Our final cost was $38.91 or $19.45 per person, well under $21.

Here’s what we used up completely: canned corn, canned peas, canned tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, spaghetti sauce, black beans, lentils, baby limas, 3 packages Mac & Cheese, 18 eggs, 3 packages of yeast, cheddar cheese, 8 tortillas, frozen collards, 5 lbs. flour (the amount remaining is not enough to make anything) and 2 lbs. of carrots.

We actually used more cheese than I bought, but we buy the store brand cheddar anyway, so I just used some I had previously purchased. The cost per ounce is the same. I bought more margarine, but at a lower cost of $0.89, and I didn’t average that in since I didn’t think it would matter. We have 1/4 lb. of that remaining, but we definitely used up the initial margarine.

What’s remaining: about 8 oz. vegetable oil, pancake syrup (almost none used — I never made pancakes), grape jelly (not a lot, but enough to make a sandwich or two), 8 oz. spaghetti, most of all of the spices, most of the salt, all the ramen, 1/2 an onion, 2 stalks of celery, 24 tea bags, 8 oz. pink beans, oatmeal, peanut butter (also not a lot, but enough to make a sandwich or maybe two), about 6 oz. of rice (3 c. dry), soy sauce, dry milk, corn meal, baking powder, sugar, frozen kale, frozen green beans and 1/4 lb. margarine.

The highest cost item was cheddar cheese at $3.85. After that, the 5 lbs. of potatoes at $2.99 then the eggs at $1.79 and then the yeast at $1.67. I think the best bargain was probably the three boxes of macaroni and cheese for $1.00.

While I certainly would not want to do this all the time, it is very much doable. It got a little old eating at home all the time — we usually eat out way too much. Certainly, virtually all the meals were tasty. The spaghetti sauce was awful and the corn fritters weren’t worth it based on the ingredients used. The dry milk was awful in stuff that wasn’t cooked. In mac & cheese, baked goods and oatmeal, it was fine. A small amount of fluid milk (for tea) would be nice. A pint would last the whole week. I was quite happy with everything else.

Here’s where the calories came from (on average) for the week:

The feds recommend 25-30g of fiber, so we’re doing well there. The Merck manual says that “Adults need to eat about 60 grams of protein per day (0.8 grams per kilogram of weight or 10 to 15% of total calories).”, so we’re in good shape there too. The general guidelines are 30% fat and 50% carbohydrate, so we are in range there as well.

Here’s the nutritional breakdown:

Except for B-12, we’re exceeding needs for B vitamins. There’s plenty of A and E as well as Iron, Calcium, Selenium, Phosphorus and Magnesium.

This diet is short on B-12, but this is a known issue with vegetarian diets. If we were going to continue to eat this way, I’d invest in a bag of nutritional yeast and add it to soups and stews. I actually already have that in the pantry, but we didn’t purchase it on the plan. Tino normally eats more cheese than we were eating this week, and I normally eat some meat, so ordinarily, we have it covered.

According to Fitday.com, it’s short on Zinc, but the Vegetarian Society claims the RDA has been changed to 7mg for women and 9.5mg for men, so we’re closer to 91% for Tino and we’re over for me.

It’s also short on Vitamin C, and if I had known that beforehand, I might have budgeted for some frozen orange juice from concentrate and left something else off.

If we’d eaten the other box of frozen greens we purchased, it would not be short on Vitamin K. Dark green vegetables have huge amounts of Vitamin K, so if they are consumed a few times a week, you are all set for K. this was not a matter of cost, in any case. I just didn’t work them in.

Vitamin D is synthesized from solar exposure, so a dietary shortage is not a big deal, especially in the non-winter seasons.

Almost all the food was prepared from scratch, so with the exception of the margarine, spaghetti sauce and mac & cheese mix, the ingredients are natural and free of additives. I suspect that this diet is much healthier than that eaten by the majority of Americans. I can’t help but think that the grocery lists of the elected officials taking the Food Stamp Challenge make them look like idiots.

There’s a letter in today’s Washington Post about the Food Stamp Diet. It’s from a Quaker who eats well on $3.57 a day. It concludes:

Let it be said that I completely agree with McGovern that “it’s immoral that in the U.S., the richest country in the world, people are hungry.” However, with all due respect to these elected officials, I would vigorously challenge the nutritional wisdom and fiscal prudence of their shopping lists.

Which is really at the heart of this, isn’t it? It’s perfectly possible to feed yourself a healthy diet on $21 a week (or $35 a week, which is what the food stamp program actually pays out if you have no other resources). On $21 a week, you can’t afford Twinkies, or eating out. But there’s no chance of going hungry if you know how to spend the money.

