Fin

Andrew Samtoy

The 1st song by the notorious B.I.G. that I ever heard and liked was “The Ten Crack Commandments.”  Rule Nombre Uno, he opines, is to “never let no one know how much dough you hold.”  This fit in with a personal philosophy of mine: that one that should endeavor not to disclose how much one has to others.  In fact, within reason, the more disadvantaged you seem to others, the better off you are.  If you don’t appear wealthy, they won’t be jealous of you and try to tear you down.  It is always better to over-estimate and be under-estimated.

This has application in the present personal challenge.  For the balance of this post and this challenge, I will no longer be talking about my meals in as much detail as I have previously.   I will not tell you, or the others attempting to win this personal challenge, about the meal I made last night– of the caramelized onions, the minced mushrooms browned over medium-sized flames, the way that the egg rose and flattened, as if breathing, before I folded it over the filling and then put it between two slices of bread to make a wondrous sandwich, overstuffed to the point that the filling fell out and I had to eat it with a fork from the plate.  I’ll also not discuss the bowl of diced, microwaved potatoes, with resistant outer layers and tender, steaming insides.  I won’t go into the tofu and vegetables waiting for me at home, or the seven eggs I anticipate having left over, as well as the chicken, rice, potatoes and onions I won’t be able to eat.  What’s the point?  I have enough food to last me far past the end of this week for the challenge, but talking about it to excess will give away my position.

In terms of the challenge, then, there is no debate left.  I won, and I thank God, my family, my friends and all of the people who believed in me, in that order.  Now, it’s time to start talking about what winning means.

First, it should be clear that most of our writing has been somewhat in jest.  We recognize that there is no way to replicate the experience of living on food checks and welfare other than to actually do it.  “Doing it” includes the conditions of living in poverty not just those limitations on budget.  None of us had these limitations; with only financial constraints, this was really “Welfare-lite.”

I can also see where surviving for months, or years, on food stamps would be difficult (and, as my girlfriend pointed out, mentally and emotionally challenging as well).  While it’s entirely conceivable for people to survive on this allocation, the advantages my fellow participants have in terms of mobility, access and time – especially the advantages Mitch has taken advantage of over and over again in each of these areas – have made this a sort of mockery of a week on welfare and food stamps.  We’ve not lived like we were on Welfare; we adapted Welfare budgets to our own conditions and goals.  I believe that my food eventually came from four different stores, at least; it is not reasonable to expect that others would enjoy the same mobility and access.  To accurately live as if we were on Welfare, each individual should have been given a typical set of goods to purchase from a single store within a certain distance from their abode.

Nothing in life is ever perfect; there are always limited resources.  For people in a position where they have limited resources, sometimes one must give up other things in order to make intelligent decisions.  Indeed, since we have always had limited resources, we’ve always made decisions on how to best allocate these resources – even Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have to decide how they want to spend their money, since they can’t buy everything.  In this case, I believe I’ve made the most intelligent decisions possible given my resources.

I also recognize that my own success in eating a healthy, well-balanced diet over the course of the week by no means is what most people on welfare can actually accomplish, just as many people on welfare will not be able to smoke or drink as much as the other participants did this week. I think that my situation does show it’s possible, but I’m in no position to say that my consumption levels are available for anyone on Welfare.

I still believe that it is possible to eat healthy food on this limited budget.  Except for Tom, everyone seems to have had relatively healthy meals; however, I think I may be the only person in the group to have had healthy meals in both wide variety and abundance.  This came down to choices: what to consume and where to buy it.  I made the choices to forgo other options on which to spend my money.  I’ve never done any illegal drugs, even pot; thus, I was not tempted to reserve part of my budget for these.  I rarely drink alcohol, so I was not tempted to put money aside for that – it wasn’t an option.  I don’t smoke cigarettes, so I haven’t been shopping around for rolling papers.  I drink a cup of coffee a day; that was relatively easy and inexpensive to secure.

What I will take away from this is that I can live healthily on a lot less than I used to use for food.   From now on I am going to endeavor to eat on about the equivalent of $25 a week, saving more money for long-term financial stability.  Instead of budgeting for weeks, though, I’ll be purchasing for longer terms – i.e., using a bulk bag of onions over weeks, and buying them when I run out, rather than aiming to just purchase for the upcoming week.  I’ll also be donating more money to help feed those who don’t have the advantages that I have.

