On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America

by Christopher Greenslate

  I am using the term “pantry” in the sense of having a stock of staple foods that your family might consume. Pinto beans, rice, and flour are pretty common around our household, but foods that can be a base for several meals are the types of things to consider. In addition to the Home Depot buckets, we also had to rethink the way we stocked our cupboards. Instead of the boxes and cans that once filled our shelves, we now have several smaller bins with a variety of beans and grains that we use on a regular basis. There are still a few items that we buy prepackaged, like peanut butter and tofu, but we have cut back significantly, and it has made a discernible difference in how we eat and how much we spend. Now when we make our grocery lists, they often consist of fewer than ten items that we may have run out of, or a missing ingredient for a meal. In terms of healthy eating, this is helpful. I tend to be a grazer, and the way our cupboards are currently stocked, there are very few snacks, or “foodlike” products, that I can just grab and munch on. This takes away the opportunity to nibble on unhealthy food all day.

  As we traveled the aisles, we cruised past the end caps boasting that week’s sales on chips and sodas to the canned chiles that we needed. Christopher ran to grab a carton of soymilk, as this store had the best deal, while I compared the cost of the name-brand and store-brand tomato sauce. Confirming that the store brand was the most practical, and having learned that there is little to no difference between brand names and store brands, we met at the checkout with only the items we came in for. Surprisingly, one of the simplest ways we have found to save money is to make a list and stick to it. It’s easy to get lured into purchases that are unnecessary. In fact, stores count on it. The next time you’re in a store, notice how many displays are offering up everything from DVDs to summer ice chests—not to mention the displays of candy and treats that are at perfect eye level for children. The worst is the checkout where people are corralled into a narrow walkway lined with tabloid magazines, candy, and even gift cards for any restaurant or store imaginable. While we waited to pay, I scanned the headlines about stars losing or gaining weight, and the latest hookups and breakups in Hollywood. Avoiding these last-minute temptations is the easiest way to help you keep costs down. Again, make a list, and buy only what you need.

  Our new attitude toward the food we buy keeps costs lower, but because we are doing our cooking primarily from scratch, meal planning and preparation take extra time. While we are sticking to our commitment to eat healthfully beyond an isolated month, the challenge of balancing our time will resume again in a few weeks when the school year starts. It takes much more forethought to prepare a meal from scratch than from a box. When we start back in the fall, it will be difficult to avoid the convenience of dining out.

  We have managed to cut back significantly on how frequently we go to restaurants or swing by Rico’s on the way home from running errands. Currently the average American eats half of his or her meals outside the home, which is money that could be saved, or spent elsewhere. Limiting the number of meals one eats out is vital to saving money. We still dine out occasionally, but we are trying to make it more of a special occasion than a regular occurrence. Prior to our dollar-diet project, we thought little of grabbing takeout, but as expected, when we are truly looking at the cost of what we eat, it is much more expensive to eat out than to prepare food at home.

  The convenience factor is a tricky one. I often feel that the benefits of eating at home aren’t worth the time and effort that I have to put into preparing it. I have to remind myself that making our own meals is the healthier and less expensive option. Plus, once you have transformed your kitchen and revolutionized your habits, it’s harder to go back.

  When we started focusing on affordable healthy eating, we quickly learned that joining a CSA and planting a large garden meant that we would have to figure out how to use what was available at any given time.

  We were filled with anticipation on the Friday when we received our first delivery of produce from our CSA, Be Wise Ranch. Our pickup point, a private residence, was only about a mile from our house, a nice walk for us and the dogs. We grabbed two bags, strapped leashes on the pups, and headed down the road. After the short walk to the house, we encountered stacks of small and large boxes filled with produce.

