I'm alive, and I'd like you to feed me something other than cans of peas

published: 2023-11-01

I moved out of my parents' basement a few months ago. I promised that I was going to write an update post, and I had one kinda-planned and half-baked the first few weeks of living by myself, but it essentially boiled down to me making a series of word-based soyfaces:

"My ISP lets customers text support for basic problems!"
"The government gives me a free credit for Internet every month because I'm within 200% of the federal poverty line!"
"My landlord doesn't give a shit if I park my bike inside!" (I'm afraid of my neighbors stealing it...)
"My local food shelf has more things than just cans of peas in it, and they don't even make me submit proof of my income!"

And then I decided that enough of the things I was excited about were region-specific to make it easy to dox me if I gushed about them in too much detail. So I'll spare you the folderol and simply state that I'm alive and doing fine.

I've been able to survive these past few months despite my relatively low income- I can't work full-time due to being disabled- mainly by getting large swaths of my food intake from the local food shelf. Don't get me wrong, I still have to buy some of my own groceries; it's meant to be a supplement instead of the whole thing. But if I plan my meals carefully, and I accept the occasional extra loaf of bread or jug of milk from my mother when she has too much for her own fridge, I can spend less than a hundred dollars a month on groceries. Which means more money left over at the end of the month after I've paid rent. Which means more money saved up for me to survive on in case my disability gets worse and I can't work anymore. (Please don't worry about me. I have more than enough to ride out the remainder of my lease should that happen anytime soon.) I could get food stamps as well if I wanted; I technically qualify due to my income being close to the aforementioned federal poverty line. But that requires setting up a phone interview with a county worker, and while I've largely kicked my fear of phone calls, I work too weird of a schedule to not be a huge hassle to the clerk handling the scheduling. I got approved! My card came in the mail a few days ago! Twenty bucks of toilet paper, here I come!

When I was in elementary school almost two decades ago, "food shelf" was something that bothered the teachers multiple times a year for a "food drive". And "food drive" was a sheet of paper I'd give my parents in our Wednesday newsletter folders that would make them groan and open up the pantry and pull out several cans of green beans and peas. I'd have to give a sagging plastic bag full of these cans to my teacher, who would count each can as an entry in a raffle for a pizza party for our class. (My class never did win any pizza parties.)

So cue my surprise when my mother and her friend took me to the food shelf for my first time- the two of them had been going for a while, so for me it was like a rite of passage- and I saw shelves overflowing with bread and fresh fruit and cans of soup and fridges of still-good deli sandwiches and gallons of milk and freezers with turkeys and homemade casseroles... and a small selection of canned peas. I thought, "Whoa! This is actual food! I'm not consigned to eating canned vegetables for the rest of my days!" And I filled up several cardboard crates with all the food they allowed me to take, and my mother's friend drove me home and helped me put everything away, and after they left I sat on my floor and cried for how grateful I was.

Because, you know, poor people are people too. And we like a variety of food just as much as you do. I know I'm lucky to have such a well-stocked food shelf nearby, but a lot of people in the USA aren't. So next time you donate, depending on what the individual shelf accepts, here are some things we'd really prefer you donated instead of canned peas that are still shelf-stable or at least freezable so they won't go bad for a long time:

Peanut butter. There's a hell of a lot of protein in peanut butter. It's doubly important if you can't get protein from meat for some reason, whether you're vegetarian or you just don't have the fridge/freezer space or you don't have the cookware necessary to prepare a whole turkey or chicken. If you don't have any bread, you can just eat it with a spoon. It makes a good "depression meal" when I can't be assed to actually cook anything.
Pasta and pasta sauce. Most don't require anything additional to cook other than a boiling pot of water. Which is fine for me, because my landlord pays for all my essential utilities. Depending on how hungry I am at any particular meal, a single bag of pasta is at least four meals. A can of sauce can cover multiple meals if I shove the leftovers into the fridge.
Canned soup. Especially when it's cold outside. A larger one can feed two people, or make one meal now and the other one later as leftovers. I like to put crushed crackers in to add extra bulk.
Freezable premade meals. Sometimes Kitchen Coalition donates little individual containers of meals to our food shelf and I get to take some home. The plastic dishes come with a lid and are microwave-safe, which makes them great to take to work with me so I don't have to deal with paper plates or pay out the nose for the canteen in the break room. (At least, back when we had a canteen... the damn vendors at work took away three of our microwaves and just gave us a vending machine.) Otherwise, if your local food shelf has freezers, we poor people would like some of those boxes you see in the frozen section of your grocery store. I like egg rolls and small pizzas. Someone gave me tamales once. (They were kind of mushy.)
Sliced bread. My mother taught me that, if I have too much sliced bread and it would go bad before I could use it, I can just chuck it in the freezer until I'm out of bread and then it'll thaw fine. And she was right! Bread is a part of a lot of simple meals, like PB&J and grilled cheese and spaghetti (if you need something to help you wipe up and eat the extra sauce from your plate when you're done). But it has to be sliced bread, because I've observed that croissants and bagels and donuts don't keep well in the fridge, and if I don't eat those fast enough they grow mold in the blink of an eye.
Powdered milk/drink packets. I keep a big tub of powdered milk packets in the corner of my pantry for an emergency where I'm not able to get to the grocery store or food shelf for a long time and I'm truly almost out of food. Some of them have extra chocolate and protein in them.
Frozen vegetable/fruit bags. Again, only if your food shelf has a freezer. But this way I can have fresh fruit when I want it and I don't have to feel the crushing weight of guilt for forgetting I have it for several weeks because it was in stasis in the freezer the whole time.

Occasionally I feel bad about "living on the dole" and being dependent on the goodwill of others- I mean, I could afford groceries, but then I'd have no money left at the end of the month after rent- but then I look at my paystubs twice a month and see how much money is being deducted from my paycheck for taxes and Social Security and I realize I'm getting less from the state in benefits than I'm paying in, even factoring in the whole "being disabled" thing. Which shuts down the guilt pretty quick. And honestly, even if I was getting more out than I was paying, where would you rather have your tax money go: to disadvantaged people like me so we can survive, or the American imperial war machine to make people on the other side of the globe die? ("B-b-but Vane, you're conflating state and federal programs-" And who do you think is funding a large portion of those state programs?)

I'd really like it if you picked the former. And if you gave us something to eat other than canned peas. The healthier we are now, the less we'll cost you in medical debt later.