There are ways to do it, but knowing how to cook makes it so much more palatable. Years ago I did some vol. time with St. Patricks center, recovering addicts that had lived on the street were learning how to cook at a job center that had a restaurant serving lunch in DT STL Monday-Friday.
To stretch the limited allocation I suggested that they shared cooking duties, each making a meal for 4 a night. It's cheaper to make 4 portions of something then 4 different meals. You can combine resources, thats where the poor are at a loss. Generally smaller amounts cost more. There's more community and less isolation if you eat &/or cook together.
Most of the time transportation is an issue too.
Community Gardens are abundant here and accessing cheap seed too. And I'm sure if your meeting your neighbors one will have an overabundance of zucchini, cukes or tomatoes.
One of the grants I was periferly involved in had low income people canning....that is just not a reality, canning is in many cases more expensive.
A chef friend worked on Mother & Child with ACF and went to really LOW income homes and taught them how to cook with whatever ingredients they provided.
A couple of years ago I taught afterschool cooking classes to 3-4graders at an inner-city school 95% on free lunch....When I asked what they ate for dinner ramen was a standard response. I taught them to cook omelets, sweet potato muffins, quesadilla, tortilla pizzas, Thai peanut butter pasta...
fried rice....10 weeks.....I'd sit down and the girls would start braiding my hair or running their fingers through it, straight caucasion hair was new for them. It was a major compliment for them to feel that comfortable.
When we practiced making omelets many of these young small children ate all three of their practice omelets. It was a strong wakeup call for me, they never wasted food ever. And cheap protein as well as cheap bulk up food was on the table.
The nasty little grocery store in the neighborhood was expensive and many things were spoiled or out of date....the produce consisted of onions, cabbage, some mustard greens, red apples and yellow apples.
The low end chain grocery stores were much less exspensive, but then you'd have to get transportation.
We're now in the fourth generation that does not know how to cook. they can warm food but being able to cook with raw ingredients : flour, eggs, milk, salt, leavening, is scarce.
25 years ago I went to a conference at BYU and one of the speakers talked about gleanning......offering to pick fruit from a neighbor's tree in exchange for part of the harvest. How to access recent damaged container food, how to preserve food with natural energy or limited man made. Mormons have a higher number of children than the population at large so they have had to find ways to stretch food dollars.
One container of olive oil would wipe out one week's food stamp allowance, that's really sad when you think about it. |