By the skin of my teeth.

Food Stamp balance $13.61

This month was my quarterly review for my food assistance. I've done it like clockwork. I printed out all the information that they required and blah blah blah. Only this time in Jan. I actually had some employment. It's funny, you work part time on something it's more difficult than if you actually just didn't work. I've actually had more hardship this past month than not even though I made less working than I did with the assistance.

How broken is that?

I get a letter three days past the time I was hoping to get my assistance saying that my application was not correct and that my benefits were terminated. Great....I called my worker, who is, I have to say, the most complacent person I've ever talked to, and she said I need to call this person. Okay, I called them. This man, who was very respectful to me, told me because I worked I needed to write a letter saying how long I worked, whether it was still going on, when/if it ended, why, etc.

Fine. I sent it out the next day. And on came the waiting.

In the interim I had to look at the food I had in the house and see what I could buy out of pocket. With these past three weeks I've had to be creative. I thought about the core things I wanted and really could not. Coffee, soy milk were at the top of the list.

2/12/2011 Ralphs cash total:$13.95

2/16/2011 Food 4 Less total: $11.23

The month started off pretty good. I had some leftover frozen veggies that I sautéed and added some canned black beans with hot sauce.

Gooooooood.

Then as the days progressed, I had to get creative.

I boiled the remaining potatoes I had in the fridge and added boiled carrots and my leftover brick of tofu. I mashed them all together and made patties that lasted for the rest of the week. Yay!

Even though I didn't have much cash this month, I was tired of being stuck in the house. I went out a couple times with friends and spent a total for $26 for the times I went out. Thats not too bad for food and drink, plus I got to hang out with some friends. Sometimes that is worth the price of an over charged salad.