On not blaming the poor

Over the last few days we have been having a great discussion here about different foods, different ways to cook food and even about food that can be found by foraging. As much as I have enjoyed this conversation (and as hungry as it has made me) I worry that when I tell stories about my family's cooking/foraging acumen it can "read" as if I am blaming the poor, as with Sean Hannity's recent statements about "making a pot of rice and beans."

In my opinion, buying food and preparing meals is one of those things that is so fundamentally different when one is (even comparatively) well off that it can be hard to grasp that one's own experiences are shot through with privilege. For example (to use only my own case):

• My partner and I both work out of our own home. Our time is our own and very fungible. Therefore we can cook meals that require supervision all day long. We can cook foods that have rather indeterminate "ready" times.
• We have a car and can therefore easily comparison shop.
• We live in an area where a variety of local (cheap) food is available for a good part of the year.
• We can spend as much time as we like shopping without having the distraction/worry of children to look after.
• We have enough money that we can buy in bulk and take advantage of sales.^[1] Thus we may actually spend less over a year on food than do people who do not have the resources to stock up during sales or through buying in bulk.
• We have time and support that many other people don't have. Neither of us spends hours of our time going back and forth to work and usually we cook together which means no one is alone in the kitchen and work is shared between the two of us.
• We don't have hungry, tired, anxious children to watch, monitor and placate as we work in the kitchen.
• Even when we had less money than we now have we never had to make the choice between inadequate amounts (that is, amounts that would leave one hungry) of nutritious food and adequate amounts of less nutritious food. Most importantly, we never had to make that choice when some of the hungry mouths in the family would be those of children.
• Even when we had less money we always had relatives who would pitch in by bringing over food and helping in other ways.

And this list includes only some of the ways in which I/we are privileged.

What "hidden" forms of privilege do you see embedded in discussions about "the poor" and food?

--mmy

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^[1] We realized not too long ago that there are some foodstuffs (food which keeps well) that we have never bought at full price. When there is a sale we stock up. ↩

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Comments

[Bay]

It's amazing how much having a reasonably healthy body can influence food. I spent more than I should have for this coming weekend's groceries because my SO is out of town and I know I won't have the stamina or energy to cook all the meals alone so I bought things that would be easier to prepare.. and spent about twice as much as I could have gotten away with.

[hapax]

It is simply not possible to link too often to George Orwell's observations from THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER.

Money quote:

And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

[MercuryBlue]

I'm not sure 'privilege' is the right word for what I want to talk about, but: multiple-person households. A gallon of milk costs less than two half-gallons, which saves money provided there's enough milk-drinkers in the household that the whole gallon will be drunk before it goes bad, and cooking duties can rotate. Also, cooking for oneself and only oneself seems futile in a way that cooking for oneself and someone(s) else doesn't. Though possibly that's just I grew up cooking for seven.

I really need to get in the habit of cooking for myself. Not after work, because banging around the kitchen for an hour when there's four people asleep upstairs seems ill-advised and also by the time work's done I just want to sit and read for a couple hours, but I have time before work, and I really shouldn't be eating nothing but ham sandwiches and ramen.

[Majromax]

Terry Pratchett did it well with the Boots theory of poverty:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

On the original post, an extra form of food privilege: having a well-stocked kitchen, both in hardware and seasonings. For one without the means to cook, food selection is limited to easy-to-prepare and/or microwaveable meals, which are simultaneously smaller, more expensive, less nutritious, and less tasty than well-prepared home-cooked food. (Leading into another privilege, the actual knowledge of food preparation.)

[Nick Kiddle]

//Also, cooking for oneself and only oneself seems futile in a way that cooking for oneself and someone(s) else doesn't.//

This is remarkably true of my experience. I invite people round or offer to go round and cook for them so that I know I'll be motivated to cook, which I wouldn't be on my own.

One big privilege I have is physical good health and strength. It means I can get shopping without a car, it means I can grow vegetables that would be unreasonably expensive to buy, it means I can stand and walk around the kitchen without having to worry about conserving energy. One privilege I don't always have is mental energy and concentration. If I'm having a bad day, working out what sequence to prepare things in might be more of an effort than I'm capable of. This is another thing that can be eased if there's someone else on hand to talk me through things.

[Phoenix]

My personal favorite is what I call the transportation limitation. When I was living in NYC and supporting another adult and a child in addition to myself, we lived in a rathole apartment that was near a gas station with basics (and I mean BASICS... think milk, Cheerios and cigarettes). If we wanted anything else, a 20-40 minute subway ride was required and we had to carry all our groceries back by hand.

Now, we still ate reasonably well. It's amazing how many cheap and substantial meals you can get out of a bag of potatoes, provided you have some patience and creativity. But it's also amazing how unbelievably exhausting it is to drag a five year old across a major metro in search of enough groceries to last at least a few days, to buy them and then to bring them home. I get tired just remembering those days.

What might have taken an hour, two at most in a suburban area with a car could easily stretch to five hours if you added in all the walking time.

So yeah. Transportation limitation in major metros is a very stark reality. When I eventually moved out on my own, I deliberately chose an apartment down the street from a serviceable grocery store. That, along with the fact that I was only shopping for one person, made the whole process exponentially easier, and I still was not fond of carrying my groceries back by hand.

To this day, I don't take it for granted that I have a car AND am a five minute drive away from the nearest Safeway.

[Loquat]

Living on rice and beans is a whole lot easier when you know how to cook them so they'll taste great - this usually means (a) you grew up in a family where whoever cooked possessed this knowledge and was willing to teach you, or (b) you at some point had the time, patience, and extra money to get through several dinners' worth of bad-to-meh beans while you figured out how to cook them right.

Also, I have a yard where I can plant herbs and they'll do fine with no more attention from me than the occasional watering when it's particularly hot and dry out. The impact of having fresh herbs available whenever I want them for no extra cost is not to be underestimated.

[cjmr]

Every time I shop I'm reminded to be grateful that we can afford to buy the gluten-free or soy-free or nut-free or dairy/egg-free or beef-free versions of things to keep the two people in the family with multiple allergies healthy without having to stint the three people who aren't allergic to any foods. Also, we have the time and kitchen equipment to prepare two separate meals when necessary.

[chris the cynic]

@Hapax and the Orwell quote, there is a reason that a portion of my limited food funds is spent on ice cream.

It's a low energy food, I need only muster the strength to remove it from the freezer and grab a spoon, no necessary planing, preparation, or supplies, but more than that it's a feeling of, "God damn it, something in my life will be good, however superficially."

I wonder, if the depression is ever successfully treated, if I will still feel it necessary to have ice cream. Or even if the depression says the same but the situation improves. I certainly didn't feel as compelled to have some on hand when things were less bad.

[Izzy]

Also cooking space/utensils. A lot of the healthier recipes I've seen sound like they require more than a single pot/pan--and, at even more of an extreme, a couple of the apartments I saw before I decided on the new one didn't even have a stove.

[victoria]

- Not all stores and markets accept EBT cards/food stamps, and if they do there can be limits on what is able to be purchased with food stamps (e.g. I was once unable to buy nutritional yeast b/c the store had not categorized it as "food"). Most farmer's markets do not accept food stamps.

- Mental health issues: as an example, when i experience high anxiety, large crowded stores with harsh florescent lighting can be a trigger for a panic attack. The food tends to be cheaper at a large store like this, but it's not always worth the risk to make the trip.

[Kirala]

Also, the compounding issue. I can do quite well when short on any one of the privileges listed here - creativity can compensate for a lot. Knowledge of how to cook? Just do some internet research and grab some cookbooks, raid Mom's kitchen, and get to it. Trial and error will get me there pretty quickly - when I have the privilege of time, space, utensils, and Someone Else's Budget. Now that I have skills, I can get pretty creative with limited utensils, space, and budget - but if one of those three things becomes severely limited, it's more crucial for the other two to be up to scratch. And this is when I'm able-bodied and more-or-less mentally healthy. Take away either of those...