You do need to know how to spend the money wisely, though. You need to know how to cook: how to soak dried beans, and how to make inexpensive staples into something tasty. How to plan ahead. How to improvise. Most poor people by definition aren’t very good at planning ahead or at improvising: this is why they’re poor.

Should we take that into account, though? Should we demand absolutely no personal responsibility or contribution from poor people? Given that it’s perfectly possible to feed yourself on $21 a week, the Congressional Food Stamp Diet stunt would seem to be making that argument.

The trouble with that argument, though, is that it’s hard to know where to stop. Poor people don’t know how to elect decent school boards; they don’t know how to make repairs to their houses and to keep their neighborhoods safe and pleasant; they don’t know how to settle disputes amicably; they don’t know how to manage what little money they have; and so on.

Should we subsidize away the effects of all of their bad decisions? When I make a bad decision, I suffer the consequences. I don’t make many really bad decisions, though, so I’m not poor. I apparently contribute quite a bit to society, because I’ve been paid lots of money for my efforts. Should my success and my ability to make good choices mean that I’m forced to subsidize others’ bad decisions, and further to be forced to do so in a way that’s only going to tend to perpetuate their dependence on government largesse?

I don’t think that there’s any need for anyone to go hungry in a society as rich as ours. But I also don’t think that we should pretend that poor people are simply middle-class people without money. As this week’s experiment has shown, if anyone is going hungry on food stamps, it’s not because they’re not getting a big enough subsidy; it’s because they don’t have the knowledge and skills to apply that subsidy to maximum effect.

We had exactly the same breakfast as yesterday:

Breakfast - Breakfast Burrito, Home Fries and Oatmeal w/ a Pot of Tea

2 eggs
2 potatoes
2 tortillas
1 T. Margarine to cook eggs
3 T. oil for potatoes
pot of tea
1 1/4 c. milk for oatmeal and tea
1 c. dry oatmeal
4 T. sugar
1 oz. cheddar cheese

Total Cost: $1.505
Per Person: $.0752

For lunch, we repeated the Mac & Cheese and PB&J Meal:

Total Cost: $1.264 Per Person: $0.632

For dinner we had a new meal.

Bean Burrito & Red Rice

8 oz. pink beans
cumin, garlic powder, chili powder
2 oz cheddar cheese
2 tortillas
1 c. rice, dry
c. tomatoes

Total Cost: $1.543
Per Person: $0.772

I did not need to make tea. I also made a batch of cookies. Snickerdoodles have the advantage of not requiring any vanilla, which I did not purchase for the plan we’re following.

Snickerdoodles (3 dozen)

1/2 c. margarine
3/4 c. sugar
1 medium egg
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 2/3 c. flour
2 T. white sugar
1 1/2 t. cinnamon

Total Cost $0.729

This brings us to $5.04 for today or $2.52 per person, including cookies! The total so far based on unit costs is $33.66 for two of us, but I don’t really trust this method not to accumulate measurement errors. I will write a concluding entry settling up the final costs.

It’s taking me longer to mark up all the costs than to make the food! The components are generally repeats anyway, so I’m going to truncate today a bit. I had completely forgotten about the tortillas until today when I realized we didn’t have any bread.

Breakfast - Breakfast Burrito, Home Fries and Oatmeal w/ a Pot of Tea

2 eggs
2 potatoes
2 tortillas
1 T. Margarine to cook eggs
3 T. oil for potatoes
pot of tea
1 1/4 c. milk for oatmeal and tea
1 c. dry oatmeal
4 T. sugar
1 oz. cheddar cheese

Total Cost: $1.505
Per Person: $.0752

Lunch was leftovers from the Butter Bean meal, and we still have not finished all the beans. I’ll take all the cost on here anyway.

5 oz. frozen collards
1/2 batch corn fritters
1/2 batch butter beans
pitcher of tea
1 T. margarine for fritters
1 oz. syrup
1 T. jelly

Total Cost: $1.371
Per Serving: $0.685

Dinner was Lentil Chili, which we have had before. I made Quesadillas to go with it, and those were new. This time, we have a whole serving of lentil chili left, and I’m sure that will get eaten, but I’ll take the cost on here anyway. We still had tea from lunch.

Lentil Chili
2 tortillas
3 oz cheddar cheese

Total Cost: $1.888
Per Serving: $0.944

The cost for Day 6 was $4.541 for a per person cost of $2.38. I will make an accounting of what’s missing tomorrow to come up with the total cost for the week. I’m sure adding up all the bits will turn out to be off.