I had a dollar and change left after this challenge.  At lunch, I went to the Mexican grocery store near my work and purchased 20 five-cent candies.  I left them at the counter with one of the managers and asked him to give them to the next 20 children that walked in for free.  After all, many of them are poor and their parents might be on welfare; they would enjoy the candy more than I would.

And with that, I won.  Now for a celebratory meal.

Bender

 

Mitch McFadden

Obstacles appear all the time and for everyone.  People who have found success aren’t just some rare breed of lucky individuals who have no roadblocks put in their way.  All-time great hitters have slumps.  Nobel Laureate poets are afflicted with writer’s block.  World class handicappers get it wrong for weeks at a time.  What makes them the greatest at what they do is how they overcome these obstacles and get back to doing what it is that makes them so great.

I mention this because of the fact that I have officially run full force into the wall.  My Welfare Week actions are starting to take their toll on me, and I’m finding it hard to go on.

Before you naysayers get all excited, let me just clarify what it is I am talking about here.  The food aspect of this challenge is outright simple.  I’ve yet to be hungry, and I have a wonderful pot of pasta sitting in my fridge waiting for me.  Should I happen to run through the pasta, I still have potatoes and $1.50, which is enough to throw together another casserole, or something comparable.

The wall that I’m referencing is the booze.  I set out on this mission to prove that $26.75 is not only enough to survive on, but is in fact, a more than suitable amount to eat, smoke, and drink your brains out.  It is the drinking your brains out aspect that I am now having trouble with.

People who know me well know that I have no aversion to getting outright shitfaced on a moderately regular basis.  I’m not of the breed which bemoans drinking after one hard hangover.  I’m not of the school of thought that says time spent drinking is time wasted.  To put it succinctly, I am a hammerback.

It is for this reason that I had the nagging suspicion that I’d not have enough booze to keep me hooched up all week long.  I thought I’d get a good couple of saucings in and would thus have proved my point.  Now, however, the real problem is coming to a front.

For the last four days, I have gotten so god damned smashed that I’ve either had trouble making it to bed, fallen on the way to bed, or chosen a different part of the house to play the role of bed.  I have not cut any corners in terms of level of intoxication.  The thing is, despite my love for the booze, I’m not the type to go on multi-day benders.  I’m a one a week kind of guy.  It takes real gumption for me to actually force that first drink down my gullet each evening, and I’m finding it harder and harder to pull off.

There have been plenty of setbacks in the liquor management department of my house so far.  I have spilled a full glass of wine on three occasions.  On top of that, the actual box of wine takes serious concentration to keep it from spilling when you are pouring it, and concentration has not been high on the personality trait list for the last few days.  In my own form of cheating, I also used two glasses of the wine in the pasta sauce that I made.  I told myself it was for the taste, but in reality I was just trying to get rid of this nightmarish substance that is starting me in the face every night.  But, it’s not going anywhere!

Last night I drank ridiculously harder than I have yet this week. I really broke on through, so to speak.  I thought that if I just focused on really pouring it on last night, I’d run out and could be done with the whole damned thing.  I am nowhere close.

So, I will go home tonight, and I will pour another glass.  I will press this until there is nothing left to press.  Mickey Mantle didn’t stop hitting because he had a four game home run streak.  Rudyard Kipling didn’t stop writing poems because he had a four day poetry masterpiece session.  Jimmy the Greek didn’t stop running book because he picked the right spread for four days worth of games.  And, I’m sure as shit not going to stop beating the ever loving holy hell out of this completely non-competitive personal challenge simply due to the fact that I’ve already been absolutely dominating the other contenders for four straight days.

I'm the Great Bambino of booze.

Notes From The Front

One of the first image results for Natty Light Beer Helmet

Johnny Russell Hammersticks

Let me preface this short essay by saying my current frame of mind is not one in which I would typically be writing anything. In the last 18 hours, I took anti-anxiety medication (prescribed and included in my budget, but I won’t mention how many) mainly to come off of not being able to smoke (which will hopefully be something that lasts). My meals today consisted of hard boiled eggs (plain), a chicken thigh (with spices from my home garden), a piece of wheat bread and water. Not too fun, but there are reasons for that: lack of planning, lack of preparation and simple laziness.

I am now drinking a much needed Nati-light after working about 11 hours with no lunch or break. Although this is not much of a physically challenging job, it is still work. I am planning on throwing down another five beers in the next hour or so to maximize that feel good. After that I will most likely eat another quarter of the two casseroles I made, late night style. Here is what has happened so far.