... well, there's a reason why I keep cans of cheap soup on hand.

@MercuryBlue: I don't know how you are on freezer space, but when I feel impelled to cook I'll often cook for four and then use the freezer to distribute the extra portions to myself in the future. Don't know if that helps, but wanted to post just in case.

Freezer, refrigerator, pantry space: further privilege.

[Anon]

@chris: Ice cream has a lot of calories for its cost, and when you're not getting enough food, ice cream can be a way to get the calories you need. (You don't start thinking about about nutrients/unit of currency until you're getting enough calories. Up until that point, it's all about calories/unit of currency, and in some areas ice cream is very effective on that scale). If I had a freezer, I might go the ice cream route, but I can't eat enough ice cream in one sitting for it to be cost effective for me.

I tend to notice that it's assumed that everyone has a fridge. It's a bother not having access to refrigeration and it makes cooking a hassle. Everything has to be a tiny portion -- generally a smaller portion that I can buy cheaply or at all -- and there cannot be leftovers. Food must be acquired on a daily basis, even when you're too sick to leave home. Though, it's been so long, if I had a fridge, I'm not sure I'd know what to do with it.

I keep looking online for some magic article on cooking while poor that will tell me how all the other poor people manage but I haven't found one. Instead, the cooking while poor articles tell me to save money by buying in bulk and freezing leftovers, or that I should do a big shop once a week to save money on petrol for the car I don't have.

I manage, I just always have this lurking feeling that if I were more clever I'd be getting enough calories.

[Kirala]

@Anon: I tend to notice that it's assumed that everyone has a fridge.

Amen to that. I have a hard enough time when I have fridge/freezer space limited by roommates; having none at all would be very difficult. I suspect I'd be living on potatoes, canned soup, and Easy Mac. Possibly fresh fruits and veggies as available. Ugh.

[chris the cynic]

I manage, I just always have this lurking feeling that if I were more clever I'd be getting enough calories.

Cleverness doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with it. If it did you should be doing much better than me and you aren't.

I think it comes down, almost entirely, to luck.* I have a lot of it, even though it seldom feels that way, and I need every bit of it. Anything less than the privileges I have and I definitely wouldn't be here. I'd still be alive but I'd either be homeless and hungry or I'd be living with and entirely dependent on one of my frequently nice but far too abusive for comfort family members. (I think I'd prefer homeless and hungry.)

Which is to say, I'm privileged enough that even abject failure leaves me with options.

-

* Which is, more or less, the point of this thread.

[Anon]

@Kirala: I hadn't seen your comment (or any of the ones after Chris') when I wrote mine, so I wasn't ragging on you just so you know, it's just a frustration that's been building from the articles and cooking blogs and stuff that I see around the net.

I like canned soup. I'm out, and the store with the affordable & yummy canned soup is on the other end of town, but I've found a local company that delivers, and they charge less than I'd pay using public transporation for the delivery, and space to store cans of food is something I do have. I could probably even get 10 or 20 of them, though I should take the cat to the vet first and see how much that ends up being -- she seems to have acquired feline acne, which itches her and she scratches it and her chin looks awful. My vet's prices are pretty reasonable, though, so I can possibly do both this month, and if not I can get the soup next month.

What are some easy things that can be done with potatoes? I prefer cooking with the oven on some tin* foil to using the stove. I usually make canned soup by opening the can and putting it in the oven for a half hour. I bought two potatoes a few months ago, and I put some spices and oil on it and wrapped it up in tin foil and put it in the oven and that was okay, but it wasn't very exciting. I can buy a small container of plain yoghurt or sour cream, but I think even a small container might be too much for a single serving of potatoes (though I could share it with the cat). I can sometimes get a single serving of cheese at the deli counter without having to pay extra like you do for the ones that are prepackaged. Other than that I don't have too many ideas, but I'm open to suggestions. A lot of the things that seem to make sense, like "add some onion" make less sense when you'd only need about a quarter of an onion and you don't know what to do with the rest of the onion.

* made of aluminium, not tin, but I still call it tin.

[Kitryan]

@Anon
You can slice the potatoes (about 1/4" thick) and season the slices with paprika/salt/pepper/garlic powder/onion powder (whatever combination you may have and enjoy)
Lay them on lightly oiled tinfoil or, I haven't tried this, but you could probably get away with no oil on parchment paper, then put them in the oven at (I'm bad at temps) something like 375 degrees fahrenheit and they'll take somewhere between 10-20 min to brown. I'm also bad at times, so I check them every 5 minutes or so until they look nice and brown. I like them well done, my mom calls them healthy potato chips, which is a generous description, but not completely insane, especially if you slice them even thinner.
I also saw a recipe where you bake the potato (in tinfoil, like you said) and when it's nearly done, you cut a cross in it and smash it with a mallet or a big spoon or something and season it and then cook it ( sitting on it's tinfoil) uncovered some more. To season it, I usually drizzle olive oil, use any of the previously mentioned seasonings, and stick some unwrapped cloves of garlic around and if you have onion left over, you can add the slices. When the onion/garlic starts to brown and the edges of the smashed potato are starting to get a little brown, it's done. Outside of mashed potatoes which is more involved and plain baked potatoes with added leftover cheese, that sums up my potato repertoire.

[Loquat]

@Anon: One of my favorite potato recipes is roasted potato and onion - one potato and one onion, chopped into chunks, tossed with rosemary and salt and roasted in an open pan. You have to start with just potato and add the onion halfway through since it cooks faster, but that's the only remotely complicated bit. Plus you can do variations on that theme with any root vegetable, or even winter squash, all of which tend to be cheap and store well. And I think you can get away with chopping a raw winter squash in half and covering the cut half tightly in plastic, and have it still be ok a few days later.

Also, have you considered home vegetable fermentation? It's relatively easy, keeps well at room temperature, and would give you a use for vegetables that come in larger quantity than you can eat in one day - just chop the vegetables, mix with salt, stuff them in a clean glass or ceramic container with enough water to cover, give them a few days to start fermenting, and then they should be edible for the next several weeks, no refrigeration required. Plus homemade sauerkraut goes great with potatoes!

[Kit Whitfield]

I have a home computer and live in an area where the supermarket delivers, plus I can afford the delivery fee. This means I don't have to choose between a half-hour schlep or a long-wait bus ride with pushchair in tow, and I can order heavy food.

That's a big issue too: I don't have a car, which means I can only buy the food I can carry or hang off the pushchair. Delivery gets round that.

[Rakka]

I've noticed that stuff doesn't necessarily go bad overnight, even some that might be expected to. My parents frequently don't bother to put a roast salmon to the fridge overnight and we've never gotten sick over it. So making food every second day might be OK unless it's very hot where you live, Anon. And if it's cold/cool weather hanging stuff outside of the window works for long-term storage too.

Potato recipes: yes to chips! And if you have a cheese grater you can grate the potato, soak it in cold water overnight, add some cheese and egg and spices and make potato patties.

Also, is it really that common for homes in US to not have a kitchen? Because over here even the tiny carpet-sized flats in old buildings that have the shower in the basement sauna* have at least a kitchenette. Not having a kitchen in a place you're living in permanently is something I never even considered possible until seeing that oh yes, if you're poor you can't cook because odds are you won't have a kitchen. My reaction: WTF?

* Because in Finland getting to go to a sauna is considered pretty much a human right. Older apartment buildings have a communal one, where you can book a weekly time slot and which also have a weekly open hour (gendered), and it's mostly just places that've been built in the last 20-10ish years that have private saunas in the flats themselves.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Most US apartments and rental houses have a room or area designated as a kitchen. Only in some states is the landlord required to supply it with a working refrigerator and stove.

The major exception to this would be people who are living in really cheap hotels instead of apartments--those have no kitchen whatsoever.

[Rakka]

*headdesk* And toilets are not generally required to have a sewer and running water if in rental apartment? I mean, how can it even be a kitchen without cooking utilities and not just another room?

