$23 for 5 Days

brown beans + rice. Could live off that for a month for $5.50 lol

Guess the big question is what is the cheapest you could go and still remain healthy.

And all that is bs. My sister who has worked for 30 years went on disabilty because of health reasons her income on ss. she could never make it was getting 90.00per month when she got her cost of living this yeas first time in three years her food stamps went down to 16.00 per month

that's hard to believe. she only gets $16 a month for food?!

yes thats what it is 16.00 per month

that's a lot of ramen!

Read a post on another forum some months back about a guy who was able to do it for $1 a day. But it involved buying in bulk during sales, lots of beans and rice and main protein was whole chickens. If I can dig it up I'll xpost here.

sorry to hear about your sister majermark.

The "average" recipient receives $1,656.00 per year. I recognize majermark's sister receives a lower benefit due to social security provisions but I wonder if that means other recipients who did not put in 30 years of work receive more benefits.

The average recipient receives $138 per month.
For the year I am averaging $151.00 per month which is $91 under my budgeted amount.

I could easily cut down my budget to $138 per month if needed, especially if I were eating on someone else's dime and not my own. One person noted Beans and Rice. I make beans and rice and freeze it in 2 meal portions omitting the rice until I am ready to eat. I purchase nutritious Brown Rice in a 12 pound sack and store it in the refridgerator.

I also make a gallon or more of spaghetti sauce and freeze it in two cup containers and buy my spaghetti in bulk.

Breakfast is always inexpensive - nutritious cereal, skim milk and a piece of fruit.

You need to eliminate non nutritious snacks and soda's. The key is to find nutritious meals that can be spread out or stored. "NUTRITIOUS"

Hard boiled eggs, brown rice, refried beans, corn tortilla shells, oatmeal, Kimchi.... All cheap and nutritious. If you are in a rental or an apartment look for ways to grow a garden with seeds to cut down on vegetable costs.

No such things in my house as bottled water unless we have company and if I were on food stamps I don't think entertaining is prudent.

Even with my budget I still enjoy many "extravagances." Linguini with clam sauce, smoked salmon, steak... Premium ice cream when I can't fight the urge but these are treats and enjoyed more because they are not consumed every day. I do not buy chips, soda, Twinkies, or Ho Ho’s. My cookie snack consists of cheap graham crackers with peanut butter frozen. (taste like Nutter Butters – honest)

So yes, it can be done.

Sorry - I just checked my report and had not entered April in yet. The second paragraph should read:

The average recipient receives $138 per month.
For the year I am averaging $212.00 per month (Not $151 as stated above)

and again... I still enjoy the occasional extravagent meals.

Danneskjold: you mention growing stuff at home even in an apartment. Anything specific? I've been looking for a good while for seeds for sprouts but no dice, and they can be a little pricey in the store.

If you have space Tomatoes are a great thing to grow to save money, they yield a ton.

Plus once a year I buy a bushel or two to can and that last me all year.

Anyone see how obese many of these "poor" are? I recall the Blade story about the woman with the 16 year old son at the food bank. She estimated the kid's weight at 230 as I recall (she was whining about how hard it was to feed her kids).

I saw a report on 13abc a week or so ago about the Toledo Food Bank. Can't remember what it was about, probably a plea for donations. However, they made the mistake of interviewing the Food Bank employee in front of a shelf full of Easter candy. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there were probably 200 bags of Cadbury mini eggs on one shelf, and another shelf above it with that many Reese's minis. If you're going to be asking for donations, maybe have the good sense to show the healthy food you supply to the "poor"... not the junk.

Or show empty shelves.

If I really had to, I could do it.

I've had good luck in the past reducing my food budget by preparing large quantities and freezing portions, and during the summer my father has a bountiful garden that he's always pushing extra vegetables my way.

(Could also grow my own, of course, but right now I get so much extra from my father that I haven't bothered.)

It would take a lot of planning, preparation, and work, but if it came down to it I could make it happen.

Helps that I grew up in a rural community during a time where people still canned and froze items to last the whole year.

Although I don't live that way now, if push came to shove, I could use some of the tips I learned as a kid.

