In the belly of the SNAP dragon

Is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program a cute, friendly little dragon or a mean fire-breathing dragon?

So, forgive the tortured metaphor, but SNAP (aka food stamps aka CalFresh here in the Golden State) really can appear very differently to different people, depending on their situation, emotional state – and how long the line they are standing in stretches.

In previous posts I’ve discussed the polarized views that food stamps trigger in the community at large, but this is also true amongst those who are eligible for or receiving them. Most people do not want to or enjoy being on food stamps. Some feel intimidated from signing up or come off the program before they are really able, sometimes because they can’t keep up with the reporting requirements or because they take a hopeful view on how their income will hold up. Then you have those who are afraid of the government having detailed information on them or applying when they are in the middle of putting forward an application for citizenship. There are many fears, myths and barriers which prevent people from taking the help they are entitled to.

Sometimes they are afraid that the hand that feeds might also bite.

So, cuddly or spiky, I got a chance this week to enter into the belly of the beast. I took a visit  local DSS office, which is at the County complex in Goleta to interview three staff members. As you can see, the building looks pretty classy on the outside:

DSS in SB.

Inside it is still nice, but it is hard to escape the cubicles and glass barriers environment completely, and a waiting room full of people, who I did not want to take a photograph of. (The feeling was mutual on their side).

Dang, they have Dora the Explorer playing.

The DSS version of the iPad! And you can only push one button.

I spoke to Maria, Mario and Maria, which could be a wonderful mariachi group, but who are in fact Maria Gardner, Deputy Director County of Santa Barbara, Department of Social Services, Mario R. Velasco, Division Chief Santa Barbara, Department of Social Services and Maria Dwyer, Eligibility Supervisor for Calfresh in Santa Barbara.

These are nice, hard-working, dedicated people, and they indicated that SB County has a current total CalFresh participation of approximately 14,000 households or 31,000 people.  (Out of a total population of 400,000). They saw an 8% increase last year alone and indicate that they are seeing a different population of people, more middle class.

Mario: We process 2000 applications per month during busy time and partnering with the food bank to do outreach helps us draw people in.  We start interviews at 7am and can go through to 6pm to try and accommodate people’s schedules. We tried doing interviews on weekends but out of the 20 clients we scheduled only 3 showed up. If it is a rush application, we guarantee to process it within three business days.

Maria Gardner: The lives of clients can sometimes be pretty chaotic which makes it hard for them to make interviews sometimes. If their car breaks down they don’t typically have AAA to come to the  rescue. So there are lots of perfectly understandable reasons why clients can’t show.  

Maria Dwyer: They don’t realize that they can call to reschedule and don’t show and then reapply again later, slowing things down.

Maria Gardner: The amount you receive will only get less if the household composition or circumstances of income change, but otherwise they stay consistent. People are coming off and on the rolls all the time (especially in Santa Maria, where there are a lot of agricultural workers whose income yo-yos). People don’t want to be on the program, so sometimes they come off the program prematurely and that causes a lot of ‘churn’ and reapplications, which slows things down somewhat.

We try and dispel myths about fraud and waste in the system and we often find ourselves in the defensive mode of justifying why we are administering these programs which are a basic safety net for our community, rather than being able to present the positive side that 99% of all these recipients are legitimate and not defrauding.

Mario: Often people see someone using their EBT card in a supermarket and think: ‘ How dare they buy this extravagant thing, when I am in line to buy this frugal or unhealthy thing’, so there is judgment about that. They might not see that person next week because they have no benefit left. It is down to individual choice but we try and steer things with education.

Maria Dwyer: There is a large nutrition education element to Calfresh these days. There are publications and recipe cards and we partner with public health for some of these activities.

Erik: Thanks for letting me speak to you.

As with most things in our lives today, getting any attention or help comes down to how much we want to wait in line or hang on the telephone or answer questions. The CalFresh program is a complex administrative machine which can be unyielding and sometimes impersonal, but this is the system we have, so we first need to protect it and then steadily improve it, from within and without.  I’m sure I’ll get plenty of comments about people’s experiences with the DSS.