So I like the Levenger catalog. I don’t actually buy much from it, because most of the things are either too twee, or they’re meant for people whose work is radically different from mine. I like the idea of most of the things, though, because I like office supplies.

There are a lot of notebooks and folios and briefcases and desktop hutches and so forth. They’re all very nice, and I have to admit that I’m tempted. The problem is that pretty much all of this is aimed at someone who doesn’t use a computer very intensively. Which means: it’s not really aimed at Tino.

I can’t put one of their cubbyhole hutches on my desk because there’s a giant monitor on it. I can’t use their briefcases because those are really aimed at someone who carries a lot of paper and, incidentally, a computer, rather than someone who carries a lot of computer and incidentally some paper.

The more geek-centric things that they do offer aren’t really up to my needs.

This thing is pretty neat, but it only really has room to charge four things; I need to charge six things.

This photo, though, makes me think that I might really not be a Levenger person:

This badly-photoshopped picture shows these twee notebooks laying on the center console of a Lexus. Problem #1, and something that I’d think the smart marketing people at Levenger would have caught. Levenger customers probably do overwhelmingly drive Lexi and S-class Mercedeses and so on, but they picture themselves driving the Austin-Healey 3000s and MGAs that sit in the garage 99% of the time because they’re so uncomfortable. You have to sell aspirations, not reality, and people who can afford $34 notebooks are not going to see a Lexus as an aspirational product.

This is why ads for things you want to get rich people to buy tend to include antique cars. Putting aside things like a $300,000 Bentley, most of the market for a $34 pocket notebook can afford whatever car they like. What they can’t as readily afford is the luxury of sitting on the side of the road, splicing burned wires using a pocketknife: this is the luxury of the vintage British Motoring Experience. They can afford to buy the Healey, but they cannot, in any practical sense, afford to drive the thing at all often. So you sell them on that: the people in the pictures should be wearing Barbour jackets, smiling maniacally, and if at all possible smoking pipes. “See how goddamned happy we are!” you should be able to imagine them saying, “Healeying around the countryside, smoking our pipes! You, too, could be like us, if you only bought the $34 notebook!”

Problem #2: automatic transmission. Good automatic transmissions are generally better than shifting it yourself these days, but the kind of people who buy special $34 notebooks that allow your to rearrange the pages at will are going to tend to be control freaks. Even if they do drive a car with an automatic transmission, they see themselves wearing a scarf and goggles and driving around in that Big Healey.

Problem #3, the real problem. It’s hard to see in this photo even at full size, but in the printed catalog it’s obvious. Written in the notebook is:

Music to download –
Norah Jones -
  Not Too Late
Dave Matthews Band -
  Smooth Rider

Now, I have nothing against Norah Jones; the only thing that bothers me about her inclusion here is that it’s a bit too facile. Levenger’s ideal customer is probably a big Norah Jones fan. He — most Levenger stuff seems aimed at men — thinks of himself as cultured, but as he’s too busy lawyering to pay much attention to music, he really can only listen to whatever the RIAA is pushing as Music For Educated White Adults right now.

But then: Dave Freakin’ Matthews. Our white male lawyer is an adult, so he listens to Norah Jones. But he still likes to kick back with some brewskis — this is how I imagine he’d think of it — on the weekend, so he also listens to Dave Matthews. And if the iTunes Music Store sample is anything to judge by, this is not one of Mr. Matthews’ better songs. Good God.

I mean: Good God. What. The. Fuck. ‘Music to download’??! Our $34-notebook buyer is making his $34 notes about — music to download? I really think that this photo must have been produced by an intern, or something. “Ah, yes, I’ll tootle about in my luxury Toyota, thinking about middle-of-the-road music I’ll download later.”

Idiocy. In the notebook you write “Rebuild carburettor” and “Arrange for hotel in Barcelona” and the like. “Music to download” my ass.

Elsewhere in the catalog that came in the mail today, they have another reminder card with “Music to download”. “Smooth Rider” makes another appearance, but Ms. Jones is replaced with “Daughtry — It’s Not Over”. A quick check shows that this Daughtry character is a former American Idol contestant.

Maybe I’m entirely wrong about Levenger’s demographic. Maybe it’s not for Tools who aspire to be Independent; maybe it’s for Schmucks who aspire to be Tools.

