Imagine a giant sandwich, an old-fashioned Dagwood, so big you can’t get your mouth open wide enough to get around it. So you take it apart, you nibble at the edges, you take small bites. That’s what I’m doing today. Taking small bites of a big sandwich.
Forgive me if it’s an untidy process, please.
Let’s talk about Gwyneth Paltrow’s seven limes and poverty cooking in America.
I would like to get out of the way that I have never once had to scrimp money for food. I am enormously lucky and I know it. Nonetheless, understanding the economics of cooking, food, food production, are all a big part of my life, as they are of any person who runs a from-scratch kitchen, so I approach the issue with both privilege and a modicum of understanding.
Much has been written about Ms. Paltrow’s attempt at “the SNAP Challenge” and her abject failure. She was asked by a friend to try something and undertook it without any research or understanding of the siutation. That’s going to lead to abject failure. That said, a lot of the criticisms of her attempt have also demonstrated a failure to understanding the problem.
I don’t pretend to fully understand the problem but I will say that the best article I’ve read on the issue was at Vox.com. The author, Danielle Kurtzleben, explains that no one is expected to live entirely on SNAP benefits and thus the central premise of the “challenge” is flawed. She also explains that the real trap over poverty in America isn’t eating on $29/week but having to decide if you should spend your money on food or keeping the lights on.
Personally, I’m thrilled Ms. Paltrow took the challenge, flawed though it may be. I have seen more discussion of SNAP in the past week than I saw in the past three years. Most of that previous discussion was prompted by things like HB 813, a bill introduced by Missouri state representative and complete failure of a human being, Rick Brattin (R). It was intended to limit SNAP benefits from purchasing steak or seafood, because…. poor people should only eat ground beef?
If you would like to read a much more thoughtful (albeit somewhat dated) look at poverty cooking than Ms. Paltrow managed, I suggest that you pick up Jeffery Steingarten’s “The Man Who Ate Everything,” and read his essay “Staying Alive.” The whole book is worth your time, if you enjoy food. In it, he also explores aspects of poverty cooking from an enormously privileged position, but he does so by cooking on the “Thrifty Meal Plan.”
That’s the pamphlet put out by the USDA with cooking tips, suggestions, and a two-week meal plan with recipes. It’s 70-odd pages and full of slightly condescending advice like “The food lists are not shopping lists. Your shopping list will contain only those items that you do not have on hand.” The menus are unappealing, at least to me. Unsurprisingly, they rely heavily on “nutritious, low-cost foods such as potatoes, macaroni, and rice,” AKA, piles of simple carbs. Now, I love carbs as much as the next woman (unless that woman is my sister in law) but I’m not going to pretend that white pasta is nutritious. The main meals are primarily meat based, which is dodgy both nutritionally, economically, and ecologically. The one vegetarian main meal is a cheesy stuffed potato.
And therein lies much of the problem of poverty cooking in America.
I could keep my family fed and happy on $29/per person per week. I’m 87% percent certain of this statement. But that is a totally meaningless statement because it totally overlooks the main problems that an actually poor person would have with the same task.
I have a beautifully stocked kitchen. Seriously, when I’m cooking, my kitchen looks like a badly organized Williams-Sonoma photo shoot. And they are very good pots and pans. I own pans that literally cost more than my first car. (My first car was $125.) In addition, I have excellent knives, a good food processor, a stick blender, a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, and a slow cooker. I have seen the pots and pans and small appliances at Goodwill. I might be able to cook with those things, I’m sure I would not be able to cook well on those things.
There’s also my spice cabinet. I own seven kinds of salt and five kinds of thyme. Seriously. Five kinds of thyme. The smallest possible package of thyme at Penzey’s is about $4.
So, if I want to add a pinch of thyme (about 10 cents worth?) to my dinner, I need to invest $4 of my $29/week. That’s about 1/7th of my whole budget! Sure, I have the thyme for the rest of the month, but I still need to have found that money up-front to buy it and use it over that month. I need to be able to invest in thyme.
Now, before you go off on me, I am aware that there are a few places, a very very few places, that you can buy tiny amounts of spices and herbs. Theoretically, you could buy 10 cents worth of thyme at these places. In fact, I know all those places in my area. But do you know all of them in your area? Are they on your way home from work? Are they where you do all your regular shopping? Do you have the time to stop at the specialty store for 10 cents of thyme every time you want to make a meal with it?
Which brings us back to another major reason that I could “win” the SNAP challenge in a way that a poor person probably couldn’t. I know how to cook. I know how to cook and cook well. I have, in fact, spent more than two decades learning how to cook. I did not start out a good cook and I have ruined plenty of food along the way. Learning involves mistakes. When I burn dinner, I throw it out and order pizza. Someone trying to cook from the Thrifty Meal Plan likely doesn’t have that option.
Just like they don’t have the option to watch a decade’s worth of Alton Brown, Julia Child, and Christopher Kimball. That’s how I learned to cook, by the way. Watching Alton and Julia and Christopher. Not from my mom or from school — home ec wasn’t even an option in my schools, if I remember correctly. And my mom worked — she didn’t have time to teach me, she was busy putting a meal on the table. I learned it on my own. It took time and energy. It continues to take time and energy as I learn more and more.
Time and energy that you likely don’t have if you’re working two jobs and trying to get your kid to school on time.
Hell, just cooking dinner takes time and energy. The TMP relies on ingredients and not convenience food, which is good sense. But when you’re exhausted from a long day of work and you have to get ready for a long night at work, while helping your kids with homework, you don’t have the time to chop and cut and peel and saute. You want dinner NOW.
Finally, I have several excellent stores in easy distance from me. I can buy fresh fruits and vegetables every day or so, good meat when I want it. I shop frequently. I don’t have to buy all my food once a week or, worse, once a month. I can pop out to the store if I run out of something. If you don’t know about food deserts, please take a few minutes to learn about them. Unsurprisingly, the poorer you are, the more likely to you are to live in a food desert.
The TMP assumes a lot: a well-stocked kitchen, a decent spice cabinet, a working knowledge of how to cook, access to good food, time and energy to actually cook. If you don’t want to rely on the questionable recipes that the USDA offers, you need to spend time doing meal planning and researching nutrition. If you have an special food needs, you need to spend more time.
There is no easy solution. It’s a big-ass Dagwood sandwich and it’s impossible to chomp it all down in one bite. Things that I do to try to help: I donate money to my local food bank and my kid’s school food bank. Because kids are the ones that hunger hurts the most and it kills me to know that she’s going to school with kids who are hungry. I advocate for a return to home ec in the schools and I’m teaching my kid how to cook. I write to my senators and congresspeople. I call out people who say stupid things about poor people. I don’t vote for people who want to cut SNAP.
So, please, before you being mocking Ms. Paltrow for failing, take a few minutes to research the problem and see if you can do something more productive than making fun of her on social media.
One Pot, One Knife 