Not so much time to dip into the food stuff this post and will report more next time. Still, I have been pleased how many great comments I have been getting from people about their experiences. Please take a moment to take a peek at the comments on some of the posts if you have not already done so. These include the challenges of people facing food insecurity. Someone also wanted to know where I got the fish I mentioned in one of my meal logs but not in my list of purchased items! I’m glad people are keeping an eye on me. (And by the way the fish was purchased with my food stamp money but after the first listing I provided).

On Thursday I braved hellish rainy traffic to go to Orange County for a board meeting of the California Association of Food Banks (I serve on the board). We work very closely with them through the Farm2Family program which helps us purchase low-cost produce from across California and we also work with them on State level advocacy.  For the meeting, I planned ahead and packed a lunch for myself and warned them not to get me one.

I turned my back on the nice packaged lunch, thereby remaining virtuous and saving another tree for the box

Captain Virtuous – I stayed with my trusty Ak Mak crackers and kind of yummy tuna and fresh vegetable mix with rice vinegar, with tomatoes and cucumbers on top

This Friday I spoke at a National Conference of State Legislators Hunger Partnership meeting which breezed through town, featuring  Senator Renee S. Unterman, Georgia and Representative Dwight Evans, Pennsylvania and a bunch of others. We had been asked to speak to them about our innovative programs at the Foodbank and I mentioned about the Food Security Challenge. There was a lot of interest from representatives around the country about adopting the type of approach espoused by our organizations and which I have been pushing through my ‘From Hunger to Health Blog.’

I have been super diligent about not taking any of the food and snacks that are offered to me at meetings and other business situations that I have to navigate. I have only been taking tea or water so that at least people don’t feel that I am totally snubbing their hospitality. However this time I definitely didn’t snub the hospitality because I took home 5 of my favorite tea bags from the presentation. Call me a thief, call me a cheat, but no one’s going to miss that from a huge hotel catering department, and you have to be aware of the ‘low hanging fruit’ in your environment when you’re on food stamps!

Which would you rather have? Five teabags or a state representative’s business card?

Next week I am going to Chicago for three days. I sit on the National Advisory Council for Feeding America (the nationwide network of Foodbanks) and we meet five times a year to advise the senior management team of Feeding America about the issues involved in taking what can be perceived as a very local issue (hunger) and giving it a national perspective and solution. There is a lot of focus on joint advocacy, food sourcing and training. Hey, I know I go to a lot of meetings, but they do actually lead to things happening or I wouldn’t go.

So, Chicago is a very beautiful city, but the problem is that I’m on food stamps, and all my food is, like, in Santa Barbara…

I’ll be offered nice dinners and lunches and I’m going to have to ‘Just Say No’ again. The bigger challenge will be sourcing food and being able to keep to my budget while staying there. If I try and smuggle any more packets of my frozen chili, the TSA will be convinced that I am trying to smuggle plastic explosives on the plane – and my chili just doesn’t have that kind of kick.

In Chicago I’ll be meeting with SNAP experts at Feeding America and also checking out a SNAP outreach/ Food Distribution on Chicago’s South Side. It should give me a chillier view of the world of food stamps, where having a nice little salad might not cut it if it is freezing cold outside.

Let’s see how this Santa Barbara ’60 degrees is freezing’ wimp does in the Windy City!

Stamp Collector or Literary Genius?

Yesterday I was bemoaning the repetitious nature of my Food Security Challenge diet. Today, I was able to do something about it, to get some new ideas, to get stimulated about nutrition again. I didn’t put my feet up and watch the cooking channel hoping that some inspiration would magically transfer to me through the airwaves. No, instead I headed down to the Foodbank’s Healthy School Pantry at Isla Vista Elementary school.

Healthy School Pantry is a program we are very excited about at the Foodbank. Last year we won a national Hunger’s Hope Award for the program as the best child nutrition program in the country.  The concept behind HSP is that you can’t help people become more food secure by just giving out food. You have to provide the education – what we call the ‘food literacy’ – for families to make effective and economic use of the food they have.