Thursday, the day before WW, I vowed to go shopping for the week. I did not. I had a nice dinner with some friends that night and went home not thinking of the bad day and worse week ahead.
Mistake # 1: Work was long Friday. I ate nothing until 5, at which point I bought some delicious double cheeseburgers with bacon (bacon free due to incompetence of the BK staff) – $2.00.
Mistake #2.: Picked up 30 pack of Nati, $15.07. If alcohol was going to be something I wanted to budget for, this was not the best way to get drunk on the cheap. Calorie-wise I think it filled me up, but not good. I finished the night by boiling 12 of 24 eggs (.89 per dozen at Walgreens).
Mistake #3 (although not too costly): I ate one egg and forgot to refrigerate the rest, leaving them in the pot of water overnight.

I woke up at 2 p.m. the next day. I ate an unknown number of eggs and started drinking with my roommate. In my infinite wisdom I decided shotgun’n beers was a better way to drink so I tried to shotgun every other one for a while, inside the house, which was a borderline mistake, as well.

I had forgotten that this dude, whom I’ve never met (a friend of a friend in LA) was staying in my house for the night Saturday. “Nice to meet you…,” says he and hands me a bottle of Belvidere and a bag of Chipotle chips, which I have to decline.

I blacked out with the lights on that night. It’s good electricity isn’t included in this budget.

Sunday it was time to get my act together. I went shopping. I bought chicken thighs, bread, beans, noodles, and sausage links for a total of $6.70. I am maxed out on money now.

I made some casseroles out of the shit with some tomatoes and herbs from the garden and ate some of it. It wasn’t too bad.

I think I have enough food until Friday. I have only enough to booze for one more night of drankin’.I have lost eight pounds. I’m hoping the rest of the week shapes up a bit better. Updates to come…

Vote Hammersticks for WW winner!

Viandas Sellos

Andrew Samtoy

I lived in Spain for a year, mostly as an undocumented worker teaching English. In December, much of Spain goes on holiday until mid-January; thus, except for a few lessons here and there, I didn’t have anything to do. I also didn’t have any income, since I was working under the table, in cash. At the beginning, I took a hard look at my finances and realized that I’d have to live on 3-4 Euros per day. Food isn’t very cheap over there, so it was difficult.

One day I went to the grocery store across the street from my apartment and looked around. I picked through the aisles, and then saw a familiar sight: bright yellow Knorr bullion cubes. I picked up the box and looked at the back: the suggested soup recipe called for chicken, onions, potatoes, carrots and some spices, and the box cost just over a Euro. I put it in my basket, anticipating that I’d use two cubes a day and stagger my purchases of the other ingredients, then…

I paused. I picked the box up again and looked at the back. I could read Spanish and understand it without consciously translating it.

Right now I wish I’d remembered that moment, and what brought me to it. Soup is incredibly cheap, and the one I made – having marinated in the fridge – is truly, heartbreakingly excellent. If I’d made this only, I would have spent perhaps $13 total on all the food I could want, and would have had much more to spend elsewhere. The lesson: that’s what I’m going to do next week, to see how far I can get with very little effort and huge amounts of reward.

Monday Afternoon

Andrew Samtoy

The last two days saw me not eating much; I think it was a mental thing, psyching myself out.  See, I figured I wouldn’t have enough to last the week, and I subconsciously believed everyone when they said it would be difficult.  To save up food, I just didn’t eat it.

This must have been the cause of my hunger.  On both days, too, I went to the gym and didn’t properly eat afterward.  Right now, though, I’m realizing the folly of my actions.  The egg, toast and banana I had for breakfast held me until lunch, when I had some of the stir-fry and rice without feeling any hunger.  My stomach is now comfortably pushing against my shirt; it’ll go down eventually, and I’ll eat the peas and rice with another hard-boiled egg.  I love eggs.  And I’ll still have food left over at the end of the week.

In retrospect, it would have been better if I’d done all of my shopping at a single store, under both time and geographic constraints.  I feel like I may learn nothing this week other than that I can get plenty of cheap, healthy, good food in different places.

 

 

Wino

Mitch McFadden

This weekend has really shown me that this personal challenge has really made things hard; hard to stand up, hard to wake up, hard to keep from blacking out, hard to not totally destroy this challenge and FUCKING RULE.

