We talked earlier this month about whether we could live on a $15 a week grocery budget. Many of us thought we could, though it would be hard, time-consuming and rather boring. Now, CNN reporter Sean Callebs is attempting to see what it's like to eat for $176 a month, the most a single food stamp recipient can get in a month. The economic stimulus bill is calling for raising food stamp payments by 13 percent, a sign that the current payments are not enough, Callebs says.

So far he seems to be doing OK, eating basic but healthful meals like chicken stir fry and grilled cheese sandwiches with salads. He's also eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and a lot of pasta with tomato sauce. But, Callebs points out, he has time to cook and is well-educated on which cheap foodstuffs are also healthy. He also has energy to run three or four miles a day, making his carb-heavy diet less of a weight gain risk. The average food stamp recipient may be working two jobs, with little time to spend in the kitchen chopping and stir-frying lean cuts of chicken.

Callebs is also getting a lot of interesting comments, ranging from budget and shopping tips to admonishments to "stop whining" to thank-yous for raising awareness about consumer food spending.

Of course, it's only for a few weeks, to see how the other half lives.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski and his wife are going to live on just three dollars worth of food stamps a day raise awareness of what poorer people have to face in their everyday lives.

It sounds great I guess, but is it really an accurate representation? I mean, what car is the couple going to drive to the store in? When they get back from the store, what kind of house are they living in, what kind of bed, what kind of TV are they watching, how much money do they have in the bank if they need it for an emergency? When I was a little kid, my family was on food stamps for about a year, and I think a lot of other factors weigh in on what happens to you when you have to be on them.

I thought I could do better than the Hillbilly Housewife, whose weekly menu of weiner stirfry and tuna-and-peas-over-rice didn't appeal much to my sense of budgetary gourmet. I'm not the only one, evidently. The good people at the Better Times Almanac have created what they call the "Slow Food for Poor People Challenge."

Taking the "Food Stamp Challenge," they ate on a food stamp budget for a week (about $61 for two people) and tried to make their example an even better one by employing "(1) frugal supermarket shopping, (2) preparing meals from basic ingredients, (3) buying local foods, (4) gardening, (5) food storage, and (6) home preservation of food."

Menus like "Buffalo meatloaf, oven fries, corn on the cob, green beans," biscuits and gravy, buffalo pot roast and a breakfast of "2 scrambled eggs, 1/3 lb sausage, hash brown, potatoes, rolls, apple cobbler" are a little more my speed. The drawback is that their menu is a bit repetitive (and, being from Oklahoma, relies heavily on buffalo meat). But you can hardly argue with a $60 weekly menu that employs organic eggs from free-ranging hens and meats from local cooperatives. It's a nice attempt and only fuels my desire to come up with more and better cheap-but-gourmet meals.

[photo Sarah Gilbert]