Son of a farmer/canner and as a single person with a garden in the 90's early 00's I lived on 25-30 dollars a week of store bought foods (mostly meats and dairy). I used to cook a weeks worth of meals on Sunday and eat leftovers most of the week. A 5 dollar little sleazers pizza would be like 4 meals!

Don't know if I could do it with today's cost of groceries.

I do not envy those that have to rely on foodstamps to feed their family. As far as the comment about the obese boy - healthy foods - fruits and veggies can be expensive. The money stretches farther if you load up on processed foods. processed foods tend to pack on the pounds.

For gardening in small spaces, like apartments, this site is super awesome...

http://www.yougrowgirl.com/

"You Grow Girl was launched in February 2000, as a community for gardeners not unlike myself; people who want to grow but whose garden space is less than ideal. And for those of us with shallow pockets but a big, crazy love for tending plants and making a meal from homegrown fare, wherever home may be."

INeedCoffee, are you looking for seeds to plant in dirt, or seeds to sprout and eat (such as alfalfa sprouts, etc.) ?

There are cheaper (dirt) seeds at Titgemeier's Hardware -- a fun place to shop for any reason -- and Ben Sell's Greenhouse used to have a rack of bagged seeds in very small quantities, hence lower prices.

For sprouting in a jar, I would do some research online and find out how many different things can be sprouted -- it seems like there are easily 3 dozen "vegetables" we could be eating, beyond bean sprouts. Then look around at the small ethnic groceries around town, Middle Eastern and Asian. They usually sell the beans and seeds for cooking -- but you can sprout them, and they're much cheaper.

Get in touch with ToledoGROWS and the botanical garden volunteers and put next year's Seed Swap on your calendar. One visit there, and you'll have free seeds for a lifetime. Don't forget the Plant Exchange this Saturday at the Original Sub Shop -- they give you tickets on the way in, and you "spend" the tickets on plants. But many groups are there to give away vegetable plants and you don't have to have anything to swap.

I could probably mail you some free seeds if I knew what you want to grow!

My 81 year old mother in law lives on her widows portion of her late husbands social security.
She was told she qualified for $17 dollars a month in food stamps.

Food stamps aren't supposed to be any more than a supplement are they?

I think it depends on dependants, the more kids you have the amount of food stamps increases a lot I think.

Lincrosser - you are correct. And that's why we need welfare reform. All this does is give these babymammas more incentive to keep popping out kid after kid. Why go on birth control when you can eat like a king/queen?

Sensor that argument don't fly, its a just a talking point from the liberal reelect machine.

Not sure about that. Based on what I have read, He'd hang out and tell stories with his fishing buddies and have some dinner and some wine. You know, He could be in Point Place right now.

He lives in PP hes a member of the PPAA, he hangs out at the Mayfly and picks up bottles in Cullen Park.

The Bible tells us that "if you don't work, you don't eat".

It is just that simple.

I was at the Krogers tonight on Glendale. For sh*ts and grins I priced dry navy beans and rice. A bag w/24 (!) servings of navy beans costs $2.74. A 2 lb. bag of brown rice was $3.15.

Using this as a base (and remembering that you can stock up on these and will be receiving another $23 in 5 days), I would postulate that one could live well and eat healthy for $23 every 5 days.

Why couldn't a person buy a chicken or two for fresh eggs, grow tomatoes and peppers, buy a ham and use the bone for soup and the drippings for flavoring and shortening?

We are soft..my dad was an executive when I was a kid and we still ate like this.

If you go to pretty much any asian store you can get a 25lb sack of rice for around $10-15 that last a loooong time :)

Yes, you can do this it all depends on WHERE you shop and WHAT you buy. I use to feed our family of 4 for undr $100 every 2 weeks.

Shop at Aldi's be amazed at the savings...

Shop at Aldi's be amazed at the savings...

Here here! Love Aldi. I don't know how you did a family of four for under $100/2weeks (a LOT of rice or pasta?), but my wife and I have shopped Aldi for years...and eat like royalty for about $200-250 a month for the two of us. Imagine what we could do if we were really pinching pennies....