Lent on $2.50 a day

My friend Irene Groot decided to try the Lenten Experiment this year. "I recently sent off a couple of hundred dollars to a local soup kitchen," she e-mailed me this morning. "That's the money I saved taking up your challenge."

Irene lives in a pricey Northern California city, so it couldn't have been easy. "Actually, I'd heard a local reporter trying to survive on $4.00/day so I figured that was the California rate," she wrote. "What I found was that I kept my husband and myself well fed on fresh, wholesome, well-balanced meals for $2.50 - $3.00/person/day. I'd say the figure was closer to $2.50."

How did she do it?

The key to this was watching the grocery ads for three supermarkets not too far from our house. I generally used only two in any given week. Here are the sort of items I am buying on a regular basis on sale:

• Fuji apples $0.33/lb, oranges $0.33/lb, bananas $0.47/lb (all excellent quality)
• Ground beef $1.68/lb, chicken thigh + leg $0.47/lb, all other meats in the low $2.00/lb range
• Cabbage $0.33/lb
• Tuna $0.44 and I stocked up
• Cake and brownie mixes (Betty Crocker) were $0.69 and I stocked up
• Whole grain breads are regularly on sale for $1.69 - $2.50. I've snagged excellent fresh French bread for $0.99.
• Eggs go from $0.99 -$1.50.
• 10 lb. of potatoes for $0.99.
• Sliced American Cheese, 1pkg $0.99

Any other secrets, Irene?

Buy the major food groups on sale, and then figure out what recipe to use. If you go to the store with a recipe, I can't see how you could keep the prices as low as I did. Also, make soup from leftovers. Waste not, want not. It's been an interesting experiment.

Irene told me that she didn't use coupons or giant discounters like Wal-Mart or Costco. She just went to the stores closest to her home.

Irene and I did the Lenten Experiment to see if we could survive on a food-stamp budget. An increasing number of Americans have no choice.

The USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - the program that administers what used to be called food stamps - helped to feed some 27.6 million people in December 2007. That number rose to 31.8 million a year later, and last December it soared to nearly 39 million (you can see the figures here).

Feeding America, a network of over 200 food banks, now serves one million more people each week than it did in 2006, according to their "Hunger Report 2010." They estimate that "one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America for food and groceries." And it doesn't look as if the recession is going to end anytime soon.

Thanks, Irene, for good ideas on how to save money at the grocery store - and on what to do with the money saved.

P.S. Irene e-mailed me after reading this post and looking at the illustration (an ad I pulled off a Safeway web page): "I didn't buy the $0.75 items. Too pricey. I'm watching for better deals and stocking up."

Good-bye, Daddy

Fifteen years ago next week, on my mother's 85th birthday and exactly one week before Ash Wednesday, my father died.

Some months later I wrote a short memoir about my parents, death, dying, and faith. I say I wrote it, but at the time it felt like I tore it out of my chest. It is the most real thing I have ever written. U.S. Catholic magazine published it for Ash Wednesday 1996. Today, the day before Ash Wednesday 2010, I share it with you.

To dust you will return

From U.S. Catholic (March 1996), pp. 34-36, © 1996 LaVonne Neff

The deacon dipped his thumb in the ashes and marked my forehead with a cross. It was Ash Wednesday 1995, and I was having no trouble remembering my mortality. Less than 24 hours earlier, I had buried my father.

Nine or ten years ago, my father began showing signs of forgetfulness. Nothing serious, I thought. I have trouble remembering things myself.

A year or two passed, and his memory lapses became more noticeable. “I may have already mentioned this,” he would say, and I would cringe, knowing he was about to embark on a story he had just finished telling five minutes ago. Maybe he needs his thyroid checked, I said to myself.