  Since we were new to this, we had signed up for a small box on a weekly basis. But “small” is relative. We opened the box and started to place the items in our bags, cheered to discover the bounty our local farm had to offer. We were excited about everything in the box. Well, almost everything. Inside was a pound of black cherries, three cucumbers, four oranges, two grapefruit, two different kinds of lettuce, green beans, one bunch of celery, scallions, carrots, and radishes. However, lurking at the bottom of the box was a head of cabbage and five beets. To say that Christopher and I do not care for these last two items is an understatement. We had, of course, been introduced to cabbage through the Thrifty Food Plan, specifically for use in the infinitely recurring turkey-cabbage casserole and the frequent lunchtime coleslaw. Seeing the rotund green ball brought back bad memories.

  The beets were another story. In the past I’d always scooped them off my salad and given them to my mom. I don’t know if I had ever tried them, but the red stain that they left on my lettuce turned me off to them entirely. Christopher’s first and only experience with beets still strikes a chord with him to this day. After his parents coaxed him to eat them at dinnertime, he later called his dad into the bathroom to see the blood in his poop. Christopher was panicking; standing alone in the bathroom, he feared that he would have to go to the hospital. Surprised that his son was calling him to peer at his excrement, his dad had to explain to Christopher that what he was seeing wasn’t blood, but the result of the new side dish. Christopher refused to eat beets after that moment. I was glad to have an ally in my disdain for the vegetable, but this time there was no escaping them. Our thrifty sensibilities and contempt for waste would override our distaste; we would find some way to eat them.

  The fact that we had all of this produce to work with helped us to change the way we planned our weekly menus. Before our adventures in eating, I usually just flipped through cookbooks trying to decide what meals I wanted to make. This gave me the chance to experiment in the kitchen in search of that enchanting new dish. While I enjoyed this process, it was time consuming, and often resulted in long lists with items that we would use only once. The one-offs would sit in the cupboard or refrigerator until Christopher would ask, “What is this for?” Things like Marsala, capers, and phyllo dough might be typical items for the resident foodie or the sophisticated urbanite, but for most people, they are far from essential.

  In an effort to eat a healthier and more affordable diet, the CSA produce encouraged our new approach to shopping and eating. While the CSA posts on their website what is in a typical box each week, there are still occasional surprises, which can make it difficult to plan meals until the box arrives. This is when we started to use what now seems to be a more commonsense way of planning meals. Instead of deciding what we wanted to eat and then going shopping, we now look at what we have between our pantry and the CSA delivery to determine what we can make. So when we got our first box and found the cabbage, I was able to go online and search for recipes that I thought would make cabbage more palatable. One night we tried a stuffed cabbage recipe, and while it wasn’t too bad the first night, the sizable leftovers were less appetizing.

  With the beets, I made a curry sauce that I found online. The beets are roasted until they were soft enough to rub the skin off them—while it may seem obvious, I learned the hard way to give them a minute to cool down before grabbing a beet straight off the baking pan—then they are sliced and the sauce is drizzled over them. The sauce was tasty, but not enough to disguise the fact that I was still eating the dreaded beets.

  By the third week of our CSA, we were beginning to be overrun with produce. Christopher was out of town, and there was no way that just one person could eat it all. I threw t
ogether a pasta dish that I named “Whatever Came in the CSA Box Pasta.” It included eggplant, green beans, leeks, onion, celery, and peas (which did not come in our CSA, but which, for some reason, we had three unopened bags of in our freezer). I ate it with a side salad that used up as much lettuce as I could, as well as any vegetables that wouldn’t work in the pasta dish. More beets had arrived that week, but I offloaded them on Christopher’s mom, who was thrilled to get them.

  When Christopher came back, one of the first things I said after hello was “We need to change our pickups to every other week.” There was no point in getting more produce than we could use. It didn’t matter if it was priced well if the food went to waste. Going through our refrigerator’s produce drawer and pulling out almost-liquid cucumbers or blackening lettuce juxtaposed in my mind with that past September when we would have done anything for fresh produce. This furthered my desire to use all of the vegetables that crossed our threshold. It took a few weeks to figure out just how much produce would be coming, and how much we could eat. We changed our order to a large box every other week, which was a much more manageable amount.

