$13.30 for three days of food

drawaimfire

deannalfisher wrote: »

I'd recommend checking out the blog budgetbytes - every year she does a challenge based on using only money received via the SNAP program - which might give you some ideas

Absolutely love her site. I have been cooking from it for over 6 years, just excellent in general but when she did the SNAP challenge, it was an even greater eye-opener. I am up in Ontario, Canada, so price wise, I haven't been able to match up to how much she can save but it helped me focus and get inventive.

Anyone who likes food and saving money, go visit it, it's worth your time.

cmtigger

stanmann571 wrote: »

French_Peasant wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I never use anything but water with my oatmeal.

me neither- you cook the oatmeal with water and then you pour milk OVER it.

I am of the school where you cook the oatmeal with milk, then pour heavy cream over it. According to my daughter, who just had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant with sad water-based oatmeal, I make the best oatmeal EVER, and according to my son, my oatmeal is EPIC, so that settles it.

I prefer the school of you cook the oatmeal with water then toss a healthy pat of butter on top and pour honey overtop.

Or cinnamon sugar or maple syrup instead of honey.

SusanMFindlay

Theo166 wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

LadyRooster wrote: »

I don't get the rule where you're not allowed to buy from bulk. Would that just make it too easy? Because I know for a fact it's accepted on assistance.

I think the rule was, you couldn't buy a $10 big bag of something that would last 10 days, and say "well that's $1 a day out of the budget". If you were going to buy a big pack, the whole cost had to come out of the $13.

Yeah - which isn't so unrealistic, because when you're living hand-to-mouth, sometimes you run out of food and money at the same time and have to deal with what you've got.

ALso: It goes against basic economic sense, but states have been trying to limit the ability to buy in bulk on assistance. As I've posted already, Wisconsin tried to limit the acceptable packages of dried beans and rice to ONLY 1-pound packages, as well as limiting total purchases on EBT cards to $25 at a time.

isn't that based on known fraud, where people are buying larger quantities and reselling?

It's all quite sad though, well intentioned officials adding such new regulations can do more harm than good. Instead of stopping fraud, they prevent earnest recipients for improving their food value.

Documented fraud? Or is this in the same category as the supposed voter fraud that some groups like to pretend is a problem? I can't imagine there's much money in buying 25 pounds of beans and reselling them in 1 pound bags. And even if low income individuals were doing things like "I buy 25 pounds of beans; you buy 25 pounds of rice; we split the stuff", how is that a bad thing?

French_Peasant

stanmann571 wrote: »

French_Peasant wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I never use anything but water with my oatmeal.

me neither- you cook the oatmeal with water and then you pour milk OVER it.

I am of the school where you cook the oatmeal with milk, then pour heavy cream over it. According to my daughter, who just had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant with sad water-based oatmeal, I make the best oatmeal EVER, and according to my son, my oatmeal is EPIC, so that settles it.

I prefer the school of you cook the oatmeal with water then toss a healthy pat of butter on top and pour honey overtop.

Well that goes without saying. The only question is, does the large spoon of brown sugar and 80 g of blueberries and granny smith apple go UNDER or OVER the honey???

savithny

I think its designed to make recipients embarrassed in the checkout lane when they accidentally buy a 15 ounce or 2-pound container of something and get loudly told they have to put it back. They're also not allowed to buy red or yellow potatoes - only white. Rules that are hard to follow make people screw up and shame them.

I'm really not worried about the Black Market in Bulk Chickpeas as a major budgetary issue, somehow.

French_Peasant

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

Theo166 wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

LadyRooster wrote: »

I don't get the rule where you're not allowed to buy from bulk. Would that just make it too easy? Because I know for a fact it's accepted on assistance.

I think the rule was, you couldn't buy a $10 big bag of something that would last 10 days, and say "well that's $1 a day out of the budget". If you were going to buy a big pack, the whole cost had to come out of the $13.

Yeah - which isn't so unrealistic, because when you're living hand-to-mouth, sometimes you run out of food and money at the same time and have to deal with what you've got.

