THIS is why fundies scare me

[constantgardener]

I keep wondering why she had chicken breasts in the fridge at all. Buying chicken breasts is an incredibly expensive way to buy meat. At the supermarket where I shop, a pack of two chicken breasts costs pretty much the same as a whole chicken. She could have made a large chicken stretch to feed 11, if it was used carefully and was not the main ingredient e.g. in a chicken and veg risotto. I refuse to buy cheap chicken on animal welfare grounds but I always get my money's worth from a free-range bird by using every little bit of it.

[Sobeknofret]

Am I the only person who responded to this by going and cooking a decent meal? I've made vegetarian potato and spatzle soup and chicken and rice soup so far--we're all recovering from the flu and soup is all anyone wants right now! :D

[Marian the Librarian]

I woke up thinking about this, too. All these whiny, parsimonious, penny-pinching-for-the-Lord "tips" are making me fee particularly stabby this morning. It would be great if it were brought to the attention of their local CPS agency.

BTW, I wanted to be sure I wasn't misremembering her post-tornado stories, particularly the part about FEMA's offer of assistance. I searched her blog - voila, she's conveniently put it all together for us! generationcedar.com/main/2011/07/all-in-one-how-the-tornado-affected-the-crawfords.html

FEMA came by and told us that we would have government assistance available to us. I just smiled….â€thank you, but we don’t need itâ€.

[Bethella]

I keep wondering why she had chicken breasts in the fridge at all. Buying chicken breasts is an incredibly expensive way to buy meat. At the supermarket where I shop, a pack of two chicken breasts costs pretty much the same as a whole chicken. She could have made a large chicken stretch to feed 11, if it was used carefully and was not the main ingredient e.g. in a chicken and veg risotto. I refuse to buy cheap chicken on animal welfare grounds but I always get my money's worth from a free-range bird by using every little bit of it.

This! It's right after the holidays- we were able to get whole turkeys really cheap after Christmas (I want to say like 25-30 cents a lb?) So we bought four to put in the freezer to use over the course of the year (and a couple of hams too). In addition to eating plain roast turkey and turkey sandwiches we also make turkey casseroles and I make a ton of turkey soup. I can usually get two gallons of soup off a carcass and that's going light on the starches like noodles or rice; if I wanted to bulk the soup up with that stuff I could probably get three gallons or more. I may not like the Jeubs- but at least they did talk about doing this kind of stuff in their show. They would wait until something was majorly on sale and then buy a ton to stock up. With shoestring budgets and lots of people to feed it just makes sense.

[thetabmeister]

This post is really triggering for me. I grew up in a fundie family of four children/two parents where food was always rationed like this, too. We left every meal hungry for YEARS. For a while when I was a young teen, breakfast would be about 1/4 cup cooked oatmeal in a bowl with 1/4 cup powdered milk reconstituted. By 9:00 my stomach would be grumbling until lunch around noon (at that time, we were attending a Christian school, and the other kids made fun of me every single day for my stomach growling). As an adult, I am about 15-20 pounds overweight and I have food buying/hoarding issues. Not to mention a whole plethora of emotional and mental issues that probably stem from all aspects of the fundamentalism I was raised in, but oh, the damage that underfeeding does! I have chronic anemia and health issues that have risked my life several times (like when I get sick, I get it bad). I also have a "starvation" mentality where I rarely have or feel a healthy appetite and can go hours or even days (not so much now that I'm married) without eating much or anything and not even notice it or feel hungry. For the love of something, these people need to feed their children! What damage they are bringing on them! I absolutely HATE that people do this :(

And for what it's worth, my mom sometimes got on commodities (what they were called in the nineties) but it was just a bunch of crappy pasta. My parents went to every free meal /food event there was (like if HOme Depot was giving out hotdogs or popcorn, KWIM?) They would drive for MILES to go to get-togethers (suppsoed to be for fellowship, right?) just to get the free picnic. They even got food showered from various churches a couple of times, though they managed to make 1 plastic folding table of food last almost a YEAR. Their entire philosophy of food, eating, life, is just....................idk, a problem, amirite?

[J'ean Skirt]

Am I the only person who responded to this by going and cooking a decent meal? I've made vegetarian potato and spatzle soup and chicken and rice soup so far--we're all recovering from the flu and soup is all anyone wants right now! :D

I'm on my way to do so. I'm making a big pot of bolognese sauce because we've eaten everything in the freezer. It's my Sunday project this week. I may even make pasta.