  Without a strict food budget, Christopher and I felt less isolated. We had the freedom to join friends who invited us out, and to invite them to our home. However, we still paid attention to the cost of our food and what we were eating. When I sent out an invitation to my friends for a “Stitch and Bitch” party, I was faced with the challenge of preparing snacks and appetizers for friends while keeping the cost down and the menu healthy. My girlfriends were invited to bring crocheting and knitting projects over (the stitching) while we snacked and chitchatted (the bitching). I knew that I wanted to serve appetizers, but I wanted to avoid the chips and dips that are typical party fare. This brought up all of my old urges to prepare memorable food for guests.

  Rummaging through the kitchen and the garden, I did a quick survey of what was available. As I mentioned earlier, I had had no concept of how much to plant, and at this point, the first of my seventeen tomato plants was starting to produce. I picked four or five ripe ones off the vine and moved on to the basil. Following my mom’s advice, I pinched back the flowers to extend the life of the plant and then clipped off a handful of leaves. The pot next to the basil contained bright green mint sprigs. The mint had taken a while to get started; I had planted it the year before in my first attempt at gardening, and it had just taken off a few months earlier. I cut a few stems. Out front where the fig tree and a lemon tree have existed for years, I picked as many lemons as I could reach and then went crawling around under the fig tree, emerging with ten cradled in my shirt. Bringing the bounty inside, I placed it on the kitchen counter. I separated the produce into piles and started planning the menu. I had ideas for most of the items, but I didn’t know what to do with figs, so I started researching some recipes.

  On the day of my get-together, I set out bruschetta with fresh basil and tomatoes, baked figs glazed with balsamic vinegar, and a cucumber salad with mint and lime. As my guests arrived, I showed them where to drop their crochet bags and ushered them in. My friends dove into the food with exclamations of delight. Anytime a group of teachers get together, the conversation quickly turns to talk of the school year: rumors about the upcoming year, hysterical or horrifying moments from our classrooms. While some crocheting did take place, we spent the evening conversing. Every once in a while, someone would get up to grab another piece of bruschetta or more salad. It was a hot day, and we cooled off with a sparkling rosemary lemonade. With the help of the garden and our pantry, I served my eight guests for under thirty dollars. It was inexpensive, healthy, and satisfying—everything we had been searching for.

  16

  Epilogue: Finding Our Way

  Christopher

  Every summer, Kerri and I have the opportunity to spend a week with her family at Donner Lake, a small area near Sierra Nevada, just northwest of Lake Tahoe. This area is perhaps most famous for the group of thirty-three led by George Donner in nine covered wagons, who in the winter of 1846 got stuck in the snow on their way to California. After a while, a group of fifteen fashioned some snowshoes and did their best to seek help, but the blizzard got worse, and after a few people died, the remaining members of the team resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive. Our journey to Donner Lake was nowhere near as dramatic, but it was on our most recent trip that I started to finally make sense of everything that Kerri and I had done over the past year during our eating adventures.

  One afternoon on a hike in the mountains with Kerri’s father, Mike, he asked, “What do you guys think about those sports drinks?” I told him that I thought they were probably fine, and that what mattered more than the individual foods or beverages were entire eating patterns. I told him that those drinks were really nothing more than sugar-water with some salt, but as long as he wasn’t drinking them all the time, I thought he’d be all right. This seemed to make sense to him.

  While we continued making our way through the woods, Mike went on to tell us about his experiences as a runner, and how sports drinks could be helpful. He told us about how some of his former coaches required him to eat salt tablets while training for a meet. It made me recall all of the recommendations that I had heard from some of my own coaches growing up: “Load up on pasta tonight, so you’ll have energy for the game tomorrow,” and teachers reminding me to “Eat a good breakfast, so you will be ready for the test.” We started sharing stories about how people eat. We talked about those who can eat fast food on a regular basis and seem to maintain good health. We talked about the genetics that determine things like obesity and differing metabolisms. We talked about how for some people, avoiding fat and sugar-laden desserts was no problem, but for me, it was a serious struggle.