ALso: It goes against basic economic sense, but states have been trying to limit the ability to buy in bulk on assistance. As I've posted already, Wisconsin tried to limit the acceptable packages of dried beans and rice to ONLY 1-pound packages, as well as limiting total purchases on EBT cards to $25 at a time.

isn't that based on known fraud, where people are buying larger quantities and reselling?

It's all quite sad though, well intentioned officials adding such new regulations can do more harm than good. Instead of stopping fraud, they prevent earnest recipients for improving their food value.

Documented fraud? Or is this in the same category as the supposed voter fraud that some groups like to pretend is a problem? I can't imagine there's much money in buying 25 pounds of beans and reselling them in 1 pound bags. And even if low income individuals were doing things like "I buy 25 pounds of beans; you buy 25 pounds of rice; we split the stuff", how is that a bad thing?

My late FIL prosecuted entire multi-county crime rings engaged in welfare and food stamp fraud shenanigans. The best one involved a foster parent to many children underfeeding the kids on absolute crap and using her credits to source high quality bulk meats for a buddy who owned a restaurant. Never underestimate the depravity of the human spirit.

If you buy a 25-lb bag of rice and sell off the $1 bags (same as the discount grocer to which you have to walk 5 miles uphill both ways on another thread) that's $25 you have in your pocket. Sure, your kids aren't getting fed, but 25 bucks is 25 bucks.

dfwesq

savithny wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

LadyRooster wrote: »

I don't get the rule where you're not allowed to buy from bulk. Would that just make it too easy? Because I know for a fact it's accepted on assistance.

I think the rule was, you couldn't buy a $10 big bag of something that would last 10 days, and say "well that's $1 a day out of the budget". If you were going to buy a big pack, the whole cost had to come out of the $13.

Yeah - which isn't so unrealistic, because when you're living hand-to-mouth, sometimes you run out of food and money at the same time and have to deal with what you've got.

It's a little bit unrealistic, because assistance is paid for a longer period of time than 3 days. So if someone actually on assistance wants to buy flour, rice, salt, spices, condiments, and cooking oil and use them up over a period of weeks it's doable. In this 3-day experiment it wasn't. On the other hand, the students doing this experiment had some advantages that people receiving assistance might not typically have.

karahm78

savithny wrote: »

I think its designed to make recipients embarrassed in the checkout lane when they accidentally buy a 15 ounce or 2-pound container of something and get loudly told they have to put it back. They're also not allowed to buy red or yellow potatoes - only white. Rules that are hard to follow make people screw up and shame them.

I'm really not worried about the Black Market in Bulk Chickpeas as a major budgetary issue, somehow.

Where has these rules? I worked in a major grocery store and all food (except prepared) was allowed.

cmtigger

karahm78 wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

I think its designed to make recipients embarrassed in the checkout lane when they accidentally buy a 15 ounce or 2-pound container of something and get loudly told they have to put it back. They're also not allowed to buy red or yellow potatoes - only white. Rules that are hard to follow make people screw up and shame them.

I'm really not worried about the Black Market in Bulk Chickpeas as a major budgetary issue, somehow.

Where has these rules? I worked in a major grocery store and all food (except prepared) was allowed.

I think she may be mixing up WIC and SNAP.

savithny

cmtigger wrote: »

karahm78 wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

I think its designed to make recipients embarrassed in the checkout lane when they accidentally buy a 15 ounce or 2-pound container of something and get loudly told they have to put it back. They're also not allowed to buy red or yellow potatoes - only white. Rules that are hard to follow make people screw up and shame them.

I'm really not worried about the Black Market in Bulk Chickpeas as a major budgetary issue, somehow.

Where has these rules? I worked in a major grocery store and all food (except prepared) was allowed.

I think she may be mixing up WIC and SNAP.

Nope: The bill specifically required that 2/3 of the food purchased with SNAP be on the list of WIC foods. They want to apply WIC standards to all food assistance.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/wifoodstamps.asp

IT was proposed - it didn't pass, as its mostly posturing - those policies are set at the federal level. Nevertheless, there's a strong desire to control people's shopping with frankly arbitrary regulations.