In 1989, when my parents were 79, my husband and I flew 2,000 miles to help them close up their condominium and move into a retirement apartment. My father met us at the airport. He could not remember where he had left the car, and on the way home he got lost three times. As we packed and moved their things, we continually ran across small portents: a comb neatly tucked in a shoe, a pan lid on the bookshelf. In the pantry, next to 17 jars of Metamucil, were 37 bottles of hand lotion. And everywhere were reminder notes scrawled in my father’s hand: “Harold phoned.” “Go shopping.” “The bread is in the refrigerator.”

African Lent

Here’s an idea for Lent that will do more good than giving up desserts: Read a book about contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. It's not a penance, though it can hurt. And seeing how much of the rest of the world lives sure does put a lot of my minor irritations and even major problems in perspective.

Consider a novel or memoir by an African, such as

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Nigeria)
Athol Fugard, Tsotsi (South Africa)
Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone (Sierra Leone)
Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (Zimbabwe)

Or read a journalist's first-person account, like

Dave Eggers, What Is the What (Sudan)
Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains (Burundi)
Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun (post-colonial Africa)
Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families (Rwanda)

If you'd rather watch a movie, try one of these:

The Devil Came On Horseback (Sudan)
Tsotsi (South Africa)
War Dance (Uganda)
Hotel Rwanda (Rwanda)

+  +  +

Folks who live near Wheaton, IL, can kick off their African Lent next Saturday, February 20, 2010, by coming to A Night of Hope and Music, the fifth annual benefit concert by Chicago-area professional musicians in support of a medical clinic in Renk, Sudan. Previous concerts have provided the clinic with lab equipment, medicines, and a midwife's salary.

Date: Saturday, February 20, 2010

Time: 7:00pm - 9:30pm

Location: Barrows Auditorium, Wheaton College, 501 College Avenue, Wheaton, IL

Suggested donation: $20
Special guests: The Lost Boys of Sudan (singers and dancers)

For more information, see this Facebook page.

The Lenten Experiment Blog

In January of 2009 Mr Neff and I began a Lenten experiment. We wanted to see if we could eat adequate amounts of tasty and nutritious food on a food-stamp budget. We also wanted to see what we might learn from the attempt. I recorded the experiment in fifty almost-daily posts here on Lively Dust. Trouble is, it's awkward for anyone to go back and read them, because blogs always put newest posts first.

To make them available to Lively Dust readers in a more accessible format, I set up a new blog, The Lenten Experiment, and arranged the posts in chronological order from "1. Please advise us on our Lenten plans," written several weeks before Ash Wednesday, to "50. The Lenten Experiment: Analysis," written the week after Easter. In between are dozens of posts with recipes, menu plans, money-saving ideas, and cheap wine recommendations.

Ash Wednesday is less than a week away. Maybe after this year of continuing economic recession, Congressional stalemates, a monster earthquake, and paralyzing snowstorms, we don't need a spiritual discipline to remind us that we are dust and ashes. On the other hand, maybe the simple act of trimming our food expenses for 40 days would help those of us in affluent countries to be grateful for what we still have, and mindful of the needs of others.

The Lenten Experiment: final grocery bills

We did it!

The only shopping I'm going to do tomorrow will be a couple of items for Easter Sunday, and I've decided that doesn't count--it's a celebration and should not be part of the Lenten Experiment.

So, here's the bottom line for 5 1/2 weeks--39 days--from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday (tomorrow). Lent, of course, is a week longer than that, but we took a week off in March to celebrate our anniversary and visit our kids and grandkids.

Our aim: to spend an average of $11/day for the two of us and any guests we might have during Lent, which is roughly what the US Department of Agriculture thinks a thrifty older couple needs for a healthy diet (thrifty: $11.17; low cost: $14.36; moderate cost: $17.69; liberal: $21.23).

We had company three times during Lent and were company three times. We attended two soup suppers and provided all the bread for one of them. I believe I ate in a restaurant twice and Mr Neff did once. Maybe I've forgotten something, but that's what our records show. And we were maniacal about recording grocery purchases.