Many of us are reasonable cooks and smart about what we buy, but a lot of those skills can go by the wayside when people are incredibly busy. The easy solution is sought out and that is usually not very healthy. Also we do see families where the parents are pretty much heat and serve. The grandparents can cook, but the parents have forgotten, were never taught or are too busy.

I’m finding in my own challenge that food literacy skills are not something that is nice to have, but that are absolutely essential if I am going to make it through the month with very little money for food, but still wanting to stay healthy. How can I stretch my food stamp dollars? How can I utilize that large quantity of a carrots that I got from the food distribution before they go bad?

We made the decision to focus a lot of energy on a series of programs for kids, called Feed the Future, which starts food literacy training at the youngest age possible and then builds on skills all the way until high school graduation.

This is not going to stop people losing their jobs, or avoid the effects of a national recession. What it will do is give them the skills to take the modest safety nets we have (food stamps and Foodbank/Member agency food distributions) and utilize them to stay healthy. The great thing is that these ‘survival’ skills are really ‘thriving’ skills, because they are equally applicable in better economic times. Using good nutrition to be healthy is the number one preventative health tool we all possess, and Feed the Future is designed to make it available to all.

So, what did I find down at IV Elementary School? Not some food distribution where everyone is standing in a line, feeling disempowered, but an exciting circle of activities where people are learning how to cook a delicious dish, how to grow more of their own food, about nutrition and even having some some fun and games on our bike blenders.

This is how the pantries are laid out:

How the HSP model works.

My first stop was to see Foodbank community health volunteer Angie Rios and Foodbank Health Education and Evaluation Manager Serena Fuller and the recipe of the day they were demonstrating.

Serena and Angie

The good thing about HSP is that it provides the actual ingredients you need to cook the recipe that is featured. That may not sound like much, but in the food bank world, where we are used to just giving out the food we have on hand, it is an epic achievement.

This recipe used basic ingredients like a boxed macaroni and cheese and a bagged marinara sauce that were both availabe at the Foodbank and then incorporated minutely diced celery, carrots and cauliflower to make a dish that was not only incredibly good for you, but down right delicious and wolfed up by hordes of kids, never suspecting just how many fresh vegetables they were ingesting.

Simple ingredients, delicious result

Whilst at the HSP, I had to try out a healthy smoothie using the amazing bike blender. Last month we made an amazing smoothie with kiwi fruit, bananas and spinach, where no kid noticed the spinach and everyone loved it. This time we had frozen strawberries with bananas and apple juice.

Foodbank CEO pretends to assist child whilst stealing entire blender of delicious smoothie

People were also learning about nutrition from Justine Meyer, our Dietetic Intern.

Justine talks practical nutrition

A key component of HSP is a chance to get involved in our Grow Your Own Way program  Program Manager Oscar Carmona shares some spinach seeds and the skills to plant them.

Oscar shares spinach seeds

Providing this friendly and supportive range of services is augmented by volunteers who are helping us get eligible people pre-screened for food stamps.

Our wonderful Calfresh volunteers

The HSP also includes a distribution of other food items and is current serving 14 schools around the county.

Visiting the HSP certainly fired me up to try a new skill, which is to make up some large batches of a very healthy marinara sauce with pureed fresh vegetables, which will enable me to create a whole new raft of dishes for my next week on the Food Security Challenge. Stay tuned!

Our HSP was visited by County Supervisor Doreen Farr

Download the recipe at:

13-01-15 HSP Baked Macaroni and Cheese with Marnara Sauce and Breadcrumbs

Food Log Wednesday

B – 2 rice cakes and orange

L – curried chicken salad and Ak Mak Crackers

D – Salsa and chips and HSP free samples!

Truth or Dare

Visa, Mastercard, American Express…or EBT?

I have now completed the first full week of my Food Security Challenge, and the challenges it is bringing are beginning to come into focus.

And they are not just nutritional.

I knew this was a touchy area before beginning the challenge, and that was part of the point. To get the conversation going on this vital area of federal support that could bring another $80 million into the community to be spent locally, an investment that would benefit the entire community, not just those on food stamps.

There has been quite a lot of reaction to the challenge from all sides of the political and personal spectrum. My own mother warned me that I could be seen as a ‘poser,’ spending a limited amount of time living in a situation that millions can’t walk away from at the end of a single month.

