The Hard Economy Diet

by Natasha Chart · 2009-02-19 18:38:00 UTC
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Dinner is in the crockpot; by merelymel13Michelle Obama visited the Department of Agriculture today, where she praised the department's prospective community garden and said:

... Mrs. Obama said she was particularly pleased that the department’s facilities all over the world would be planting gardens. “I’m a big believer in community gardens,” she said, “both because of their beauty and for providing access to fresh fruits and vegetables to so many communities across the nation and the world.”

Which seems very sensible, considering that food banks are seeing lots of new people come through their doors, many of them fully employed or from wealthy suburbs, many shocked and shamed by their unexpected poverty:

... Over all, demand at food banks across the country increased by 30 percent in 2008 from the previous year, according to a survey by Feeding America, which distributes more than two billion pounds of food every year.

... “A deadbeat husband and a loss of a job,” said one woman in her 20s, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she did not want her friends to know she had been visiting the pantry. It was her second visit. The first time, she could barely get out of her car. “Let me put it this way — it took me a long time to come here,” the woman said as she added a bag of lentils to her cart. “I felt like a loser. I felt like a total lowlife.” ...

Wrong as it is for so many people to be hungry in a nation this wealthy, it's almost worse that any of them should feel ashamed because of it. This has never been a full employment economy, that isn't its stated purpose. Considering that over half a million more people just lost their jobs in our ongoing economic meltdown, the absurdity of embarassment over falling on hard times should be thrown into sharp relief.

Anyway, the Angry Black Bitch has some suggestions for eating and entertaining while broke that are good not only as practical advice for slow cooking in a crockpot, but a reminder that modest circumstances don't have to mean the end of enjoyment with family and friends.

(Photo credit: merelymel13 on Flickr.)

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