Let’s see: what else is in there? There’s this folio of to-do items written on color-coded cards:

Here are a couple of those cards, close up:

Idea! No — Concept! Line the interior of an L.L. Bean tote bag! You know — for kids! Christ. Thank God for that sketch; without it, all the nuance and detail would be lost: lost I say.

I love the repeated use of the word ‘business’ on this card: clearly, our Tool couldn’t infer anything about the to-do items themselves from the heading on the card. He might call this generic ’sushi restaurant’ — which in my mind is lit with fluorescent lights and fitted out with tables salvaged from an old Wendy’s — and make reservations for something else instead! And he might accidentally send his job candidate on a vacation! He might need that conceptual bag for his head, he’d be so embarrassed. It’s almost as if he has to keep reminding himself: Business, Jenkins, it’s all about business! Keep focused! Business!

Maybe I’ve got the whole idea wrong after all. This would explain why I don’t buy much from Levenger.

We repeated the egg breakfast and the vegetable fried rice today. I made a new recipe, which appears below.

Our total cost per person for today is $2.64. So far, we have used up $24.08 in food or $12.04 per person. The $21 a week plan allows for $15 so far per person or $30 total.

We’re pretty far under our goal, so I think I might make some cookies. We have ingredients for Snickerdoodles. Sadly, there are no chocolate chips, brown sugar or vanilla for chocolate chip cookies. The USDA Thrifty Plan for a family of four, which is designed to be done on the food stamp allotment, does include home made chocolate chip cookies.

Potato Soup Meal

Here’s the breakdown on the soup:

There was actually more than two servings. It was probably about two and a half, but that half can’t really be the basis for a meal, so though I saved it, I’m charging it here anyway.

We had one new meal today and repeated breakfast and lunch. There were slight differences, so I’m posting the costs again.

We added toast and cheese to the breakfast, and I made the oatmeal with part milk, so we used much more milk than usual.

I bumped up the cost of the sandwiches because the last loaf of bread was very soft and hard to cut. I only got 10 slices instead of 12 out of it, and this was the first meal we used it. Also, there wasn’t enough jelly on the sandwiches before, so we used more.

These were Hillbilly Housewife recipes. The butter beans I make at least once a month anyway. I had never made the corn fritters before, and while they weren’t bad, we didn’t like them. I suspect they need to be fried in a high-temp fat like bacon grease to be really good. The bacon grease would, of course, add a new taste to them too.

I love all manner of greens, but there’s no savings in buying them frozen — they are better out of a can. This was too big for us, so we’ll have the leftovers at some point.

We ran out of margarine, and I bought more for $0.89, which is actually less than I paid for the stuff I’ve used up. We are light some margarine somewhere in these tallies, so I’m adding $0.297 to the total cost for today to pick that up. Without it, our total cost is $1.86. The missing margarine brings it to $2.16. The total for the whole day, per person is $1.08. Our grand total is $18.42 or $9.41 per person for 4 days. At $21 per week per person, our goal up to this point would be $12 per person or $24 total.

When we’re done with this, I’ll do a reckoning for anything else that’s used up and not accounted for here.

Bean Soup and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

We used up the rest of the soup, splitting one bowl into 2 cups of soup. The sandwiches were quite substantial (and really tasty), so that worked out fine. Here are the costs:

Today’s breakfast is the same as Sunday’s except that I only used 3 eggs, and we didn’t use any jelly. The picture for Sunday will cover this. I only used 3 eggs because Tino really only eats one anyway, and I can live with fewer potatoes. Oh, and somehow, we used 1/3 c. of milk instead of a 1/4 c. in the tea. Anyway, the numbers are:

Spaghetti with Red Sauce and Garlic Bread Sticks

I won’t dignify the sauce by calling it Marinara. It was not good. It smelled like it would be, but Tino thought it had too much garlic, and I thought it tasted like the can. I’m putting the whole cost of it on this meal because, while I kept the leftover sauce, I have no plans to use it for The Plan.

We still had tea from lunch, so no pitcher of tea.

The costs for the Garlic Bread Sticks:

I made these earlier today because we had a complicated errand to run, and I would have to produce dinner in a very short time. They would have been much better if they had still been warm.

There was also a snack eaten:

This brings the total cost for Day 3 to $2.71. Our total for the experiment so far is $7.23 per person, and we had a goal of $9.

I ate one of the bananas on Saturday, pre-experiment. Tino ate one today, so I needed to replace them. We’ll be eating those tomorrow at breakfast. We bought these in Chantilly at Safeway, and they were $0.49 per pound (Highway robbery!) for a total of $0.42 for two bananas. So, they will be $0.21 instead of the $0.19 we’ve been using so far.