Our results: Counting only groceries, we spent an average of $9.39/day. (Compare with the $12.00/day we spent during the month before Lent, when we were already tightening our belts but not quite as seriously.) Counting groceries plus restaurant meals, our daily average during Lent was $10.02 (two of those restaurants were really cheap).

I hadn't planned to include wine in the calculations, since wine is an extra that is neither covered by food stamps nor included in the USDA's figures. Also, I didn't keep track of how much we drank during Lent (it wasn't much), and my wine purchases are mostly undrunk or given away. But just to find out how wine might affect the total, I added the amount we spent on Chianti and Dolcetto at Caputo's Cheese Shop March 7--$43.53 for seven bottles--and am hoping that's somewhat accurate. If so, counting groceries plus restaurant meals plus wine, our daily average was $11.13.

Next week I may analyze the Lenten Experiment a bit. What exactly did we eat? What did we miss? What did we learn? What will we be eating as soon as it's over? But for now, just one observation: The Lenten Experiment was really easy. If you want to do an experiment worth blogging about, try keeping an Orthodox Lent. Here are the rules, which the web site says are "not widely known or followed in our day." I can see why.

The Lenten Fast

Great Lent is the longest and strictest fasting season of the year.

Week before Lent ("Cheesefare Week"): Meat and other animal products are prohibited, but eggs and dairy products are permitted, even on Wednesday and Friday.

First Week of Lent: Only two full meals are eaten during the first five days, on Wednesday and Friday after the Presanctified Liturgy. Nothing is eaten from Monday morning until Wednesday evening, the longest time without food in the Church year. (Few laymen keep these rules in their fullness). For the Wednesday and Friday meals, as for all weekdays in Lent, meat and animal products, fish, dairy products, wine and oil are avoided. On Saturday of the first week, the usual rule for Lenten Saturdays begins (see below).

Weekdays in the Second through Sixth Weeks: The strict fasting rule is kept every day: avoidance of meat, meat products, fish, eggs, dairy, wine and oil.

Saturdays and Sundays in the Second through Sixth Weeks: Wine and oil are permitted; otherwise the strict fasting rule is kept.

Holy Week: The Thursday evening meal is ideally the last meal taken until Pascha. At this meal, wine and oil are permitted. The Fast of Great and Holy Friday is the strictest fast day of the year: even those who have not kept a strict Lenten fast are strongly urged not to eat on this day. After St. Basil's Liturgy on Holy Saturday, a little wine and fruit may be taken for sustenance. The fast is sometimes broken on Saturday night after Resurrection Matins, or, at the latest, after the Divine Liturgy on Pascha.

Wine and oil are permitted on several feast days if they fall on a weekday during Lent. Consult your parish calendar. On Annunciation and Palm Sunday, fish is also permitted.

Ash Wednesday: The Lenten Experiment begins

Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

My plan

• Get up at 5.45 for 6.30 Mass with imposition of ashes.
• Come home, eat a light breakfast, and spend some time online with the Days of Deepening Friendship Lenten retreat by Vinita Hampton Wright.
• Spend the rest of the morning attending an ongoing church history class at St. Michael parish.
• Eat a light lunch (at my age I am not required to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as younger people are, and I figured I'd function better if fueled).
• Try to stay calm and pleasant while explaining to a furnace repair company that they ripped me off last weekend and should really do something about it.
• Blog. Include a Lenten reading or two from Scripture, reflect on my experience so far, log our daily bread.
  
• Eat a light supper.
• Read.

Reality

• Got up at 3.00 with a serious headache. Showered, washed hair, ate a few bites of yogurt and flax seed, lost same repeatedly.
• Though unaware that one of today's readings has to do with fasting, weeping, and mourning (Joel 2.12), did all three continuously for about five hours as headache went from bad to evil.
  
