{"id":1865,"date":"2014-10-06T20:53:57","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T03:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2014-10-14T07:01:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:01:47","slug":"oh-snap-coffee-is-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/06\/oh-snap-coffee-is-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, SNAP! Coffee is food"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chicken<\/a>
Chicken and potatoes. Brown: It’s what’s for dinner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I stumbled out of the gate on Opening Day of the Arizona SNAP Challenge.<\/a>\u00a0At 5:02 AM, I trudged into the kitchen. Made the coffee. Drank the coffee. Realized the coffee was not in my $27 weekly food budget.<\/p>\n

Talk about your\u00a0 wake-up call: When I went shopping on Saturday at\u00a0my neighborhood Safeway, I thought only about what I’d be eating this week. It took me about an hour to spend $27… which is about as much time as it normally takes me to spend $270. I kept adding (proteins, starches) and subtracting (fresh fruits, vegetables), trying to see into the future of servings that could stretch to next Monday.<\/p>\n

Thinking about how I’d be eating on $1.27 per meal, I never considered\u00a0what I’d be drinking! Because you cannot use the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to purchase alcohol, I knew I could abstain from\u00a0booze for a week, but I hadn’t figured on skipping the one beverage I am truly addicted to: COFFEE.<\/p>\n

Normally, I buy the good stuff – usually on sale for $7.99 per bag – but\u00a0that’s 29.6% of the weekly food budget for a single person on food stamps. Granted, I don’t consume a whole bag of coffee each week, but what would I do without<\/em> this week so I could\u00a0keep drinking my coffee into the next two weeks? Instead, I’ll probably recycle those grounds tomorrow morning and see if I can squeeze an extra day of flavor (and joyful caffeine) from them.<\/p>\n

I’ll also put $7.99 into my penance kitty to donate to the Arizona Community Action\u00a0Association<\/a> at the end of my ordeal.<\/p>\n

Coffee is food. Who knew?<\/p>\n

After the sweet caffeine\u00a0rebooted my brains, I refocused my intentions on\u00a0wheat toast with a tablespoon of extra-crunchy peanut butter and a glass of 2% milk for breakfast at 6:45. That lasted until 11:25 when I heated up my tasty, homemade black bean soup:<\/p>\n

1-pound of black beans, soaked for six hours ($1.49)<\/p>\n

14 ounces of chopped\u00a0tomatoes ($0.75)<\/p>\n

1 can of sweet corn ($0.79)<\/p>\n

6 chopped tabasco peppers (FREE – grown in my own backyard)<\/p>\n

6 cloves of garlic (I count garlic\u00a0as a staple-seasoning, but I can also throw 50 cents into the kitty if others disagree)<\/p>\n

6 cups of water<\/p>\n

salt \/ pepper<\/p>\n

Cooked overnight on high in my crockpot. I divided it into six containers. (SCORE!)<\/p>\n

My first serving was delicious… and lasted until 2 PM when my stomach started growling (I KNEW<\/strong> I should have served it over rice!)…\u00a0I ate one of my three bananas… which lasted until 3:06 when I poached one of my boss’s apples… which lasted until 4:20 when I filched a snack-bag of Goldfish from the office pantry. My stomach growled audibly.<\/p>\n

As with coffee, I hadn’t thought much about snacking, and I usually\u00a0have a handful of nuts to get me through the afternoon and get me ready for my post-work workout. Not this week. A sack of almonds would eat up about a third of my weekly budget. No thanks!<\/p>\n

“You gotta eat something. You’re cranky,” Patrick said, when I walked in the door.\u00a0“Cook your supper… I’m going to eat my chicken tenders.”<\/p>\n

(You cannot buy warm, pre-prepared foods with food stamps, so his chicken tenders smelled deliciously effortless. Because\u00a0he is not participating in the SNAP Challenge, Patrick\u00a0can spend $4.95 on a trio of tenders or $27 on a filet mignon if he wants, and he can eat it right in front of me… if he wants\u00a0to sleep on the couch).<\/p>\n

I chopped up three\u00a0russet potatoes; sprinkled them with fresh rosemary, salt and pepper; tossed them with a little bacon grease in a baking dish and popped in them in the oven on 400. I then pulled my cast-iron skillet from the cupboard, seasoned four\u00a0chicken thighs with cayenne, pepper, salt and parsley;\u00a0seared my bird-parts\u00a0(med-high, about 5 minutes per side) and eased that\u00a0in the oven (now at 350) with my\u00a0roasting potatoes then\u00a0waited for an interminable half-hour.\u00a0Total cook time was about 45 minutes).<\/p>\n

That was the best damn chicken I’ve had in a while… and I have three pieces left over for lunch and snacks the rest of the week, along with extra potatoes to go with my eggs for breakfast tomorrow!<\/p>\n

But sadly at breakfast, there will be no coffee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stumbled out of the gate on Opening Day of the Arizona SNAP Challenge.\u00a0At 5:02 AM, I trudged into the kitchen. Made the coffee. Drank the coffee. Realized the coffee was not in my $27 weekly food budget. Talk about your\u00a0 wake-up call: When I went shopping on Saturday at\u00a0my neighborhood Safeway, I thought only … Continue reading Oh, SNAP! Coffee is food<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}