(Addendum, as it might read that in some flats you can only wash once a week: the shower room is open and free to use, but the sauna is only warm at reserved times.)

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Room full of cupboards, with a sink and dedicated outlets/circuits to plug in a stove and a refrigerator = kitchen. Table space is also optional.

[Coleslaw]

One of my friends has begun couponing as a way to save money, and she admits it takes a lot of time, plus it takes about a year before it really begins to pay off, since you need to stockpile non-perishables so that you don't run out before you have a coupon or find a sale again. Stockpiling means you need space. She has actually bought Sunday papers from nearby cities to get extra coupons. So I can see all the ways this won't work for poor people, and if literacy is a factor, reading the fine print on a coupon could be difficult.

In fact, just think of all the ways illiteracy affects access to healthy low cost foods: not being able to teach yourself to cook by reading recipes, not being able to read store ads and comparison shop, not being able to read nutritional information on food packages, not knowing when you are being cheated.

[Kit Whitfield]

I keep hearing the 'beans and rice' dish mentioned as a supposed staple for 'poor' (by which I gather this often means 'African-American') people in the US. What kind of cooking do they mean? Is there a standard recipe?

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

'A' recipe? Hundreds, more like.

'Beans and rice' can be anything from dumping a can of kidney beans onto minute rice and dousing it with ketchup/salad dressing to make it even vaguely palatable (very low end), to cajun style red beans and rice that contains lots of spice, peppers, and sometimes even andouille sausage and/or crawfish (fairly high end).

Poor + 'beans and rice' =/= African-American in this context. Other minority groups are just as likely (if not more likely) to be eating beans and rice.

[lonespark]

Pinto beans + tomato rice in New Mexico. (And chile on most everything.)

Black beans with seasonings and rice in Central American neighborhoods.

Tonight we are having curried chickpeas over brown rice. I don't think that's what most people mean when they say it, but you can buy four cans of beans a month with WIC checks, and it's delicious. But of course the spices are a big up-front expense.

[victoria]

Beans and rice are also a staple of a lot of Latin American cuisine, so it could also be a dog whistle for not wanting to support immigrants.*

I occasionally make a pot of black beans, using onions, garlic, salt, cumin, and whatever extra salsa or spicy condiment is in the fridge. But it takes a lot of time, so often it's easier to buy a can of already seasoned black beans from the store.

*for those in the U.S. who believe that all the "bad" immigrants are "those Mexicans"

[Coleslaw]

Pretty much like any dried bean cooking. You soak the red beans overnight, or at least for a few hours. You can do a quick soak, where you bring the beans to a boil then immediately remove from the heat and soak for an hour.

To cook, you sauté some chopped onion and a little garlic, then put the drained beans and some seasoning meat, which would be ham hocks, tasso, a ham bone, pickled pork, or something like that, salt, pepper, thyme and some bay leaves into water to cover and simmer for a couple of hours, checking the water level periodically. When the beans are done, you fish the ham bone from the pot (if necessary), then remove a quarter cup or so of the means, mash them, and put them back in the pot to thicken the sauce. Serve over rice with cornbread and greens.

If you want to get even more elaborate, you can make a ham broth with a ham bone or ham hocks and use it to cook the beans. You can add some jalapeños if you like real spicy. Most people I know cook the sausage on the side and use other pork products to season the beans, but that's a personal preference thing.

For this to be a poor people's meal, you either have to butcher your own hog or else skimp on the meat or skip it altogether. The beans and rice by themselves make high quality protein, so you don't need the meat.

[hapax]

Grocery stores here sell bacon ends very cheap (less than a dollar a pound), which are used to flavor beans and rice, green beans, soup, gravy, even cornbread.

Of course they're mostly fat, but that's what passes for "meat" in a lot of the "end of the month dishes" (y'know, when the paycheck doesn't quite stretch to the last week).

[gleomstapa]

One of my friends had to stop buying anything in cans, because they were too heavy to get home on her bike. That was a real loss in convenience. She had to stop buying milk because the bike path was so beat up the milk bottles kept splitting on the way home. Most of her vegetables came from her garden or the farmers' market which was mercifully nearby, and she couldn't have many out-of-season because they're bulky and she couldn't get enough back on her bike. She baked all her own bread and never got any prepared foods, ever. That's a lot of time spent just trying to get by, and still, she was mildly malnourished and sick a lot.

People, by which I mean Sean Hannity, talk like protein is the be-all and end-all of an adequate diet. It's not. Anyone who claims that living on beans and rice alone is reasonable either flat-out doesn't understand nutrition, or doesn't expect people to be doing it long-term.

The times I've spent very little money on food involved a mostly-vegetarian diet, a car which could make weekend grocery runs, almost no prepared foods, and a small horde of housemates. The small horde of housemates was really important: it meant someone was almost always free to do the grocery run or cook, so if anyone got overwhelmed with work or sick other people could take up the slack. Also we could stock up on staples - replacing the 25-pound bag of rice is a much bigger deal for one person than for seven. We also had a good kitchen, plenty of utensils, few food allergies, and enough time for cooking.

[Kit Whitfield]

Are red beans what I call kidney beans?

[inge]

Oh, I really need to blow off steam on this one. I frequent a forum where I encounter the most insufferable privilege, arrogance and cluelessness about this, and I lack the temperament to harass them the way they deserve. ("OMG how can you use *stock cubes* when it is *so easy* to make your own soup stock!")

Counting my blessings:

#1 I have a great, shiny, roomy, well equipped kitchen. The total value of my kitchen gear, electrical appliances not included, is in the four digits. I have a functional fridge, and freezer. I have a microwave. I have space to store all my cooking gear and (most of) the food I buy. I have space to work when I cook.

#2 I am healthy and have next to no allergies or food issues. Put it on the table, I'm probably able to eat it with some enjoyment and no ill effects. I do not have family members to feed who might have allergies, issues, or be picky about food.

#3 I have not learned to cook from my mother, but we had shelves of cookbooks in our nice middle class home. I read them all. I could cook well when I left home and I became better over time. Put it on the work space, and I will probably be able to prepare it.

#3b If I fail and what I prepared is not edible, I can throw it away and order pizza, because I can afford it.

#4 I can walk to the grocery store in five minutes. I can walk to the supermarket, the speciality stores and the twice-weekly farmer's market in 30 minutes. I am able-bodied enough to actually walk that, and back with a bag of groceries. I *also* have a fine bicycle, so I do not *have* to walk.

#5 Being able-bodied, I can stand in the kitchen for as long as needed to prepare food.

#6 None of my neighbours is going to complain about cooking smells, because where I live home cooking is considered a virtue.

#7 Being a skinny middle-aged office worker living a not-too-stressful life, I do not need much food.

It drives me up the wall how many people ignore something as trivial as #1. People who are plain unable to imagine that a person might not have a kitchen. Or appliances. Or a pan. "But those are cheap to buy! You do not need a fancy stove! A simple one for 200 Euro will do!" Blithely ignoring that with a welfare-level food budget, those 200 Euro mean you will have *nothing to eat at all* for 50 days. A cheap frying pan? Two days. A single heating plate? Seven. I would like to see people try. *And that's assuming there is a kitchen*.

But not content with assuming there is a kitchen, people assume there is a *farm kitchen*, where you can can those 20 kg of apples you got for 10 Euros. And the equipment. And the cellar. And probably a garden with an apple tree. I can only imagine that whoever believes this grew up seeing *rural* poverty, while they were too young to realize that the wife worked an 100-hour week in the home and the kids had to do chores before they were allowed to do homework.

Regarding #2, #4 and #5, too often poverty makes you ill and illness makes you poor. How well will you be able to comparison shop, to schlep home food, to prepare it, when your eyes are bad, your grip fails, you cannot stand for a long time? How about when you are being depressed and need all your daily spoons just to make it through the day?

Regarding #3, people assume that cooking (like any traditionally female task, one feels) is so simple that everyone can do it. No skill or knowledge involved. Nothing to learn. A real woman would look at a box of raw veggies, strange grains and unidentified meat and *know* how to make a tasty nutritious dinner from it. (Only men's tasks require skill. No one (to my knowledge) tells the poor to just do her own electrical wiring .)

