I was with 3 of my long time friends yesterday and one of them told me that a friend of hers lost her job and gets unemployment and food stamps $17 of food stamps to be exact. My first thought was what can you buy with $17 ??? So we made a game out of it and came up with some very good ideas. Of course $17 will not feed a person for 30 days but if it's used wisely it sure can help. Each of us pretended that we had only $20 to spend for a week we had to have 3 meals a day. some of the things we came up with were: rice, beans, peanut butter, jelly, bread, oatmeal,eggs, a whole chicken to bake then make soup out of the bones. a bag of apples, various vegetables, potatos. These are a few things that we had on our lists of course this cost more than $20 but it was a very interesting conversation. As a side note I asked two men the same question and their first item was meat all the women said a carb for the first item. So what would you buy for $20???

eggs are an inexpensive protein and are very versatile

eggs, rice, beans, oatmeal, apples, carrots and potatoes.
I have had to help many low income families and Sr.s do just this. Is NOT easy. She will be hard pressed to make it stretch for sure. After all, her $17 of food stamps is for a MONTH, not a week! The man across the st. from us is raising 3 small kids on his own. He gets only $100 a month in food stamps! Try to feed your family of 4 on that!

A lot of communities have "food banks" or "needlines" that she might be able to get some food items from also.

Hopefully she already has the staples of flour, sugar, seasonings etc. Nothing preprocessed is cheap so its all from scratch now.

I bought eggs Friday and they were 2.00 a dozen. When did they get so high? I about fell over!!! :?:

what you get in food stamps is to "help" you buy food, not to be a complete subsidy for everything you need.

I've thought about it -

is one of the assumptions that she/he/they still have a means to cook whatever?

When the pickings get really slim - the power and other utitlitieis get cut off.

My MIL told me that they went dumpster diving to eke out their food (about 1935)

Pinto beans,Rice,Bacon,lg.Ragu,lg.Spaghetti noodles,Oatmeal,Eggs,Chicken thighs,Sm.Flour to bread the chicken with and make gravey. 8-)

ramen, tomato sauce, eggs, 1 pound hamburger, generic bisquick for topping, cream soup, rice, beans, spaghetti noodles, 1 loaf bread,

bread -$1 Dollar Tree
2 cream of soup, 49 cents ea, Aldi $1
1 pound hamburger, separate into 4 servings $2
bisquick topping, $1
eggs, Aldi's $1.50
rice, 1 pound $1
black beans and pinto beans, $3
spaghetti noodles $1
generic spaghetti sauce $2, 2 cans tomato sauce
2 cans mixed veggies, $1
oatmeal $2.50

That's the end of my money, oatmeal for breakfast, egg sandwich for lunch or ramen noodles, supper is spaghetti or hamburger/bisquick casserole, or beans and rice.
It would make a week, but barely for 1 person.

There was a show on this a while back & it showed how much perfectly good food was taken from dumpsters. In NY there are "clubs" of people who have jobs & make good money & still go dumpster diving regularly for food & bring back all kinds of stuff. The one man on the show said that when he gets home he wipes down the food or containers/bags/boxes with mild bleach to remove any bacteria on the pkging & his family eats what they find & when he finds good stuff that he doesn't need (other merchandise) he sells it on Ebay, etc.