 kids would complain) and plus I didn’t want to use up that much garlic so I adapted using just a handful of cloves.

I roasted the garlic first:

Garlic Bread

1 pkg dry yeast (or if you use yeast in a jar like I do, 2 ¼ tsp)

1 ¼ cups lukewarm water

3 cups flour (I used half whole wheat/half white)

½ salt

Dissolve the yeast in water. Stir.Let it get foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in 1 cup of flour and blend. Mix in salt & the mashed garlic. Gradually add the remaining flour, stirring after each addition. Transfer dough to floured surface to knead. Knead until smooth and elastic.

Let rise until doubled, about an hour.

About 15 minutes before baking,preheat oven to 400. Sprinkle baking sheet with cornmeal. Fill a cast iron skillet halfway with water and place in bottom of oven.

Punch down dough and divide in half. Roll dough out into rectangles,about 1/2 inch thick. Then roll the rectangles into logs, pinching the ends to seal. lightly brush with water,

Bake for 30-35 minutes .

I’d show you a picture of finished bread but Friday evening when hubby was cutting the bread, he nearly severed a finger sooo…that sort of took priority over taking pictures of bread. By the time I’d finished tending to his finger, one of the sons had cut the bread.

SATURDAY 11/12

Breakfast (sort of brunch) was ahhh-maze-ing. I made Apple Stuffed French Toast.  ← That link is pretty much how I made it but I cut out the corn syrup (seriously, brown sugar AND cornsyrup? ) , I didn’t soak it overnight and I made the egg mixture stretch over 9 servings . Also, I used walnuts, not added in but put on table in a dish so everyone could garnish if they wanted.  We also made regular french toast for seconds if anyone was still hungry. (yeah,I wrecked 2 loaves of bread making this. For this, I used cheap,99 cents a loaf bread.)

We ate so late, no one wanted lunch. There was snacking on bananas and for dinner, we had Spinach & Feta Pierogies . I think we used 3/4 of a 64 oz bag. Yikes.

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I’ll be using hastag #foodstampfood when I tweet about food. If you use food stamps to eat, feel free to use it,too.