[ladyamylynn]

This reminds me of a really horrific crime that happened a few years ago when I was living in Brooklyn. Basically, a young girl was beaten to death by her stepfather for "stealing" a yogurt from the refrigerator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Nixzmary_Brown (Warning, this article is incredibly grim.)

Anyway, somebody needs to report this sorry excuse for a parent.

[2xx1xy1JD]

This stuff is painful to read. Maybe I'm reacting so strongly because my religion is all about stuffing your kids with food?

I also have to wonder at what point the kids put 2 and 2 together and realize that more siblings = less food for them. That can't be a good dynamic.

[Rosa]

It might not be true that more siblings = less food. Since she's just doing this for control reasons, not because she can't financially/physically get more food (unless it's actually because of abusive headship control and not her own, but it sure doesn't seem like it from the outside.) Hopefully the kids realize that it's not God and it's not them, it's Mom and Dad deciding they should be hungry.

Unfortunately in a group of kids that big there are always a few who side with the authority figures. Sometimes when there are only a few kids they band together and work around the parents as much as they can.

There have been horrific cases in the news over the last few years where some but not all kids in a household are denied food. I know some have been posted here, especially when they were adopted kids. But it's a pretty common form of parental control/abuse and it's spread out over all kinds of bad parents, not just religious ones.

It's not a natural law that in the US more kids makes each get less food. It's that Kelly prefers her kids to be hungry. We've all mentioned ways to get more food into the house - WIC, SNAP, asking the church/neighbors, growing your own. Hell, I've dumpster dived a lot just because so much good food gets wasted in our society - I've been in groups of 3 or 4 cooks who routinely fed 30-40 people with just dumpstered and donated food. If her kids are routinely hungry AND she's as capable/blessed as she claimed, then their hunger is purely her choice. (Not all parents have the resources Kelly has. There really are places/situations where kids go temporarily hungry without their parents being at fault. I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about Kelly and her own claims about her life.)

[sarahbrownie]

This! It's right after the holidays- we were able to get whole turkeys really cheap after Christmas (I want to say like 25-30 cents a lb?) So we bought four to put in the freezer to use over the course of the year (and a couple of hams too). In addition to eating plain roast turkey and turkey sandwiches we also make turkey casseroles and I make a ton of turkey soup. I can usually get two gallons of soup off a carcass and that's going light on the starches like noodles or rice; if I wanted to bulk the soup up with that stuff I could probably get three gallons or more. I may not like the Jeubs- but at least they did talk about doing this kind of stuff in their show. They would wait until something was majorly on sale and then buy a ton to stock up. With shoestring budgets and lots of people to feed it just makes sense.

In NYC, it's about $1.99 a pound for a whole chicken, while it's $3.99 a pound just for chicken breasts. All it takes is a good youtube video on how to butcher, a roasting pan (I like my crock pot for this) and make yourself a chicken for reasonably a third less. I HAD to start buying whole chickens because I couldn't spend $15 a measly pack of chicken breasts. I imagine it is A LOT cheaper outside of the city (errr...groceries is the #1 problem I have here, honestly).

[KitCatCadillac]

Yeah, my reaction to this thread is definitely to go make dinner. ...And snack until it's ready.

[Inanna]

Am I the only person who responded to this by going and cooking a decent meal? I've made vegetarian potato and spatzle soup and chicken and rice soup so far--we're all recovering from the flu and soup is all anyone wants right now! :D

I know, right? I've been in the kitchen making all sorts of things since I read this. I think I'm going to make these tonight: http://greatist.com/health/recipe-basil ... s-041912/# since a friend of mine gave me a bunch of quinoa. Is there already a thread on FJ somewhere on how to really eat on a budget without going into pureed chicken and TTC territory? I'm always looking for new, cheap recipes and I figure we're a pretty resourceful bunch here.

I thought about Kelly's kids last night at dinner. I'd saved up some money to take my kids out to the local pizza place (the one they'd been sighing over wistfully since October) to reward them for good grades in school last semester. We were chatting a mile a minute while they were stuffing their faces with bread sticks and salads and pizza and cream sodas and chocolate cake. Healthy? Not even remotely, but that's why it was a treat!