I could go on for pages, but I'll spare you.

Just one more: There's this great posting by The Fat Nutritionist, "If only poor people knew about nutrition!" I recommend it.

[Sixwing]

Yes, red beans, kidney beans and adzuki beans are all the same beans, as far as I know.

Beans and rice here usually means pinto beans or Anasazi beans (small, mottled white-and-brown beans that taste stronger than your average pinto bean, and are something of A Thing locally), stirred in with the rice and likely topped with green chile stew, which isn't a stew so much as a very thick sauce with chunks of either pork or chicken. We may possibly have some New Mexico influence. *s*

I used to eat a lot of ramen noodles with miso broth in college, attempting to get some protein. Certainly it isn't the be-all and end-all of a good diet, but I've tried eating vegetarian a couple times and I get sooooooo sick, it just doesn't work. (Kudos to the people who can, but I'm not one.) And then every single "how to eat cheap" article says, go vegetarian and stop buying lattes! Utterly unhelpful.

It really does help to have housemates. We used to go on huge team shopping runs (using a car), in which all of us would pitch in to buy the staples for the house. We'd cook some massive thing (using a good kitchen and relying on the fridge) and then all eat it over the course of a few days. It wasn't always great food (some of us knew how to cook, others not so much) but it was enough, and pretty good nutrient-wise (because we could afford it).

[inge]

cjmr: I have seen "kitchens" in flats that were not that cheap (not-cheap enough that if you were on welfare, you'd be required by law to move someplace cheaper), which did not have a sink. You could cook on a single plate on the floor and do your dishes in a plastic bowl that you filled in the shower and emptied into the loo.

Or you could somehow arrange for a car, and an afternoon's time, and tools, and expertise, to drive to the hardware store on the edge of own, buy their cheapest sink and faucet for 100 Euros and put it up yourself. Of course, you could not take it with you on your next move.

It's bad enough that these things exists, but it is so much worse that people who spend 10K Euro on their kitchen ("See, you do not have to spend 20K!") call you a liar if you tell them.

The story about Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" might be bad history, but it is perfect fable.

Sixwing: I found the advantages of ramen noodles that they are lightweight, easily stored, quickly made, and need nothing but hot water (e.g. from an electrical kettle) to prepare. No stove, no fridge, no pot, no kitchen. Also, they are hot, spicy and filling. Some of the best value for money when things get bad.

[Sixwing]

@inge: So true, and I still love a good bowl of ramen noodles.

[Kit Whitfield]

Certainly it isn't the be-all and end-all of a good diet, but I've tried eating vegetarian a couple times and I get sooooooo sick, it just doesn't work. (Kudos to the people who can, but I'm not one.

I don't have a citation, but I've heard that some people are able to get all the nutrients they need from a non-meat diet and other people aren't - a genetic thing rather than a case of 'balanced diet'. Anyone know the science on that?

[cyllan]

Most likely, Kit.

I have a black beans & rice recipe that consists of beans + rice + orange juice + cumin that's pretty tasty. Cooking the beans with a ham hock is traditional. For southern-style beans & rice, you make Hoppin' John which is black eyed peas (really a bean), rice and whatever smoked pig product you can get your hands on. If you have onions, celery, or garlic, you can add those in.

When I was really poor, I lived in a 1 room apartment that had a bathroom-style sink and nothing else. There was no kitchen, no stove, no range, nothing. I owned a single pot and a hot-plate. Walking to the grocery store that is 1/2 mile away is pretty miserable in Minnesota in the winter, and it's nearly impossible to bring back a reasonable load of grocery all by hand. The ability to live in a place with non-punishing winters is something I now treasure.

[Brin]

Huh. I don't really think of beans and rice as poor food (though I guess it makes sense). I think of it as special-occasion food for Father's Day and Dad's birthday. It's one of the very few foods for which he's ever expressed actual liking, rather than just not minding.

(I've never actually eaten any. The smell of the canned kidney beans scared me off.)

I also wouldn't have thought of ice cream as easy to prepare. I mean, compared to actually putting something together, sure, but compared to a bag of chocolate-covered almonds (my default chocolate), not so much.

[Mmy]

@inge: People who are plain unable to imagine that a person might not have a kitchen. Or appliances. Or a pan.

One of the most difficult things to get across to people who start out either with a load of gifts from family or housewarming gifts is how incredibly expensive it is to fit out even a one-room dwelling with the basics. This is something we faced all the time in the shelter movement -- how to help some one (usually a woman with at least one or two children) get started when they had had to leave their last home with (quite literally) nothing but the clothes on their backs.

They would not own a dish, a pan, a towel, a plate, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, a plate, a knife or a fork. They would not have a change of clothes or clean underwear to put on after they bathed. They didn't own a bar of soap, a box of detergent or a tube of toothpaste.

They had nothing.

Go to your local cheapest store of choice and price out the above and the total will come to far more than most entry level workers make in a month.

My mother in law was a child of the depression and as she became more affluent she never threw away furniture, pots or pans she just stored them in her basement. And she always bought underwear, towels and cleaning supplies whenever she saw them on sale. Just in case.

When she died we found four complete kitchen sets (plates, knives, forks, towels, placemats and so forth) and dresser drawers full of underwear that had never been removed from the original wrapping, towels that had never been used and cleaning supplies enough to last most households for several years.

We called the local women's shelter and they were ecstatic when we offered to package everything up and deliver it to them. What made me feel especially good was that there was not only enough pots, pans, mops, plates and so forth to furnish four kitchens but also that we could offer women underwear that wasn't worn out and second hand.

[inge]

@mmy: You just answered the question I have been pondering, what to do with those of my kitchen utensils that I will have to part with when I move to the new flat (the one with the induction stove) in a few months' time.

[Mmy]

@Brin: Huh. I don't really think of beans and rice as poor food (though I guess it makes sense).

People who like to "instruct" the poor as to how it is the poor's fault for having difficulty serving nutritious meals on limited salaries just LOVE to bring up "rice and beans" as an example of how the poor are "doing it wrong."

The amazing degree of the unacknowledged privilege is evident in the very first instruction "just buy a 50 lb. bag of rice and a 50 lb. bag of beans."

Okay, anyone else see a problem with that simple fix? Leave aside the problem that when one spends one's food budget "stocking up" there isn't enough money left to feed people today (when you stock up on food think of it as the future borrowing from the present.) Yes, eating in a month will cost less but you have to have enough wiggle room in this weeks food budget in order to pay for food that you won't eat for quite a time.)

Anyone else tried to pick up a 50 lb. bag of beans and carry it home? You need a car. Taking it on a bus with be a problem even if one can pick it up and lug it to the nearest stop. And if you depend on bicycles to get around unwieldy 50 lb. bags of any foodstuff are a problem.

And if you can get those two bags home you have probably already burned through most of your food budget for the week. Not a lot left for things like milk and bread for the children. AND you need space to store the food in. AND you need to live in a place where no one else will "liberate" the food you have bought and you don't need to worry about insects or vermin.

[Loquat]

What mystifies me about the standard "beans and rice" line is that lentils and split peas are a way easier alternative to beans, since they don't require pre-soaking and only need 20 to 60 minutes of cooking time, yet this never seems to be mentioned by those who advise the poor to eat beans and rice.

[Izzy]

@Loquat: Maybe because they're harder to find canned? Otherwise, I've got nothing.

And I agree with you.

[Gyrofrog]

@Kit and Coleslaw,
Usually when I make red beans and rice I use kidney beans, as they're easier to find. But I have seen a smaller bean simply called "red beans" e.g. in a Persian grocery. I can't recall much (if any) difference in taste. And speaking of red beans and rice, interesting this thread came up because I made a big batch last night (and it ain't even Monday). Here's the recipe I have been using. It includes a vegan/vegetarian option.

