Food Barters?

(Tomorrow morning's post is appearing early, in case any local lurker wants to rush out and barter for some Christmas gift items tonight.)

It's said every so often that some percentage of working Americans are "only one paycheck away from homelessness." A whole community of people on Twitter claim to be in that situation. 

I don't send them money, although if they were near me I might be able to help in other ways...but I do believe their plight is real, because as an Internet writer I have no savings to speak of. I own a house with access to a small, survival-warm cave, but, living on US$2000 or less per year, I'm only a couple of jobs away from hunger. (And from dark, chilly nights without the hot-air fan and fluorescent light I love.)

Well, that happened. I had a weekly cleaning job that was buying groceries. Then the client wailed about receiving medical bills for what the patient considered very careless treatment, but not quite malpractice, and I've not seen that client for six weeks. Two editing jobs fed me for those six weeks. Now I'm out of food, out of the garlic I use daily and charcoal I use in emergencies for medicine, and I've not seen the cheerful chap who's been bringing the weekly case of Pure Life water to share with the cats, lately, either. (The cats have complained about this. It's rained enough that they have actual water--they miss the ritual of sharing my water.) Electricity is paid up for three more weeks. Cat food should last another four or five days. I ate the last packet of rice on the shelf on Saturday night. Monday afternoon, the hunger "pangs" stage sets in, on schedule for me (I don't feel "pangs" while eating once a day). Decaffeination is not helping. 

I had thought about trying to sell things from a duffel bag or wheelbarrow beside the road, and take my chances on being fined for doing that, as an act of civil disobedience--but experience has shown that even in a respectable open-air market, people just don't shop in freezing weather.  

I can, legally, say this to local lurkers, and I will.

First of all, if you're feeling an urge to recommend any kind of lifestyle change to me, please remind yourself (it may help to say this out loud): "If any lifestyle change is going to work for that writer, she has certainly lived long enough to know what that might be. I can only sound stupid if I start trying to tell her about something that's not going to work, like someone jabbering away about having 'discovered' that if you stand a round wheel on edge and give it a push, it will roll! I can demonstrate my own intelligence by showing respect to the writer's intelligence and following instructions without trying to make any little changes that might seem good to me. Even and especially substituting brands or flavors if I want to make a food barter."

Now, about food barters. I know where to find enough unsprayed chickweed to keep me alive, though even chickweed doesn't sprout on mornings as cold as this one, and also I'm too chilly and wimpy to go out and look for any unfrozen rock lettuce or watercress in local streams. So the hard freeze has made me feel hunger more than I usually do. But the fact is that it takes either the kind of extreme weather we get only every ten or twenty years, or extreme stupidity, or extreme abuse of glyphosate, for anyone to starve to death in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Food is all around us, all we have to do is look. I'd rather buy peanuts and pecans than go to the trouble of making acorns, chestnuts, or even black walnuts fit to eat, but I do live near oak, (non-native) chestnut, and walnut trees. You are not saving me from starvation. You are doing me the favor of saving me a trip to Wal-Mart if you've bought what I would buy, or if you want to go to the store and buy what I pick out. There are a lot of things that you probably eat that I, as a celiac, am completely unable to digest. Some of these things do seem like treats to the cats, and the possum will eat anything, but you can't expect me to barter very much for treats for an animal whose job around here is eating the contents of the cats' sand pit.

If you want to make a food barter, don't bother with the sanctimonious speech about wanting to make sure I have food. I know why people make food barters. From their own gardens would be fine if their gardens weren't contaminated with glyphosate, but most people's garden produce, these days, makes me sick. Food banks are very unlikely to give you food I can eat. On food stamps or vouchers you might have bought food I can eat. The other reason why people barter food is that they've received a gift basket of very expensive imported food samples--I've not been offered any of those. It's none of my business, anyway, and I won't ask, but I do know why this option appeals to people. Bartering excess food for warm sweaters, for children's things, for soap or perfume, for work tools and supplies, even for help with housework, is not the same kind of thing as bartering for beer. But I can't promise to be patient with the "I'm still rich, which means God still likes me more than you" act.

