RE: Completion Of The SNAP Food Budget Challenge - Living On $29 Per Week
@getonthetrain, your shopping experience feels extremely alien to me.
Asparagus? $5.99 a pound.
Eggs? $4.50 for 18.
Milk? $4.50 a gallon.
These three items alone might eat up as much as half of your weekly budget if you were living in Ontario, Canada. The food remaining in your photo would cost about $50 here. I don't think I've ever seen fresh produce at a dollar store, only canned goods.
The concept of a "food desert" is very foreign to me. Even when I used to live in a low-income neighborhood, bus routes took you to the grocery store in a reasonable amount of time for about $2, or you could get there in 15 minutes by bicycle/ 30 minutes walk. How bad is it in the US?
I would love to try this challenge (And probably will at some point, but based on a budget from the Canadian welfare system) but I would have to use a regular discount grocery store. Shopping at the dollar store would mean no fresh fruits/vegetables whatsoever. I think the culture is very different here - Public transport makes everything fairly accessible. The main Canadian dollar store, Dollarama, is generally grouped into strip malls alongside discount grocery chains such as NoFrills or Superstore. I don't think it's common for people to have access to a dollar store without also having access to a regular grocery store.
I don't spend time in low-income areas but as I was reading up on this challenge I heard complaints from people that said it is impossible. I then read the excuses and decided to prove them wrong. One of the excuses was that they lived in a food desert. Supermarkets close up because of huge amounts of theft and problem customers - it just wasn't worth the effort.
I live in southern Arizona along the main transportation route of Mexican produce - it is super cheap! I can get a box every Saturday that has a random amount of vegetables, up to 60 pounds in total, for just $10. It is veggies and fruits that won't make it to their intended destination before going bad. Here is a post with pics: https://steemit.com/food/@getonthetrain/how-i-get-40-60-lbs-of-produce-for-just-usd10
I would like to see you do the challenge. A week is nothing, easy street! :D
Neat! Offers like your produce box are rare up here since there's very little in terms of local produce other than potatoes and occasionally apples in the summer. Anything heading here on a truck is usually destined for a store in my city.
I have had some luck with Walmart deals. They used to throw out the remaining produce when they went to restock, but lately they've started bagging it up and selling it for $1 per bag. Most of it's perfectly fine, although you run across the occasional bad apple (Pun intended). Just today I got three cucumbers, four avocados, and about fifteen bananas for $3 total. Normally this would have run between $10 and $15.
I'll try to remember to tag you when we try the challenge. My girlfriend previously talked about this sort of thing and seemed pretty interested in giving it a shot.
PS - I was in Bisbee a few years ago on vacation. We flew into Tucson and took a car from there. The desert was an awesome change of scene from our Canadian winters, and the heat was a welcome break :) Nice area you live in.