As for the "just buy a 50 lb. bag" solution, maybe if you live in a house with 1 or 2 dozen others (who also like beans). Dry beans will not keep indefinitely, maybe 6 to 12 months and that assumes they were not sitting in the grocery store for the same amount of time. For example, apparently my kidney beans last night were apparently past their prime, as they never did cook down and get creamy (I had to mash 'em up).

[Steve Morrison]

My local grocery (a Kroger) sells both kidney beans and "red beans" in cans; as Gyrofrog says, the latter are smaller. But I have no idea what species/subspecies they are.

[histrogeek]

One big issue for many is simply storage space. Back when we had adequate money to buy in bulk, my wife and I still had the issue of finding places to put bulk items, especially perishables. And then there is the problem of rodents for bulk dry items. Even though we could buy a 10# bag of rice, we can't keep that much around, only what we can fit in storage containers.

[lonespark]

OMG! All this talk of beans has reminded me of the amazing navy-bean-and-ham soup they served at my office cafeteria back before the ARRA funds petered out and thousands of my associates and I lost our jobs. Soooo delicious. Not good for the cholesterol, I suppose.

[Kirala]

@Anon: No worries about the post! My fave potato solutions have already been listed (well, apart from simply baking potatoes in tinfoil aluminum oh who cares what it's made of, it's tinfoil). My onion solution is to either get a small handful of green onions the day I intend to cook, or get garlic. A single clove is about the right amount to season my single-serving portions. (If awfully garlicky for many people's tastes!)

I can think of a lot of ways around the refrigeration issue if there's a fresh market one can visit daily, but that's a privilege I've had myself so rarely I tend to assume it's not there.

[Darth Ember]

This thread is making me far more conscious of my food privileges. My family can afford to buy good foods, and to have mum stay at home and do home-office things sometimes, so she has time to cook. And where I live, we have space for chickens, for fresh eggs, a garden in summer (side note: once you've had fresh corn, picked hours earlier, other corn ceases to taste like real corn) and various other things. Like oranges and mandarines - we do grow our own, so when they're in season we have a ready source of a good nutritional boost.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Kit: the world over, since the beginning of agriculture, you will find that the standard "peasant food" is a combination of a grain and a legume. Which grain and which legume depends on what is grown in the region, of course. The grain provides the bulk of the calories, and the legumes provide the necessary proteins. Occasional greens and seasonal fruit round out the diet to supply the vitamins you don't get in grains and legumes. Since the human race switched from hunter-gathering to agriculture, actual meat has been a luxury of the well-to-do.

[whidby]

People seem to be confusing "what food you need to eat to stay alive and healthy" with "what food I want to eat."

That confusion is, itself, a sign of privilege.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Addendum: part of the reason for the grain & legume diet, besides being freely available to peasant farmers in bulk, is that they store well. In times past, it might be the only thing you had to eat from fall harvest until the first greens in spring.

[Mmy]

@whidby: People seem to be confusing "what food you need to eat to stay alive and healthy" with "what food I want to eat."

People here or people "out there?" And what do we mean by healthy?

I, personally, get very annoyed when "healthy" isn't understood to include psychologically and emotionally health. The "poor" deserve to have enjoyment and pleasure in their lives.

[Loquat]

Keeping chickens! That's kind of a weird blend of privileges - you have to have adequate space and time, but you also have to live somewhere that allows it, and where the neighbors won't throw fits about the effect of your chickens on their property values. I'm pretty sure I have the space and spare time to keep chickens myself, but the Homeowner's Association* that regulates my neighborhood would never allow such a thing.

*Homeowner's Association: an organization, typically set up to govern newly built developments of condos or suburban houses, which takes care of expenses like sewer and road maintenance within the development, and may also heavily regulate what the residents can do with their houses and yards in the name of maintaining property values. One must join the HOA and pay its membership fee in order to purchase a residence under its jurisdiction. My own HOA is fairly lenient in allowing residents to plant vegetable gardens, whatever decorative plants they like, etc, but others are infamous for not letting people even plant flowers.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

@Mmy: thank you for giving me a notion what to do with my mother's redundant kitchen stuff when I finally clean it out. I also has a mother who was a child of the Great Depression; same thing like you said. I'm not sure there will be all that much kitchen stuff that is useful; Mom never through anything out that wasn't totally destroyed, and lot of it is pretty shabby.

Goodwill has certainly gotten a lot of nice clothes from my donations, however. Mother had very good taste, but none of her stuff fits me or my daughter. Ditto for my father's old clothes.

[Froborr]

The HOA where I live, among other things:

*Regulates when people can move in/out (okay, totally reasonable that they don't want people moving furniture at 4 a.m., but they threatened to call the cops on me because my move wasn't finished yet at 5 p.m., and they don't allow moving on weekends)

*Regulates what color people's window shades can be

*Regulates what decorations people can put on their porches/balconies

Sometimes I wish I owned instead of renting, so I could run for an HOA membership and start pushing to eliminate as many rules as possible.

[Mira]

@Anon - use shallots instead of onions if you want a smaller amount? I think a shallot is about 1/4 of an onion. Kirala's green onion idea is good too.

Adding to the random ideas and tips people have been exchanging - I was really psyched to find that if you stick the bottoms of green onions in a cup of water, in a few days you get a new bunch of green onions! Also, you can bake an egg on top of whatever other thing you're baking for 10 minutes or so and then you have a perfectly "poached" egg on top of your food.

On rice and beans - it is possible to mostly live off of rice and beans and not spend much money, even if you can only get the 1 lb bag of beans and 2 lb bag of rice, and assuming you have the time, space, ability, etc (all non-universal assumptions, I realize). But people who constantly point to rice and beans as the solution to poor people's food problems are also being dumb because guess what? Eating ONLY rice and beans all the time is both really boring and not sufficiently nutritious - it may give you calories, carbs, fiber, and protein, but lots of vitamins and minerals and such come in fruits and vegetables. You have to supplement with sides or sauces at some point. "Eat this one not completely balanced meal and nothing else for life" is SUCH a stupid straw man. I'm so grateful to be in a situation right now where I can afford to eat vegetables other than canned tomatoes, onions, and frozen spinach - not that I can't do a pretty broad range of stuff with those, but variety really is a privilege.

[alsafi]

Kit, kidney beans and red beans aren't quite the same, and azuki beans are different again, though closer in appearance to the small (or Mexican) red bean. Kidneys are the biggest and stay really firm when cooked, and azuki are smallest, sweet-ish in flavor, and probably cook up the mushiest. Small red beans are somewhere between the two in size and firmness, though I find their flavor to be even less "sweet" than kidneys, if that makes any sense. I use small red beans in my red beans and rice, since kidney beans' skins can be a bit tough, but my partner prefers kidneys for her chili. I only really see azuki beans in Asian grocery stores, and we use them to make sweet red bean paste for Japanese desserts.

[Mmy]

There are few things finer that gluten free rice & adzuki bean chips.

And, given this conversation, I felt a passionate desire for Dal Bukhara (curried black gram lentils.) So I prepared some for dinner. Spouse can't indulge (cholesterol) which means I don't have to share. BWAH HA HA!!!!

[inge]

When it comes to gardening or keeping animals for food, there's also the initial investment and the cost of upkeep to consider.

I have tomato plants and herbs on the balcony, but I spend 40 Euros every year on new plants and herbs, because they do not survive the winter, plus 10 Euro on soil and fertiliser.

Getting an allotment (if I *could* get one) would cost upwards of 5K Euro to pay to the previous owner. So I could get up to 20K for it when I returned it, provided it was in perfect state and the market holds, so it would be a brilliant investment... but really, 5K Euro? On welfare level, that's the yearly food budget for a familiy of four. And there aren't plants or tools included yet...

The way to save money growing your own food, I feel, is when you inherit the means of production free of debt. (I know farmers who barely break even, because the farm is not debt-free...)