It was good times but walking home I started feeling really sad because I realized that Kelly's kids were probably going to bed hungry while mine were taking leftovers home in boxes. If I could have magically sent those poor kids the extra pizza, I totally would have... even if half of it was meatball and pineapple. ("Don't judge me," said the preteen when he ordered.)

[super skeptic]

My mom's family was poor as children, and though she thankfully doesn't have issues with food hoarding or overeating, she does this one thing where she buys a lot of oil. We're always overstocked in cooking oil (as I speak there are probably 3 new big bottles in the cupboard and she always picks up an extra one when she goes grocery shopping). I finally asked her why she overbuys oil and she said "I don't know. I guess when we were kids, I remember your grandma running out of oil and having to ask the neighbors for a cup when she needed to cook. I guess it's one of those things I feel anxious to run out of."

[Artemis]

Ok, so I'm odd.

I decided to work out, just for the sake of interest, what could be bought with $180 which is £115, to feed a large family for a fortnight.

I put meat in it, because her family are not veggie. If you were veggie it would be so much cheaper. I used prices that I know I can back up in the UK - in the USA food is cheaper, yes?

I haven't done the conversions back, but this is what it looks like:

£115 for 14 days.

5kg belly pork = £20

4kg beef brisket = £20

5kg soya beans = £7

5kg pinto beans =£8

5kg brown lentils =£9

2 x 7kg nets of ‘pony’ carrots =£7

20 kg sack of potatoes = £10

10kg onions £4

21 sweetheart cabbages =£8

14 kg wholemeal bread flour = £17

5kg rice =£5

Total is £115

There's NO dairy in that - no milk, cheese. No fat, no sugar. No fruit.

You'd end up with a monotonous diet of sourdough bread or boiled rice for breakfast, dipped in broth, and then soup/stew every day for lunch, and dinner but there would be veggies for vitamins, lots of carbs, and quite a lot of protein both animal and legume-based.

But actually, I bet you wouldn't be terribly hungry. I've allowed 1kg of pulses per day for 11 people, plus assorted vegetables and starches, and meat for seasoning, and 1kg of flour to be made into bread every day. It's very basic peasant food, the type our ancestors ate for centuries.

There must be someone here who's a nutritionist. How does this pan out in terms of nutritional value?

Trouble is, of course, Kelly would never do this, because it's not about nourishing her family for less. It's about controlling them by starving them into submission.

[Sumeri]

I realized after posting last time that my dog eats better than this. And I don't mean that in a tongue in cheek - "My dog eats better than that!" way. One of our dogs has suddenly developed kidney issues that aren't being helped by the medication he's on, so at the advice of my vet we are trying a whole food diet: one pound of turkey, some liver, a cup of brown rice, and mixed veg pureed in a blender (and I would never puree the meat!) and some doggy vites to make sure it's balanced.

Other than the quantities and, you know, vitamins and minerals, doesn't that recipe sound familiar?

So take note, Kelly. There are dogs in the Midwest who eat better than your children do.

[Wolfie]

Ok, so I'm odd.

Nah, not THAT odd, I know somebody who likes to do taxes for fun. That's really odd.

I decided to work out, just for the sake of interest, what could be bought with $180 which is £115, to feed a large family for a fortnight.

I put meat in it, because her family are not veggie. If you were veggie it would be so much cheaper. I used prices that I know I can back up in the UK - in the USA food is cheaper, yes?

The US is so big that the cost of different types of food can really vary depending on where you live and what shopping sources you have access to. I have noticed that in the last year or so food prices have risen quite a bit. I can get by on about $100 a month if I need to, but I prefer to have a little more wiggle room. And even then, when my niece is visiting and in a growth spurt, she probably eats more during one day than the meal that Kelly fed her entire family.

[KBepote]

It might not be true that more siblings = less food. Since she's just doing this for control reasons, not because she can't financially/physically get more food (unless it's actually because of abusive headship control and not her own, but it sure doesn't seem like it from the outside.) Hopefully the kids realize that it's not God and it's not them, it's Mom and Dad deciding they should be hungry.

Exactly. Her writing suggests that she's the abusive control-freak. Over and over again.

[sarahbrownie]

Yeah, my reaction to this thread is definitely to go make dinner. ...And snack until it's ready.

I actually went out and bought a whole chicken. I am now $17 broker. But I got a week worth of chicken and potatoes now, which makes me feel safe because this thread makes me so paranoid.

