Life on Food Stamps I       November 20, 2008

I used my food stamp card today for the second time.   The first time was a month ago, when the sun was still shining, and an early snow hadn't beaten down the goldenrod to blackness in my field, and my princess cat was still alive.  Today was a grey and  icy November day, a week away from non-Thanksgiving, so I was feeling a lot less happy.

Stopping at the health food store to buy some spices might have been less embarrassing if I'd put the card through with the magnetic strip facing the right way.  The clerk airily asked if it was credit or debit before I got it right, and I had to wave it at her and say "neither."   But it was worth the humiliation, as I took away enough ginger and cinnamon to last me for several months. 

I'd gotten paranoid at the end, though, and came away with such minute amounts of oregano, marjoram, and thyme, that the supplies won't last deep into the winter.  I tried to calm myself down, and stare at all the jars to make sure I wasn't forgetting something important (I  wondered why anyone would spend good money on dried cilantro, which has less flavor than old hay).  I checked the price on garam masala, and tarragon, and Earl Grey tea.  I used to love going shopping at this kind of store.  Now it's sort of excruciating, because I can't afford any of it except the really real necessities.  

Of course, my necessities aren't other people's necessities, and I'm well aware that my poverty level is so far above the general third world poverty level that I have no real reason to complain.  It's therefore embarrassing in several ways to admit that I almost started crying in the big supermarket I went to after my health food store stop.    But I had to buy a bunch of ramen, and for some reason the ramen in my store of choice (where I get my prescriptions filled at a reasonable rate, without insurance) is placed at floor level.  I mean FLOOR level.  A flood in the store would produce a major noodle soup. 

This would be fine, except that today the only ramen flavors I buy (oriental, and shrimp, which, mind you, I can turn into some pretty decent noodle dishes - condiments are the thing that makes poverty bearable) were almost sold out.  I couldn't reach them without kneeling down on the floor, and with a knee that has no cartilage, I wondered if it was worth it.  But I'd driven 15 miles to get there, and I wasn't coming back any time soon, so I knelt and pawed and whimpered.  It felt pretty horrid.

 Then I proceeded down the same aisle to the canned beans, where I found that the cannellini and kidney beans that a month ago were only 69 cents (a few months before that they were two for a dollar) had gone up to 83 cents a can.  And then the refrain that has been playing in my head for the last year or so whenever I have been in a grocery store  started playing again, to the effect that life is too expensive to be lived.  

As my eyes started to fill with tears, my obnoxious alter-ego (the one that revels in a good bowl of ramen) pointed out that I was lucky to be living at in a place and at a time when  you aren't allowed to starve.  Then it pointed out the Jif extra-crunchy peanutbutter across the aisle.  Which is my favorite.  Back in the days when Proctor and Gamble was still torturing animals, I stopped eating Jif extra-crunchy, for years.  It was hard.

Anyway, the peanut butter cheered me up.  

It also made me think an African stew is in the offing,  with beans and thyme and stewed tomatoes.

 But ramen on the floor, though, is wrong.