I keep hearing how difficult the challenge is from everyone.  My roommate has been starving all weekend long, and has been quite grumpy about it.  Not a day has gone by without Duke calling and trying to convince me that some sort of cheating is all right.  Samtoy seems to be knocking it out of the park, in terms of menu items, and is still complaining about a nagging hunger.  Am I really the only one who is completely dominating this personal challenge?

Yes.  I am.  On Friday, I drank two pots of coffee and smoked home-rolled cigarettes all day.  For dinner, I made a casserole that was outright delicious.  I took 5 potatoes and nuked them.  Then I sliced them into au gratin shapes and lined a casserole pan with them.  I covered them with diced onions and oregano from our oregano plant.  I put my big fatty chicken thighs on top of all of this and slathered all of it with the stolen salt and pepper.  I covered it all in the two cans of cream of mushroom soup and baked it at 350 for an hour and a half.  Let me just say that it tastes wonderful.

At that point, I let the real point of this challenge begin.  I started getting hammered.   Surprisingly, the shit wine that I bought is now becoming normal to me, and I’m not having much problem smashing it, which is probably why I blacked out on both Friday and Saturday, and could barely walk up the stairs to my bedroom last night.

I supplemented any short bursts of hunger by cooking a baked potato, and ate one large portion of the casserole each day around lunchtime.  What I didn’t really expect, though was how effective this wine would be at getting me sauced.  So, Sunday, I was really battling a massive hangover.  I found myself budgeting my last two dollars on enough ingredients to make the casserole again.  I don’t really think that I have enough cash to do this, but I convinced myself at the time that I did and proceeded to smash today’s portion last night.

There are only four days left, and I have not hit the halfway point on my wine.  My bag of tobacco is less than a quarter of the way through.  I have the ingredients to make a huge pasta dish tonight that will easily last four days.  I have five potatoes left.  I have $1.50 left in my budget.  I have been shithouse drunk for three days.  It is completely obvious that I am well on my way to being the absolute grand champion of this completely noncompetitive personal challenge.

Monday Morning

Andrew Samtoy

 

What has two thumbs, speaks French and is totally dominating this challenge?

Moi.

Last night I got home late, but still had to cook a few meals.  I made:

1)      Tofu, fried, with onions and frozen bell peppers, all cooked with ginger and habanero pepper and put over leftover rice;

2)      Frozen peas cooked with onions, ginger and habanero pepper and put over leftover rice.

These made, I believe, five Tupperware containers of food, after I took a few bites of each.  In addition, I came home to a crock pot full of soup – chicken, carrot, potato.  I learned an important fact: bad chicken makes good soup.  I used to use frozen chicken breasts from Costco, which were expensive and low-fat.  They made ok soup, but the cheap chicken thighs I got from Marc’s blew my mind.  It’s tender, soft, delicious and fatty, and fell apart into delicious chunks, mixing well with everything else.  I took the bones out, had a bowl and put the rest in a large Tupperware and two small Tupperware containers.

Finally, eggs.  I can’t remember where I found this recipe, but it’s supposed to be French.

1)      Take eggs out and leave them on the counter for a half-hour.

2)      Boil the water so that it’ll cover the eggs.

3)      Place the eggs in the water with a slotted spoon and boil them for eight minutes EXACTLY.

4)      At eight minutes, take them out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl of ice water immediately.

5)      After two minutes, pick them up, crack them a bit on the edge of the bowl, and put them back in the ice water for ten minutes or so.

6)      Take them out and put them in the refrigerator.

I’ve been eating them as snacks, and every time they blow my mind. The whites are tender, the yolks are soft and the combination is perfection.  With the dozen eggs I bought yesterday, I think I have 15 left for the week; I’ll be making dinners with them, probably with onions and mushrooms.  Maybe I’ll make a Spanish omelet with the potatoes.

Finally, I’ve projected out my meals for the rest of the week.  If I make the other block of tofu with onions and peppers half-way through the week, I’ll still have just over a dollar left, PLUS perhaps 6 eggs and two large chicken thighs, which I’ve frozen.  I’ll also have about a cup of uncooked rice, some potatoes, onions and carrots.

However, my eating habits aren’t getting better.  Last night, despite the fact that I had some of each meal I made, plus the soup, plus the hard-boiled egg, I went to bed with a sort of dull hunger at the center of my stomach.  Rest assured, I’ll be eating more in the next few days.