@Mira: So true. "Poor Economics" has the interesting observation that poor people, if they come into additional food money, do not go for more calories, but for better food. Which is, as it happens, not just "tastier", as mentioned by Orwell, but also fills nutrition needs that bland everyday fare won't.

[Sixwing]

@alsafi, thank you for that; I always thought all three were the same thing, and it's interesting to see that isn't the case.

This also may have something with my failed attempts to generate anko from red beans, having been assured they're the same by other people. *laugh* It never tastes right, and is too runny, and if I'm using the wrong bean, that probably has a lot to do with it.

There are few things finer that gluten free rice & adzuki bean chips.

If we're thinking of the same chips - the super crispy, square, and chili powder-flavored ones... ohhhh yes.

Gardening is -expensive.- Pots are expensive if you're not lucky enough to have a garden plot, soil is expensive if the same (and soil amendments are expensive too, unless you've got a friend with manure-producing critters), plants and seed are expensive unless you have time, ability and facilities to preserve your own.. and that assumes you have varieties that produce fertile seed, which ISTR a lot of them don't.

This year I am a bit grumpy at the weather, because we had a mild freeze two weeks ago that killed all my seedlings, and I had to start over from scratch. Bah.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Room full of cupboards, with a sink and dedicated outlets/circuits to plug in a stove and a refrigerator = kitchen. Table space is also optional.//

I was boggling at that until I remembered that my kitchen didn't have a cooker when I moved in here. I think the council would have sourced me one, but luckily a builder mate of my dad's was fitting a new kitchen for a client and offered me the still-serviceable cooker they were getting rid of.

[Gotchaye]

I can imagine that many people have a huge blind spot about the ability to choose otherwise.

A lot of households prepare at least half of their meals, and may put in a fair bit of work on most dinners. People in these situations might think that preparing every meal isn't really that big of a deal; it's only a little bit harder than preparing most meals.

But this misses two very important facts about people who can choose otherwise. First, they can avoid cooking exactly when cooking is most inconvenient - leaving room to be too exhausted to cook one or two nights a week is hugely more pleasant than having to cook every night. Second, they don't have to cook all of the kinds of things that they enjoy eating - they can still eat everything they enjoy while only cooking the things they enjoy cooking.

And preparing food is probably just less psychologically draining if it's done because you're choosing to do it rather than being forced to do it.

[Indiana Joe]

I think that, "time to cook" is often overlooked. If you only have two or three hours between the time you get home from work and the time you need to be in bed, "convenience" foods look more reasonable - but they cost more.

[ZRAinSWVA.]

Beans...

Preferably navy. Wash thoroughly. Place in a large pot and cover so about 3" of water covers. Boil at high. Refill pot as needed to maintain water level. Do not let get dry! Stir often to keep from sticking and to keep the broth stirred-into the beans.

When they start to get soft (to the taste) and the broth is thickened, add a tablespoon or so of oil. Yes, oil. The fat adds depth of flavor and a silkiness beans don't have alone. Salt to taste.

Make a big pan of cornbread. Not from the box recipe type cornbread if you can help it. The cooked in a cast iron skillet, preheated with oil, kinda corn break-it makes a really crusty cornbread!

Clean and hand-shred some green leaf lettuce and toss with some chopped green onions.

Place a heap of lettuce and onions in a large bowl. Add a nice slice of cornbreat. Smother with well-cooked beans. Add pepper to taste. Let it settle to wilt the lettuce.

Dig in and enjoy.

And a 1 pound bag makes lots of leftovers. And it costs less than a dollar per large serving. And it's wonderful!

[storiteller]

One of my friends had to stop buying anything in cans, because they were too heavy to get home on her bike. That was a real loss in convenience. She had to stop buying milk because the bike path was so beat up the milk bottles kept splitting on the way home.

I find bringing heavy things home is actually a lot easier on a bike than walking, but obviously still harder than driving. I adore my bike grocery bag (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0031M9MN0), but it's really expensive. I'm hoping that as bicycling for transportation in the U.S. increases, practical items like that will both become more available and come down in price.

That's kind of a weird blend of privileges - you have to have adequate space and time, but you also have to live somewhere that allows it, and where the neighbors won't throw fits about the effect of your chickens on their property values.

Talking to my neighbor, it appears that so many people in my neighborhood used to keep chickens that you'd be practically tripping over them on the sidewalk. Then, they outlawed them and only recently brought them back. My neighborhood is historically African-American, so some of the older folks seem a little resentful that people are allowed to have them now when that privilege was taken away from them.

Gardening is -expensive.-

It can be extremely expensive, but it can also be cheaper and less time-intensive than a lot of people realize. I've found there are three key components to lowering the price of gardening - getting supplies that can be shared (including land), getting supplies for free, and getting reusable supplies.

In terms of the land issue, this is where I think community gardens and farms can make a huge difference, especially ones that have both individual and collective plots. Rather than needing to try to grow things on your windowsill, you can grow them much more easily and get much more out of them when the plants are in the ground. Although some community gardens charge a fee, most of the time it's pretty small - $20-30 for the year. That can be a lot, but many also offer discounted rates for low-income folks. In addition, if you grow too much of any one type of vegetable, you can trade with other gardeners, ensuring that everyone has variety without incurring the cost of planting a bunch of different plants. Community gardens and farms can also hold workshops, filling in some of the knowledge gaps that are frequently lost and lowering the bar for participation. Lastly, if the farm has collective plots, a lot of the time you can get vegetables in exchange for volunteering without the time commitment of maintaining your own plot.

As for the free and reusable materials, I've found that I've been able to scavenge a lot of stuff. I mulch my garden with leaves from the cemetery next store, lay down layers of newspaper (which I happen to get for free, although I know this is far from a universal option), and use compost that I made. It took some up-front work in the fall, but that method has also saved me hours upon hours of weeding in the spring.

Again, although it won't work for people who need food Right Now, food stamps in the U.S. can actually be used to buy seeds and seedlings. This has always been allowed, but never very well-promoted. This group has been trying to raise awareness of it: http://www.snapgardens.org/.

On gluten-free and allergy-aware... I have to say, I've started buying gluten-free items when I go grocery shopping for the big food drive at work because someone here recommended it. I would have never considered it otherwise, but I hope someone with celiacs now can eat better because of it.

[gleomstapa]

I find bringing heavy things home is actually a lot easier on a bike than walking

Oh, I agree on that. She didn't have proper panniers, though - just a rack, a milk crate, and some bungee cords. When you combine that setup with a couple miles of bumpy roads, the tradeoffs favored dried beans.

I've seen a few cargo bikes in the wild, as well as a lot of bikes with fenders, so I'm fairly hopeful about the increase in biking being seen as transportation.

A while ago there was a bit of a kerfuffle across town over whether people could raise rabbits, which were banned some years ago for no particularly good reason; I can't remember what the resolution was. Chickens are still prohibited, but that's occasionally ignored by people with agreeable neighbors (another privilege).

[inge]

Transport of groceries: Friend had a handcart to get home groceries for their shopping collective of eight. First time I ever saw something like that. But, of course, it was only 20 Minutes to the store for them, and there was a sidewalk...

Time for cooking: On my "aaargh!"-Forum (I stay there for the recipes...): "Making a salad takes not longer than heating a frozen pizza". That is true if one only considers how long after coming through the door, dinner will be ready. However, I make a salad, I spend half an hour in the kitchen, and have to do the dishes before I go to sleep. I heat frozen pizza, and all the evening's chores are done by the time the pizza is. Guess what I'll do when I'm stressed and tired and it's already half past ten?

@storiteller, re: Gardening: Yes, collectively owning the means of production works, too ;-)

Funny detail I dug up when looking into cost of allotments: Yearly rent is about 20 Euros. Literally Cheaper than dirt. It's only the initial investment that makes this kind of gardening impossible for an able bodied poor person with sufficient skill and free time.

[Rowen]

Keeping chickens! That's kind of a weird blend of privileges

I think this might be a regional thing. Where I grew up (Texas) having chickens meant you either lived in a rural setting, or were poor, or both. It's only since I've moved to NYC that I've seen chickens become a "thing."