And you have to listen to your mother, right?

So I wanted to take the opportunity to spell out again that the reason for the challenge is to bring to attention a difficult situation that many face. It is not to make light of their situation, but to bring light to bear on it. It is not a lark, it is serious business. And if I want to try and have fun doing it and crack a few bad jokes, well that is just me, and no one should take it personally.

Food distributions, the lifesaver.

So, explanations over. The simple facts of my current situation are that I have spent $67.80 of my allotted $200 after the first week of my month. (See below for a breakdown) Not wildly over the $50 per week I would spend if I was dividing my total available food stamp money into four. Also  I have purchased some things like cereal and cooking oil, which will last me more than a week. I also have a good 8 meals still frozen. On the negative side I have to remember that I was on the challenge for three days before I could spend any food stamps, so really that figure represents four days of purchasing, not seven.

One thing is already crystal clear – that I would have no chance of remaining healthy and well nourished for the whole period without the additional help I have accessed from the Foodbank and our partners in the community. I received groceries of the value of $80 from the first distribution and produce worth $25 from the Mobile Farmers Market I attended.

The production line is cranking out the meals, but mass-produced is never as yummy.

I am eating well, and eating healthily. Yet my diet is boring. I have been busy and have not had as much time to devote to cooking as I would like. Also that would require more money. I would need extra ingredients and my money would run out pretty quickly. When the Foodbank first started devoting a lot of attention to teaching ‘food literacy’ skills (cooking, shopping, budgeting) people felt that it was a nice addition to our activities of providing and distributing food, but that they were not core to what we did. Now it is clear that these basic skills are what can help people use the food we provide to be truly healthy. You don’t need to be given a recipe and to follow it slavishly, but to use basic techniques which allow you to produce a number of variants of the same basic ingredient.

So I better start practicing what I preach and make my food life a little more ‘literate’ than it’s been the last few days.

And now I see that 18 month old Mia has eaten the last of my pretzels. How could she…

Week One Food Stamp Purchases
Tomatoes	3.49
2 x Hothouse Cucumbers	3.38
Oat and peanut bars	2.29
2 x AkMak Crackers	3.38
2 x Rice Cakes	2.98
Almond and Seed Bars	3.99
Salsa	2.99
6 x bananas	1.14
2 x brown rice	2.40
Rice vinegar	1.20
3 x Avocado	2.97
Poblamo peppers	.79
Cilantro	.49
Parsley	.49
Flax Plus Cereal	2.99
Pumpkin Granola	2.99
Tortilla chips	2.69
2 x black beans	1.78
Fire roasted peppers	1.99
Olives	2.29
Corn	.89
Chocolate cat cookies	2.99
Eggplant hummus	1.99
2 x garbanzo beans	1.78
Olive oil	4.99
Licorice allsorts	2.29
Multigrain pretzels	1.39
Cucumber Hothouse	1.69
Onions	.79
Tomatoes	2.29
TOTAL	67.80
AMOUNT OF $200 remaining	132.20

My exciting diet

Fri

B – Cereal

L – salad

D – soup

Sat

B – x

L – Chicken soup

D – Chili and salad

Sun

B – Eggs

L – Chili

D – Fish and rice

Mon

B – Cereal

L –Tomato and Bean Salad

D – Chili and salad

Tuesday

B – Cereal

L – Eggplant hummus

D – chili and green salad

Cooking Up A Storm

How do you live on food stamps without having got the food stamps yet?

It’s hard, actually.

I woke up this morning at 3.33am with intense hunger pangs. My stomach wanted a bowl of my flax cereal with fruit, nuts, oats and skimmed milk and I wanted it now. This wasn’t an option however, so I pulled myself out of bed and had some of the dry corn flakes that I had picked up at the food distribution. It felt like a low point.

My whole nutrition rhythm seemed confused. I was used to being in charge of what went into my stomach and for three days now I had given over the rhythm to whatever the outside world would throw in my direction. I had to get the food stamps to be able to assert some kind of control over my digestion.