• Spent rest of morning and early afternoon first at Danada Convenient Care and then at the ER at CDH. Noticed at one point that the piped-in music was "Rescue Me." Concurred.
• After two doctors and several nurses examined me and I had a CBC, a CT scan, two anti-nausea drugs and two powerful narcotics, I no longer felt pain. I suspected, however, that I was living in a different galaxy.
• CBC and CT scan were both normal. Was released mid afternoon with a diagnosis of "nonspecific headache: Your exam shows your headache does not have any specific cause."
  
• Ate a light breakfast, drank tea, went to bed.

Reflection
Mr Neff, aka Saint David, spent the day with and for me, driving me from place to place, answering medical and financial questions, picking up prescriptions, and just being here. On this Ash Wednesday we both felt very deeply that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

I am in love with that man.

Am hoping to be lively dust tomorrow. Notice I said hoping, not planning. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Matthew 4.7).

-----------------
Daily bread
Breakfast--let's not go there.
Lunch--oatmeal, flaxseed, honey, plain yogurt, a few blueberries, tea with milk and honey
Dinner--Mr Neff is at a banquet (CTI has never figured out the liturgical calendar). I'm thinking a small bowl of oat squares and maybe some whole wheat bread with almond butter and applesauce. More tea.

The frugal couple considers wine, part 1

Ash Wednesday--the day we're going to start our Lenten Experiment of eating on a food-stamp budget--is less than two weeks away, and every trip to a grocery store has become a consciousness-raising experience.

If I really had only $12 a day to spend on food for two adults, would I have spent $3.49 on four small avocados? $2.99 for a box of blackberries? $2.49 for a bag of wild arugula? $3.49 for two organic zucchini?

Well, maybe. It would probably depend on what else was on the menu. The large russet potato for $1.17 wasn't bad. The $0.30 sweet potato was a steal. The pound of dried lentils cost only $1.15, and it lasted much longer than I expected--or even wanted.

Wine, however--even cheap(ish) wine--suddenly looks like a major budgetary commitment. A bottle of wine contains about five servings, so let's say our frugal couple is following AMA guidelines and making a bottle last two days. Total food budget for two people for two days: $24. Cost of La Loggia Barbera d'Alba at Trader Joe's (quite nice), $6.99: 29% of food budget. Oh dear.

Food stamps can't be used for alcohol, of course, so our frugal couple would have to buy wine out of the rest of their income. So let's see how much income they'd be able to spend if they qualified for the full food-stamp benefit in Illinois--which, by the way, is only $323 a month, or $11 a day, not the generous $12 a day we're allowing for this experiment (because the USDA thinks the frugal couple actually need more than $323 a month to eat healthfully).

Using this calculator, I described the pair as elderly (which, according to the government, means 60 or older--never mind that this hypothetical couple is still too young for Medicare), with a monthly rent of $500, taxes and insurance of $100, and medical expenses of $50.

In order to receive the full $323 benefit, the most our frugal couple can earn is $698 a month. Before taxes.

Do the math: after the listed expenses, the frugal couple has $48 to spend on transportation, clothing, utilities not included in the rent, telephone, household furnishings, supplementary food...

Looks like there's no three-buck Chuck for them. Not even on Valentine's Day.

I'm glad it isn't Ash Wednesday yet for us. I'm sad to think that it's always Ash Wednesday for so many people.
--------------------------
World Hunger Map (U.N. World Food Programme)
Hunger in the United States (Bread for the World)

Canned food from Target

Thanks to all of you who have responded to the post about Lenten plans. Several have sent recipes for cheap, tasty, nutritious food, and with your permission I'll post some of these.

Now that I'm thinking about the Lenten Poverty Experiment, grocery shopping is turning into a challenging brain exercise. Monday, while at Target, I decided to pick up some canned goods to take to the People's Resource Center. I spent $19.21--about 25% of the weekly food allotment for two (I had no idea how expensive fruit is!)--and here's what I bought:

• Progresso chicken gumbo soup (on sale), 2 cans, 8 servings, 28 grams of protein
• Diced tomatoes, 2 cans, 7 servings, 7 grams of protein
• Corn, 2 cans, 7 servings, 14 grams of protein
• Green beans, 2 cans, 7 servings
• Chili beans, 2 cans, 7 servings, 56 grams of protein
• Applesauce, 12 lunch-sized portions
• Sliced peaches, 2 cans, 7 servings
• Pear halves, 2 cans, 6 servings
• Pineapple, 2 cans, 9 servings
  

If I were buying this for myself and my husband, I'd have just bought

• about a day's worth of protein
• about a day's worth of grains (corn)
• enough fruits and veggies for four or five days (but nothing fresh!)