[Sereg]

Having an organic/hippie food store near you, is that a privilege? Because at the grocery store, spices are at least $1 even for the cheapass low quality stuff, $7 or more for some of the high-end brand stuff. But at the hippie store down the street that sells spices in bulk, I can get the same amount of spice for less than a dollar. Pennies, in the case of some of the high-potency low-weight ones like white pepper. There's often more variety than at the grocery store, and you can pick which ones you need more of and which you don't use often, instead of having only jars of discrete quantities.

Though to balance that, there is the unfortunate array of incredibly expensive treats that fills the REST of the store.

[Brin]

Though to balance that, there is the unfortunate array of incredibly expensive treats that fills the REST of the store.

Not always. The chocolate-covered almonds in the bulk section are (last I checked) slightly cheaper than the ones at the grocery store. Taste better, too. Shame we only go there when we need chicken livers for holidays. (As far as we can tell, they're the only store in the county that sells chicken liver.)

[Sixwing]

$my_little_town has just lifted their chicken ban. You're still not allowed to have roosters in town (and with the difficulties of sexing chickens at a young age, that can be a hardship too, when one of your prized future-laying-hens turns out to be a noisy and banned rooster) but at least people are allowed to keep hens.

As I really want to keep a few chickens, I need to buy (expensive) or construct (time-consuming) a coop. I'll probably choose the latter option.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Wait, sixwing, do we live in the same town?

We JUST had our chicken laws changed from 'only if you have 2.5 acres+ and are rural/residential zoned'* to 'anyone can keep up to 6 hens but absolutely no roosters in the residential zoning'.

---
*which meant my next door neighbor on one side could keep chickens, but the next door neighbor on the other side I couldn't, since our 0.5 acre lots are a carved out of the corner of his originally 5 acre parcel

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

proofreading fail: "neighbor on the other side AND I couldn't"

[Sixwing]

@cmjr, I don't think so, but if we do, we should meet up sometime! You can email me at redsixwing at redsixwing dot com if you like, but I'd rather not disclose my town in a public space, y'know?

... also, SixSpouse and I are both well-enough acquainted with preparation of very fresh dinner that if we did get a rooster, I suspect his crowning achievement would be "being served alongside a nice salad." So for me, personally, a mis-sexed chick is not a huge deal. After all, I can drive somewhere and buy another.

[Cor Aquilonis]

@Kit Whitfield

Red Beans and Kidney Beans are different, but similar. Red beans are smaller, with creamier texture and less bitterness. They also go better with a wider variety of foods. Kidney Beans are a little more bitter, the skins are tougher and the "meat" is coarser and "chalkier." They tend to be in dishes that "showcase" the kidney bean, like salads.

So, Red Beans are more of a supporting/secondary/filling ingredient, and Kidney Beans are more of a spotlight ingredient. So, if a recipe calls for Red Beans, I wouldn't automatically substitute with Kidney Beans, since the flavor and texture difference can be jarring. I'd be more inclined to substitute with Pinto Beans.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Getting an allotment (if I *could* get one) would cost upwards of 5K Euro to pay to the previous owner. So I could get up to 20K for it when I returned it, provided it was in perfect state and the market holds, so it would be a brilliant investment... but really, 5K Euro? On welfare level, that's the yearly food budget for a familiy of four. And there aren't plants or tools included yet...//

That sounds like a weird system to me. Our allotments, you have to wait for the previous owner to give it up (although there are half a dozen plots standing vacant at the moment) but the only cost is the yearly rent - I pay 30GBP for mine, and the plot has four fruit trees standing on it, so that seems like a bargain.

Seeds are pretty cheap around here - depending what you want you can buy up to 3 packets for a pound - and packets are big enough for sharing between a couple of gardeners or saving from one year to the next. Tools are a big investment, unless you have a network of friends to keep their eyes open at car-boot sales or scrounge up rusty-but-useable tools from abandoned plots.

The biggest barrier to starting growing is know-how. I'm lucky because my dad's always dabbled in vegetable gardening, so I've got his 60 years of accumulated knowledge to draw on, but maybe even more useful I've got the memories of living alongside growing things and helping out from time to time as a child. I'm sure that's a contributory factor to my willingness to go "Oh, the seed packet says sow from March to May, but it's June now, I'll just shove a handful in and hope for the best."

[Izzy]

Also, aren't chickens one of those animals where a female will become male if there isn't a male around?

I could be wrong--Wiki provides no information*, and I'm reluctant to Google "chicken sex" while at work. Or any other time, really.

*Although it does say that chickens retain the gene for teeth, which is mildly alarming.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

re: chicken sex

I don't think so. My friend Amy has a flock of about 18 hens (the max she's allowed in her town) with nary a sign of any of them becoming male.

[cjmr]

I've been spending the morning cooking things to freeze and getting things in the crockpot for dinner because this morning it was only 84 degrees and by dinner time I will be in the mid 90s.

Another food/poverty issue--when it is already hot in your non-AC home/apartment, picking up fast food for dinner on the way home is MUCH more appealing than the thought of cooking.

[Froborr]

Another food/poverty issue--when it is already hot in your non-AC home/apartment, picking up fast food for dinner on the way home is MUCH more appealing than the thought of cooking.

This this this.

My brother usually grills in the summer, but that requires a yard and is pretty expensive in fuel.

We live in an apartment, so our options are to cook, pick up fast food/eat out, or make salad or sandwiches. And while we *have* air conditioning, it doesn't work very well on really hot days like the last three.

[Darth Ember]

On chickens:
Where I live is rural, so it's not quite the same regarding rules. We only keep a few. We're lucky enough to have plenty of space - not so much a wealth thing, really, since my parents were nowhere near as well-off back then as they are now, so it's more that they bought the land back when it was considered even more remote than it is now.
But the chickens... we let them into the garden, in winter, and they eat up all the weeds, and turn those weeds into fertiliser for summer planting.

Living out of town has its own issues though. If we forget something, or miss a chance to buy things... well, we just don't have them until we can next get into town. There's not exactly time to easily drive into town twice in a day. And sometimes we get flooded in when it rains and the water covers the road, and those long, long power lines stretching out to us can be storm-damaged... We get plenty of power outages, and they don't get fixed as fast as they likely would in town. Which also makes cooking tricky if it happens in the evening. We have to keep a little gas cooker thing and a lot of candles for that.

[lonespark]

Another food/poverty issue--when it is already hot in your non-AC home/apartment, picking up fast food for dinner on the way home is MUCH more appealing than the thought of cooking.

Yeah, this. I'd been getting around it by grilling (my yard-having privilege, let me show you it! Though I have done a lot of grilling on fire escapes...) but then this week it was even hotter outside, and we just ate random things we didn't have to cook, and popsicles (freezer privilege ahoy!)

[lonespark]

Living out of town has its own issues though. If we forget something, or miss a chance to buy things... well, we just don't have them until we can next get into town.

I remember this, too. Someone mentioned large-scale efforts to drive for shopping, which we used to do in college to get to someplace you could buy, say, underwear (before they relocated the walmart) but when I lived in Indiana, there was no place to buy anything at all without driving for 45 minutes on backwoods roads, which you couldn't do in various weather conditions.

[cjmr]

I just sent cjmr's husband the shopping list for the errands that he will do on his drive home from 'town with larger stores where he works'. That was the second biggest culture shock thing moving here--we used to live less than a 10-minute drive from three grocery stores + one small mall, now the closest non-grocery, non-hardware stores are close to 30 minutes away.

[chris the cynic]

I don't think chickens sex can change, but I do seem to remember that some domesticated food bird can pull off parthenogenesis.

*googles*

"Parthenogenesis occurs in turkeys" Ok, so not chickens. But the point is, I can see someone mistaking that for changing sex. You've got a bunch of female turkeys, they start producing babies, you assume that some of your turkeys turned male to pull off this feat.