  Pushing up a small hill, the conversation carried on into school lunch programs, and how schools make junk food available to students on a regular basis, through vending machines and foods like pizza and chicken nuggets. We talked about how even in California, where many districts have eliminated sodas, they have replaced them with equivalents that contain just as much added sugar. Kerri related a story about a friend of ours who was told by the school not to pack junk foods in her daughter’s lunch anymore, only to be surprised later on by all manner of sweets and sodas at a fellow student’s in-class birthday celebration.

  This led us to consider the psychological baggage that comes with deciding what to eat. Birthday parties have the effect of making an emotional link between having fun and eating high-calorie foods like cake and pizza. As we talked, it became clear how interrelated and messy the food conversation really is. We joined the food dialogue because we started to feel anxious at the checkout counter, as each beep of the grocery store scanner took more from our wallets. Initially, we just wanted to save some money.

  Throughout this book, we have written about our experiences while trying to eat for less: first by attempting to survive on a dollar a day; next by exploring issues of hunger and health through the Thrifty Food Plan and food stamps; and finally by planning healthy, affordable, and ethical menus. We learned that in order to get the most for your money, you must have a lot of other things going for you as well. Income, transportation, time, education, health, location, and other factors play a role in determining what someone is able to eat. We did the best we could, given our situations; at this point, our quest is nowhere near its conclusion. However, we have come to understand that what makes the most sense for us is to sit down and plan out a menu each week. So that is what we strive to do. We base our menu on what is in our pantry, what we have from our CSA, what is in our garden, what our schedules look like for the week, and how we are feeling. This has kept us from always having snack foods in reach, and from dining out too frequently; it also allows us to reflect on a consistent basis about how we are eating.

  This method has enabled us not only to save money but to evaluate our personal health, and to slowly unravel how we are connected to the food system. It has also helped us
come to terms with how gender roles play out in our relationship, and how we treat each other. There were times when the sound of slammed cupboard doors spoke for us, and some silly instances that we will not soon forget, like the time Kerri stripped down to her underwear so that she wouldn’t have to run back out to the store to pick up pasta. Now when she asks me to go back out for something, I can no longer make the excuse “I’m in my underwear!”

  More than anything, these experiments have been incredibly humbling experiences, and they will stay with us for the rest of our lives. We used to go through each day eating when we pleased, giving little thought to the food that crossed our lips. But when you are counting every pinto bean, and picking each grain of rice from your plate after a long day at work, it has a leveling effect. Eating is no longer something that you take for granted. When you are struggling to decide how to ration your food so that it will last you through the end of the month, any concerns over personal health become echoes in the distance. Hunger takes over, and things like peanut butter seem decadent.

  Over the last year, we have been hyperaware of how our privilege has allowed us to do this type of experimentation, and we have consistently tried to understand why there are thirty-six million people in our country who do not have much choice when it comes to deciding what and when to eat—all of them limited by the amount of money they have, and the food that is available to them. We have met with dedicated hunger activists, visited low-income neighborhoods, and restricted our own spending, in hopes of gaining some insight into the struggles that people in our nation and across the globe face on a daily basis. We’ve tried to stop assuming that we understand the hardships that face those who are going without. Our own families and some of our dearest friends have shared with us their struggles to eat on food stamps, and yet we can only begin to plumb the depths of these issues. Right now, as you are reading this, there are thirteen million children suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity in the United States. We want to know why. We have tried to understand why there are a billion people worldwide who actually live on a dollar a day. We continue to try to bridge the disconnect between the fact that half of all children will be born into poverty, and the rise of childhood obesity in America.