Still to buy for the week, and $57.79 to buy it with:

• milk, yogurt, cheese
  
• breakfast foods, bread
  
• meat, beans, eggs
• more vegetables
  

Looks like a week like this could be balanced, but not very tasty. Fortunately I'm still in the planning stages. My bag full of canned goods goes to the food pantry this afternoon, and I hope it will supplement someone's food stamps so they can buy fresh vegetables and fruits, meat, and good brown bread. Nobody should have to live on canned vegetables.

Please advise us on our Lenten plans

The good news: I'm old enough now that not even the Catholic church requires me to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (scroll to Canon 1252).

But I want to do something meaningful for Lent, and I'd like it to be more significant than just giving up something (sugar? wine? whining?) or adding something (daily Mass? optimistic blog posts?).

So here's my idea. I think I'd like to try limiting our food budget to the amount we'd get if we got the maximum amount of food stamps in Illinois. For a family of two, that would be $323 a month, or about $74 a week.

Mr Neff suggests that we be more generous and allow ourselves the amount the USDA thinks is sufficient for a couple aged 51 - 70. The most recent figures (November 2008) suggest $79.80. So say we split the difference and make it $77 a week, or $11 a day.

This would cover home-cooked food only--no other grocery store purchases like detergent, no restaurant meals, no alcoholic beverages. Which is not to say we couldn't buy those things, though it would seem like cheating to say we were getting by on $75 - $80 a week if we were actually eating half of our meals downtown.

So, how hard could this be? Well, that means maybe $1.25 for breakfast, $1.25 for lunch, and $3.00 for dinner for each of us. Lots of dried beans, onions, potatoes. Not a whole lot of goat cheese and arugula.

Do we want to do this? If we do, will our diet be balanced and our meals tasty? Can we invite friends over? Would you consider doing it with us? (Then we could get together for amazing potlucks...)

Books and films that break your heart

I don't much like little books of canned devotions, whether topical, annual, or penitential (never mind that I've written several). Novels and journalistic accounts and films are often a better way of reminding myself that I am dust and ashes. Here are some engrossing, heartbreaking accounts from places where hunger and death are part of everyone's daily experience. All are current and available from Amazon.

Novels
Dave Eggers, What Is the What (Sudan)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Nigeria: Biafra)
Athol Fugard, Tsotsi (South Africa)
Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Afghanistan)

Nonfiction
Greg Mortenson/David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea (Pakistan)
Ǻsne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul (Afghanistan)
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains (Haiti)

DVDs
God Grew Tired of Us (Sudan)
The Devil Came On Horseback (Sudan)
Tsotsi (South Africa)

Give up carbon for Lent

Here's an idea that could do more good than fish on Fridays (though as a fish lover, I suggest fish not only on Fridays but on Wednesdays and Mondays as well)--Reduce your carbon intake for the next forty days.

This suggestion from two Church of England bishops is reported by Tearfund, a UK charity that fights global poverty on many fronts. The article includes several practical suggestions, including "snubbing plastic bags."














Merriam-Webster Online defines snub thus: "to check or stop with a cutting retort" or "to treat with contempt or neglect." Have the good bishops gone too far? Do we have to snub the bags? Will it be OK if we just politely refuse them?

Ash Wednesday

Reality
You are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

Genesis 3:19

Compassion
As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
For he knows how we were made;
he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:13-14

Gospel
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

1 Corinthians 15:47-49