[Mike Timonin]

Here in upstate New York, the town we moved out of allowed 4 chickens, no roosters. But chickens are sold by the 6, so you really need to buy 12 and split them with 2 friends - and there's the rooster issue. However, we considered it seriously enough to do some research on coops. Our landlord nixed that, though (which is probably for the best, actually).

[inge]

@Nick: It is weird. I was baffled when it turned up in my research on allotments.
I wonder if it grew naturally -- you paid the previous owner for stuff they left to you, like the fence and the toolshed --, or if it was created to discourage people from neglecting their allotment. It *does* keep a rare good in circulation and cuts down on hoarding, but ... weird.

[Darlington County]

"buying food and preparing meals is one of those things that is so fundamentally different when one is (even comparatively) well off that it can be hard to grasp that one's own experiences are shot through with privilege."

One can live (almost) exclusively on rice and beans - I did it for months at a time in the past. I would supplement with citrus or veggies once or twice a week. When I was able to pick up more work, I could spring for pasta and tuna fish.

But it did give me a pretty good understanding of what it means to be poor and it also gave me an appreciation of the fact that you have to work pretty hard in this country (unless you're mentally or physically disabled) not to be able to afford food.

Obesity is an epidemic in this country, even or perhaps especially among the poor. And, last time I checked, obesity was not the result of inadequate caloric intake.

[storiteller]

But it did give me a pretty good understanding of what it means to be poor and it also gave me an appreciation of the fact that you have to work pretty hard in this country (unless you're mentally or physically disabled) not to be able to afford food. Obesity is an epidemic in this country, even or perhaps especially among the poor. And, last time I checked, obesity was not the result of inadequate caloric intake.

There's a huge difference between "food" and "good food," both in the nutritionally sound and delicious senses. Obesity is not the result of inadequate caloric intake, but often the highest calorie things that have substantial enough bulk to fill your stomach are the cheapest. Especially if you're not only short on money, but on time, as a number of commenters have very explicitly explained earlier in the thread. In addition, making rice and beans is impossible unless you have a half-decently equipped kitchen, as a shocking number of apartments lack these days. Just today there was an article in the Express newspaper about how even higher-end condos in D.C. aren't coming with an oven or even a full-sized fridge!

So please don't overgeneralize when there are two pages of comments that already contradict your point.

[Mmy]

@Darlington County: One can live (almost) exclusively on rice and beans - I did it for months at a time in the past. I would supplement with citrus or veggies once or twice a week. When I was able to pick up more work, I could spring for pasta and tuna fish.

Well, if you were having citrus or veggies once or twice a week you were certainly not living (almost) exclusively on rice and beans.

And it is not true to simply say that you have to work pretty hard in this country (unless you're mentally or physically disabled) not to be able to afford food.

Is it "harder" to starve to death in the United States than in some other countries in the world? Yes. But it isn't "hard" to be an economic circumstance that makes it impossible to have well-rounded, nutritious meals for everyone in your family. And for all too many people affording good food for their children involves doing without things such as dental care and medications for adult members of the family.

Indeed, if you listen to members of this community there are people in the United States, well educated people with jobs, who are dependent on food stamps just to keep food on their family's table.

[lonespark]

There's also the thing where barely-adequate calories and nutrition, along with lack of healthcare and the general depressing state of the struggle to get by can make people a lot less likely to exercise. You don't feel like it, and you don't know when you'll have to use that energy.

And small children can make exercise and transportation a logistical challenge/nightmare. Especially in the face of even minor mental health issues.

[cjmr]

"Obesity is an epidemic in this country, even or perhaps especially among the poor. And, last time I checked, obesity was not the result of inadequate caloric intake."

Actually, there is increasing evidence that obesity in adulthood may be linked (in part) to inadequate nutritious caloric intake during the prenatal period, infancy, and/or childhood. See the 'Health at Any Size' website for the 101s on this.

[Mike Timonin]

Obesity is an epidemic

This construction bothers me. Epidemic implies, to me, something that is contagious - like influenza, or SARS. You can't catch obesity from an obese person, any more than you can catch pregnancy from a pregnant person. Is there a better term than epidemic, or am I mistaken in my belief that it should refer to contagious diseases only?

[hapax]

Of course obesity is "catching", Mike Timonin. It rubs off on you if you don't shame the fatties enough.

[Darlington County]

“Obesity is not the result of inadequate caloric intake, but often the highest calorie things that have substantial enough bulk to fill your stomach are the cheapest.”

The reason why I ate rice an beans was because it was the cheapest option. During those lean years, McDonalds and Taco Bell were a treat for me precisely because they were too expensive to eat regularly.

“making rice and beans is impossible unless you have a half-decently equipped kitchen”

Oh please. You need a pot and a heat source and a spoon. You don’t even need a “kitchen” at all.

“So please don't overgeneralize when there are two pages of comments that already contradict your point.”

If my personal experience and opinions doesn’t align with those of others, I shouldn’t express them? Or I should tailor them so as not to contradict those of others? You might want to think about the implications of your pronouncements.

“But it isn't "hard" to be an economic circumstance that makes it impossible to have well-rounded, nutritious meals for everyone in your family”

It’s also hard to locate a good place to keep your pony in the city.

“Well, if you were having citrus or veggies once or twice a week you were certainly not living (almost) exclusively on rice and beans.”

Could you let me know how you define “(almost) exclusively”? Because for me, when you eat rice for breakfast every morning 7 days a week and rice and beans for dinner 7 days a week and have an orange or some spinach once every week or two, I think it is living (almost) exclusively on rice an beans.

But, you got me. I also put sugar from little sugar packets I took from coffee shops on my rice sometimes and I would put ketchup or hot sauce from packets I stole from Taco Bell on my rice and beans. I also drank lots of water.

“Of course obesity is "catching", Mike Timonin. It rubs off on you if you don't shame the fatties enough.”

(American) society does actively shame the obese, yet their numbers continue to rise.

[Izzy]

@DC: Well, yes.

So...what's your point, exactly? If you're acknowledging that American society shames the obese, that would imply you don't think it's a matter of choice/laziness/etc.

But if you're coming on here comparing adequate nutrition for your family to having a pony, which...I don't even know where to start with that one...and talking about how it's not that hard to blah blah blah, you'd seem to be implying otherwise.

Or do you just want to talk about how hard you had it, and how much scrappier and more bootstrap-levitation-enabled you are than people who find that situation difficult?

[Mmy]

One can live (almost) exclusively on rice and beans - I did it for months at a time in the past.

Could you let me know how you define “(almost) exclusively”? Because for me, when you eat rice for breakfast every morning 7 days a week and rice and beans for dinner 7 days a week and have an orange or some spinach once every week or two, I think it is living (almost) exclusively on rice an beans.

Ah yes. That <sarcastic snark> would work for a struggling family with 2 or 3 small children. Yes, indeed a wonderfully balanced diet for a growing family. And yes, of course, it isn't a problem at all for a tired woman to drag bags of beans back home on the bus. And yes, the children will all cheerfully wait patiently for the rice/beans to be made and never, ever cry or complain. </sarcastic snark>

[Froborr]

Or do you just want to talk about how hard you had it, and how much scrappier and more bootstrap-levitation-enabled you are than people who find that situation difficult?

Dunno if this is the case for Darlington County, but I see this a lot, and I don't get it.

I worked my way up out of poverty, worked my way through college, got a decent job, and now I'm clinging precariously to lower-middle-class and striving to bit-by-bit claw my way upward.

And you know what? It was hard. Really hard. I could not have done it without enormous effort on my part.

And you know what else? I could not possibly have done it without an enormous amount of help from others and lucky breaks, from the food stamps that kept us from needing to live on rice and beans, to the public schools (among the best in the country) that prepared me for college, to parents that instilled a love of learning, to the life insurance payout that meant I could work my way through college *without* incurring massive debt.

The last two paragraphs don't contradict each other, and I don't understand why so many people seem to think they do.

And more to the point, I *know* how hard it is, and I want everyone else to get *at least* as much help as I did, preferably a lot more.