"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime." - Chinese Proverb
Anyone that knows me well knows that I don’t belong in
the kitchen! I grew up having my meals
prepared for me and when I ventured to college the "R" Dining Center
was my three buffet a day haven. So as a
young professional, I found myself choosing frozen meals and eating out as my
go-to, after my cereal all day phase.
It's not my habit to plan ahead for meals or even prepare meals that
don't require more than a microwave or a pizza pan.
I knew that preparing meals was going to be a challenge
within the SNAP Challenge. While shopping
for the week, I intentionally purchased quick assemble food to get me out the
door in the morning and easy to eat between work and community meetings. It was the dinner meal that scared me the
most. There was only so much beans and
rice I would be able to tolerate and the idea of having to spend much time in
the kitchen gave me some anxiety. What
if I overcook and ruin the rice, my main dinner starch and filler?
Saturday evening I had a couple of hours between
commitments and planned to make rice, beans and a vegetable for my dinner with
an apple for later in the evening for something sweet. I assumed cooking the dry beans would be
similar to the rice (which I have cooked a few times in my life). I had two options to clean the beans, the
standard way which required them to soak overnight or the quick method which
required me to boil them, then let stand for one to four hours. I thought, well if they can sit for an hour,
then a half-hour will be fine and still get me out the door in time for my
commitment. Have you ever bit into a
quickly boiled bean? Hard as a
rock! So my rice and beans quickly
turned into buffalo chicken corned chowder.
I thought I was pretty clever heating up a can of creamed
corn and pouring it over some rice and a can of the buffalo chicken I bought
(the regular canned chicken was gone due to a four cans for $5 special). The beans proceeded to soak for a few hours
to be used in another evening's meal or to take to work when I get bored of
bologna and cheese sandwiches.
We all have our own form of busyness in our lives. For many working families, multiple jobs and
children's activities requires increased convenience in meal preparation. Single people like me stick to what they know
and tend to be more repetitious in their food consumption.
An aspect of SNAP that often isn't recognized is the SNAP Ed program, which assists SNAP recipients with budget shopping, advanced
meal preparation and low-budget, nutritious meals. In North Dakota, dieticians, educators and
extension agents provide classroom style programs, one-on-one consultations and
community outings to educate SNAP recipients of the variety of resources
available to them to make more healthy and budget-conscious decisions when
shopping. It's certainly an aspect of
the program that I could have benefited from before taking on the SNAP
Challenge!
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