I weighed myself and discovered that I had lost three pounds in the six days since I had previously weighed myself (3 on the challenge, 3 off it). This isn’t the food stamp diet, so I need to find a new balance.

As you know, I have not actually placed a real food stamp application, I am just going through the process and waiting the period I would have to wait before getting help if my situation was bad. Today would involve going out to the DSS and waiting as long as it took for a cancellation, so that I could get my interview. Next week in my month-long odyssey, I’ll be interviewing a couple of representatives from the DSS in Santa Barbara to get their perspective.

At 2pm I attended the weekly Mobile Farmers Market that the Foodbank runs at the Franklin Center. On the first day of my challenge I attended the monthly pantry distribution there. Today was a a once a week vegetables only. And this is what I scored:

Salinas Salads Assorted – approximately 4 lbs

Upland Cress – 1 pack

Celery – 2 bunches

12 oz. bags of Salad Mix – 2 bags

Potatoes – 5 lbs

Cabbage – 1 head

Carrots – 3 lbs

Cauliflower – 1 head

It was good to know what produce I would have so that I could have my food stamps stretch further.

Finally by 5pm on day 3 I opted to assume that I would have my EBT card by now which would give me $200 to spend on food items at stores that would accept them.  I wasted no time in packing up my youngest daughter Mia (18 months) for what was going to be the most exciting shopping trip I had undertaken in quite a while. Forget about Black Friday, this was Food Stamp Thursday.

Mia Regina Talkin: Is this what I wear to go food shopping?
Dad: Perhaps a little overstated.

I remember someone at college advising me not to grocery shopping when you are hungry. Sound advice and I tried to control myself. I was working with my comparison shopping list that I had developed, showing the prices for Cabrillo Market, Fresh and Easy and Trader Joes.

I hit all three stores and spent a combined $43 – I’m trying to keep it modest and focused on items that will allow me to create multiple meals for the month, but that’s still nearly 1/4 of my money in one pop.

This is what I bought:

Cabrillo Market

Brown Rice – 2 packets

Rice Vinegar – 1 bottle

Onions – 1lb

Cilantro – bunch

Parsley- bunch

red wine vinegar – 1 bottle

Pablamo peppers – 2

Avocados  3 super-ripe ones that were on sale

Fresh and Easy

Fresh tomatoes – on sale

Canned black beans and Garbanzo beans

wholewheat pasta

Spot those bargains at Fresh and Easy

Trader Joe’s

Olive oil

Sesame Crackers

Licorice Allsorts – A man has to have a vice

Almond bars

Oat and Peanut butter bars

5 bananas

chili powder

Returning home it was time to fight back against the hunger beast by using my materials to generate multiple meals that I can put in the refrigerator and the freezer to last me for the rest of the month. By this point I felt very weak from hunger and shopping and trying to prevent Mia from squishing the avocados with her fingers ‘just because she could.’

I made some of my famous (to my family at least) Inauthentic Authentic Guacamole to give myself the strength to cook the rest of the meals. I even felt some generosity of spirit return, so I shared some of it with Mia and my wife Mari.

Gordon Ramsay with blander language

All that cooking was hard work. I spent about three hours preparing three different dishes at the same time. The guacamole first and then a chicken soup and a turkey chili.

I utilized a lot of things like the chicken and the ground turkey I had got from the MFP and the celery, carrots and other items from the MFM distribution.

I used a lot of old plastic containers to fill up with my soup and my chili.

At last I was back in charge of the Talkin gut, and ready for what my 30 day siege would bring!

Guacamole

Inauthentically Authentic Guacamole

This uses less hot peppers and sacrilegiously includes vinegar.

Ingredients:

3 mushy avocados

2 large poblamo or anaheim chilis

1/2 white onion

Juice of one lime

3 large tomatoes

Tablespoon of Cumin

1/2 bunch fresh cilantro

Tamed Jalapeño Tobasco Sauce – had to leave this out as didn’t buy any

salt and pepper

1/4 cup of red wine vinegar

Steps: Do all the usual stuff and eat rapidly.

Breakfast: Dry cornflakes

Lunch: Bagel

Dinner: Homemade Guacamole and Chips