There was a time I had to go to a food pantry because my school withheld my financial aid for paperwork they didn't even notify me about. I had to shell out $220 (my budgeted food money for the month) to keep myself in school. Ever since then, I've been awfully paranoid about having enough food for emergencies like that. This was the point when I gave up veganism, because I was just so happy to eat that I couldn't be picky, cus believe me, there isn't a lot of options at a food pantry.

[Wolfie]

I have to admit that I keep a couple months worth of food on hand. It's not really a hoarding thing, but more of a "My car broke down and took all of my food money" sort of insurance, as well as the fact that I buy in bulk and I live alone. I don't understand how these people won't buy in bulk in season and put it away in order to have enough food- it's how I was raised, it's how my mom was raised and how her parents were raised. It just seems normal, but then I know that my sister and brother don't, but part of it may be that their spouses aren't used to it.

[KBepote]

Nah, not THAT odd, I know somebody who likes to do taxes for fun. That's really odd.

The US is so big that the cost of different types of food can really vary depending on where you live and what shopping sources you have access to. I have noticed that in the last year or so food prices have risen quite a bit. I can get by on about $100 a month if I need to, but I prefer to have a little more wiggle room. And even then, when my niece is visiting and in a growth spurt, she probably eats more during one day than the meal that Kelly fed her entire family.

I do taxes and budgets for fun. Yep, I'm odd. :D

I'm TRYING to feed my family of four on $100 a week. Two of us have significant allergies and two have a genetic, mild form of diabetes, so I have to be very careful and creative, but even if we didn't, it wouldn't be easy. A family of 11 on about $100 a week? No way could I manage that, even living in an area where food is relatively reasonably priced.

In reference to the many comments above about food hoarding/obesity due to scarcity: I was raised in a very economically unstable home (father's mental health made it difficult for him to hold a job, and my mother obeyed her headship and never worked), so I have many memories of worrying about whether we would have food. Thankfully, I was never hungry ("God" always provided, or so this atheist was told. I think it was kind neighbors and friends who couldn't bear to see children go hungry), but I still often shop like I'm prepping for a famine. If something is on sale, I have to mentally talk myself down from the ledge of buying massive quantities. I've actively worked on this for over a decade, but it's still a struggle. I feel safe when my pantry is overflowing.

[apple1]

Even considering cooking from scratch nearly always and avoiding pre-made stuff that always costs more, and including some home-garden bounty because I garden and put back, I cannot even remotely feed 3 adults (my household) on $100 a month. Actually, $100 a week is fairly exceptional. I do include non-food grocery-store purchases like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, etc, because they are necessities. This also includes most packed-for-work sack lunches.

[Abi]

:angry-steamingears: This has made me so unbelievably angry.

My Mam is a single parent on a low income but I can never remember my sister and I being without food as children. Not once.

Kelly needs to get a fucking grip and stop starving her children.

[Anne Tudor]

I couldn't even read all of her "fun, frugal ideas" because that picture of her empty fridge said it all. She's proud about that though, that's why she has to show it; her overweening pride never lets her realize how horrifying that photo is once you find out she has all those kids. She's scarily like Emily in this way; she doesn't realize how much she reveals. She's so invested in the lifestyle she HAS to try to make it seem like fun and her kids don't mind. Just like Emily's toddlers loved their quarter of a spaghetti squash they shared with everyone else. "Others may not like it, but we do". Uh huh.

She is so proud at the indignities her family suffers at her hands and on her watch that that is the most notable thing about her. That is not a compliment, Kelly, if you are reading here.

[browngrl]

I'm on my way to do so. I'm making a big pot of bolognese sauce because we've eaten everything in the freezer. It's my Sunday project this week. I may even make pasta.

I was thinking about this post as I made lunch. We (my husband and I) had pot roast last night so today with left overs I made beef pot pie. The side was a big salad and dessert was brownies. It was a pretty filling lunch but somehow we have both made room for nachos to eat while watching football. In our defence we did go for a very long walk with the dog between lunch and nachos but even so I think that between the two of us we had more food than all the gen cedar folks put together (also none of my beef was put through a blender - like she did with her chicken).

[wild little fox]

I don't understand how her husband goes along with eating less than 200 calories at a meal. It does not add up. I'm not saying she isn't controlling her children with lack of food but her husband, too?