Hunger Awareness Month: Recipes for cooking on a food stamps budget

All that talk about pie yesterday got us hungry, so we figured we’d do something a little fun for Friday and talk about…food!

One of the hardest things about hunger and poverty is figuring out how to stretch a food budget so you can eat healthfully AND have variety – as in something other than instant noodles or rice and beans.

We came across this great recipe for Lettuce Soup that is quick, easy, healthy, and would be good hot or as a cold summer soup. Plus, you can purchase most of the ingredients at your local farmers market – using food stamps if you shop wherever our Fresh Access program is running.

Want a whole cookbook full of recipes like this? For free? You can download Good and Cheap: A SNAP Cookbook, a cookbook designed for people on the average $4/day food stamps budget by NYU food studies student Leanne Brown.

This 132-page cookbook is full of beautiful pictures and delicious recipes for every meal of the day that even the most stressed and time-pressed among us can execute. There’s even a “handheld” section for those that have to eat on the go. Love it!

The cookbook is free but if you want to help Leanne produce print copies for donation and discount sales you can contribute to her Kickstarter campaign. If you’re a member of a nonprofit organization that wants to benefit from the Kickstarter campaign and get the printed cookbooks for your clients for free or at reduced-price, you can apply here.

Happy cooking!