Why Food Stamps Don’t Have to Mean Spam & Eggs

A front-page article in the New York Times this past weekend caught my eye: Food Stamp Use Soars Across the Country, and a Stigma Fades.

Reporters Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff describe an Ohio electrician named Greg Dawson who recently found himself filling up on cereal, eggs, and Spam so that he could afford to feed his five children and wife. (Dawson, unlike many Americans, has not lost his job but when his overtime recently vanished, the family budget was strained.) “When an outreach worker appeared at his son’s Head Start program, Mr. Dawson gave in,” write DeParle & Gebeloff. The stigma has not entirely vanished: though Mr. Dawson now accepts the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” allowance (snappy new acronym, SNAP, courtesy of the Obama administration), he hasn’t breathed a word of it to his own parents.

Hunger is a very real issue in our country right now and surely many Americans are turning not just to spam, spam, spam, and eggs [see Monty Python video, below], but to McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. and to all sorts of cheap and filling yet nutrient-poor “foods.”

All this is depressing news for a vegetable-obsessed health nut like me, until I remembered Rebecca Blood’s project (in which she ate organic meals on a Food Stamps budget for several months) which I wrote about back in June. Blood stuck to the USDA’s budget for Food Stamps (in 2007, that came out to $320 a month for two adults) and managed to cook nutritious, affordable, organic meals for her hubby and herself. (Presumably, Mr. Dawson’s $300 monthly allowance is comparatively meager because he still has a full-time job, just not the extra padding over overtime income.)

Yet still, feeding a family of 7 on a limited budget, it’s hard to see how all but the most committed (and resourceful) parents could follow Blood’s inventive series of healthy menus (heavy on couscous, lentils, and carrots and other low-cost vegie staples) without breaking down and going to Dairy Queen or Micky D’s.

Two paperback cookbooks have come across my desk recently that may serve as inspiration for out-of-work home cooks across the land. One, Ellen Brown’s $3 Meals: Feed Your Family Delicious, Healthy Meals for Less than the Cost of a Gallon of Milk ($11.21 on Amazon), covers a range of dishes that are both satiating and simple to prepare. (And a heck of a lot healthier than a Big Mac.) The recipes range from comfort food staples such as chicken pot pie and the Italian classic Aglio e Olio to ethnic fare like chicken Molé and lamb Moussaka.

The second is Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating ($9 on Amazon) by Lisa Jervis. Though a little too obvious for anyone who knows her way around a kitchen, this lithe guide contains some streamlined versions of better known recipes as well as a “nonrecipe recipe” section that includes stream-of-consciousness variations for main course salads, “toast + spread” ideas, and superquick stirfries. It’d be the perfect gift for the non-cook in your family.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the cookbook I grew up with (and which my dad gave me for Christmas a few years ago): More-With-Less, first published in 1976 as a response to the world food shortages of the time. International in scope, it includes lots of basic recipes but also some unusual ones, too: Kusherie (Egyptian rice and lentils), Indonesian fried rice, and Argentine spinach pie.

I bet there are a lot of locavores out there who are on Food Stamps. Speak Up!  I’d love to hear your ideas for stretching your SNAP money without resorting to fast food. (Or worse, Spam.)