I don't know whom God likes. I don't know whether that has anything at all to do with it. God has provided all of us in Virginia with survival food, survival-warm caves, plenty of water if we don't foul it up, and left the rest mostly up to us. Who's better off than whom can change overnight. If you feel well off, cheers for you--don't tempt Providence. Any verbal abuse on this topic has to be returned with generous interest; I have a reputation to maintain.

So here are the brands I buy. If you happen to have those, you're in luck, you may drive up and barter for your Christmas knits (or books, or such gift soaps and toiletries as I still have--but they're no longer new and I can't guarantee how well they've lasted in storage) tonight.

Strolling through the nearest Super Wal-Mart, which is where I'd like to go to shop tonight..

1. Bottled drinks: Pure Life or Deer Park water. Soda pop is very good because it's so completely denatured that they finally get the glyphosate out of it. Sundrop. Sunkist (any flavor). Nehi peach. RC. Big Red. Big Blue. Mello Yello. Barq. Coca-Cola. Mountain Dew, any flavor as long as it's not "diet" or "hard." Pepsi. It's been so long since I've drunk 7-Up or Canada Dry that I don't know whether those brands are safe or not. Local store brands are safe.

2. Eggs are safe, and I like them, especially if they come from your own hens. 

3. Snackable aisle: Planters or Sam's Choice peanuts (but not dry-roasted). Planters cashews. Fisher's or Great Value pecans. Fritos plain corn chips (no fancy flavors). Old Wisconsin beef or turkey sausages. (These things work as parts of complete frugal meals--I'll resume posting recipes when we can all be more confident about more things being glyphosate-free.)

4. Baking aisle: Buffalo self-rising cornmeal (but NOT "cornmeal mix" with wheat flour). Nestle's baking chips, Heath toffee crunch or chocolate toffee crunch.

5. Canned fruit aisle: Dole pineapple "in light syrup" (if you paid for "juice pack," these days, you were cheated--it's not ripe enough to be edible). Del Monte peaches "in heavy syrup" (NOT in pear juice). Mandarin oranges. Mott's applesauce.

6. Canned veg aisle: Bush's, Luck's, or Great Value pinto beans (no "flavorings"), black beans, white beans, blackeyed peas, garbanzos. Del Monte lima beans. Del Monte or Great Value corn. Hunt's plain tomatoes (larger cuts generally mean better tomatoes; no "flavorings").

7. Canned meat aisle: Great Value canned chicken. Chicken of the Sea mackerel. 

8. Rice & Pasta aisle: Zatarain's Yellow, Yellow with Broccoli, Jambalaya, Long Grain & Wild, Spanish, Caribbean, or Dirty rice. Ben's Long Grain & Wild, Roast Chicken, Garlic, Korean, Garden, or Spanish flavors. Success Brown rice. Lundbergs' brown rice and quinoa. Hunt's Garlic & Herb or Traditional pasta sauce.

9. Coffee, peanut butter, and jelly aisle: Jif peanut butter.

10. Produce section: Oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, onions, garlic, and I'd consider living dangerously and trying a cucumber, because I like cucumbers. I also like tomatoes, spinach, and celery, a lot, but they all soak up glyphosate vapors out of the air like little sponges, so don't go there.

11. Meat section: Gwaltney chicken dogs or "Bolony" (be sure it's chicken, no pork). 

12. Frozen foods: Great Value toffee or butter pecan ice cream. Turkey Hill chocolate peanut butter, vanilla peanut butter, or vanilla peanut ice cream. I usually buy ice cream for the first meal after a few days without solid food.

Checkout line temptations: Not recommended. Wal-Mart sells even the chocolates in bulk at better prices, if you go down the candy aisle in the store (I seldom do). M&Ms, Butterfingers, Reeses, Snickers, and Hershey bars are safe if not "flavored" with cookies or pretzels. Fritos are safe if you don't mind paying more per chip than you pay for the bigger bags inside the store. Old Wisconsin sausages are, however, not more expensive in the checkout section than inside the store. I usually buy them in the checkout line.

There are some brands I've not tested simply because they're not competitively priced. Even when I can afford to be extravagant I don't like being extravagant. Those brands may actually be better. I wouldn't know. I'll take the risk of finding out after we get a glyphosate ban.