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Background of Cook for Good
How it started
This experiment in thrifty, delicious eating was born when the philosophy of food ran smack into the politics of food in the summer of 2007. On the philosophical side, Michael Pollan declared in The Omnivores’ Dilemma that the only rational plan for people of limited means was to wallow in the center section of the grocery store, buying as many calories as possible with their limited funds. On the political side, Congressman Ryan did just that when he tried to live on the food-stamp allowance of a dollar a meal. His solution was a slap-dash, center-aisle approach, with his aides throwing in two-ounce bags of coffee into his cart. When airport security seized his stash of peanut butter and jelly, he was looking at thirty-six hours with nothing but corn meal. He wound up cheating by eating bags of airline peanuts.
Nonsense, I thought, reading both of these accounts. These men must not be cooks. A dollar a meal is tight, but it doesn’t mean you have to pick Cheetoes over carrots. The goal should not be maximum calories but maximum nutrition. The maximum-calories idea had been around for years, supporting the idea that poor people were often fat because they didn’t have the money to eat food that would allow them to be thin. But you get fat by eating too many calories. Surely buying better food to move closer to the ideal number of calories and nutrients would be both possible and desirable.
I found myself chuffing in the grocery store. “Look, this whole bag of dried beans is only seventy-nine cents a pound … and it’s not even on sale. That’s about twelve cents a serving.” I was garumphing at the farmers’ market, too. “Here’s a flat of delicious local strawberries for $15. That’s about fifty cents a serving. Why do people insist that poor people can only drink soda and eat potatoes?”
After nearly a week of these mental calculations, I got bored with the limited answers my growling produced. Sure, some foods were both cheap and nutritious. But could I really get by on a dollar a meal? Could I enjoy it? That night at dinner, I broached the idea to my husband. What if I tried the food-stamp diet for three weeks, eating on $1 a meal just like Congressman Ryan. But what if I moved the source of our food around to better show the options available. We are within walking distance of a Whole Foods and a chain grocery. And the farmers’ market where we usually buy our fruits and vegetables is reachable by bus, even if somewhat awkwardly. What if we did week one at the Food Lion, week two at the Whole Foods, and week three at the farmers’ market? At the end of that time, we’d know a good deal more about eating on the budget allowed by our government.
My husband looked only mildly horrified. “You can eat extra if you want,” I said. “I’ll just cook for both of us to that budget and you can have extras if you want.” “No, I’ll do it with you. Might as well see just how hungry we get.” You can see why I love him. “Well, at least we’ll lose some weight.”
The Results: Saving Money Leads to other Savings
We did lose weight – about a pound a week over a three-month period. But except for the first day, we were never hungry or felt deprived. In fact, we were surprised to find that not only was it possible, but that other good things happened when we did eat so cheaply. We started feeling more energetic after only a week. Our moods improved. Our recycling and trash went down to almost nothing. I learned skills that will help me get through the panic if I ever do have serious money trouble. The first week was so good that we revised the experiment and continued on for three more months. The budget went up to $1.53 a meal, the actual amount of food stamps allotted in North Carolina for a couple with no other money to spend on food. And after that, we used the same menu plan while eating mostly organic, kindly-raised, and local food. Amazingly, this “elite” diet cost under $2 a meal. We weren’t stingy, either. I was able to take cookies to bookclub, cupcakes to friends who’d had a death in the family, invite friends over for dinner, and bring a dish to community suppers. Best of all, the food was simply delicious. Spicy beans and rice, fragrant tomato sauce on pasta, burritos, homemade pizza, bread, and yogurt. Fruit and plenty of vegetables. Dessert once or twice every day: carrot cake, homemade peach ice-cream, chocolate cookies, and more.
We realized we weren’t just on the Food Stamp Diet: we were Cooking for Good.
A Way of Life, not Just an Experiment
The results of these experiments were so good that they permanently changed the way we cook and eat. Except for the occasional splurge, we Cook for Good every day, using the version that features mostly organic, kindly raised, and local food.
Easy to Do; Hard to Figure Out
It was hard at first. Figuring out how to eat well on a dollar or so a meal takes a lot of planning or experience. Cooking from scratch can take a lot of time and a lot of cleanup. One of my most frustrating days during the whole experiment was my first shopping trip, when I was trying to put a week’s worth of good meals for $42 … and not a penny more. Some nights I stayed up well past bedtime waiting for the bread to cool because I had started baking it too late. I ruined several loaves of bread and many batches of yogurt.
But then, I got the hang of it. I’ve got a background in project management, so making work plans and budgets has become second nature to me. Much of the discovery was just reinventing what the pioneer women and June Cleaver no doubt learned at their mothers’ knees. But I was raised in a canned-soup and store-bought-bread household. This was new territory.
By using the recipes and other material on the Cook for Good site, you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration.
Experiment Revised
We realized that we needed to expand the experiment to cover longer periods of time. To get realistic results and also to work around some travel plans, we did this:
- Two weeks on $1.53 a meal, bought at the store closest to my day job and also at the State Farmers' Market
- A month the same way
- A month using the basic menus of the previous month, but with as much of the food as possible with the food grown organically, locally, and humanely. This meant shopping at a combination of the grocery store from the previous month, Whole Foods, and the Durham Farmers' Market. The intention for this month was to find out what a "yuppie" food budget would really cost.
At the end of all of that, we decided to do a final week on $1 a meal, putting to work all we'd learned. We had wonderful, home-made meals all week, with much less work than when we'd started. That's when I knew I had to share the Cook for Good method with others who could use it. Since then, I've refined the techniques so its even easier. I'm especially proud of the two whisk bread recipes that put great bread into the reach of nearly every household.