What is the longest you have gone without a good supply of decent food?

[bertha katzenengel]

The Salad Days of College count -- living on ramen and mac&cheese -- but I'm thinking mostly of other times.

How long have you gone without knowing where your next meal was coming from?

How long have you gone without being able to buy yourself -- or prepare for your family -- a balanced diet with plenty of calories to live on?

When you were a kid, did you eat mainly crap because your parents didn't have a clue? Or, were you a poor kid and grew up malnourished?

OR . . . ???

[InvisibleTouch]

1. I've gone for extended periods...

...in which I was more concerned with feeding my pets than feeding myself. I can improvise and hold out, skip meals, make do, drink lots of water. But the pet food was always a higher priority.

[Karthun]

2. do MRE's count? (nb)

[bertha katzenengel]

7. To the extent that the military doesn't care adequately for its

own, yes. Of course.

[tabasco]

8. Ranger School makes you appreciate MREs.

We even ate the coffee creamer.

I always liked MREs better than Hot A's out of mermites.

[solinvictus]

10. Good grief yes!

Mermite meals were much worse than MRE's. We used to make Ranger pudding: coffee, creamer, sugar, and cocoa mix. I loved the dehydrated fruit packets. My favorite MRE was beans and weinies. Mm mmm good!

[malmapus]

13. Ranger pudding =D

MREs were awesome..will always remember #11 (Chickon n Rice) and #8 (Ham Slice) fondly

[elehhhhna]

14. That "#8 (Ham Slice)" line maked me LOL.

If my hubs had been in the mil I KNOW he would remember the MRE's longingly--he likes off-brand spaghettios straight out of the can.

[tabasco]

21. I liked spaghetti after they came out with the new ones.

It's not all about the main meal !

Spaghetti had a nice compliment of other stuff: chocolate nutcake AND m&m's IIRC.

:hi:

[malmapus]

25. haha true enough

trying to remember, wasn't there one that had like 2 "deserts". Thinkin like m&m's and something else that could of been considered desertish.

personally I liked the dried fruit and the brownie bar was ok too

[solinvictus]

55. MRE's are actually nutritious..

They have about 1-1.5K calories per meal. Of course, if you eat them long enough, you won't be able to void for better than a week. I guess that's why the piece of toilet paper in the accessory pack is so small.

[CitySky]

3. simple answer: never

that puts me in the tiniest sliver of a minority on the planet, I'm aware. :(

I remember ONE time as a kid complaining because we had eggs for dinner (eggs was usually breakfast, and my least favorite breakfast at that!) My father responded to my comment with a level of rage that only decades later was I able to identify as out of proportion to the stimulous: I'm figuring my parents were feeling some stress, perhaps we were out of other food. But seriously, just that one time, in all my 30-something years.

[RoundRockD]

4. Try feeding a family when you're in the military.

I remember having nothing but popcorn to eat for dinner. My mother saved our skin more than once. We were enlisted and probably could have qualified for food stamps but I wasn't about to go that route.

[walldude]

5. Back when I played in a band

I went a couple years surviving on Kool-Aide, Ramen noodles and Baloney. It was still one of the best times of my life.

[Walt Starr]

6. About 4 years n/t

[On the Road]

9. I Was Out of Town and Unemployed

I finally got a restaurant job, but for the three days before it began, I had only $1.00. Bought a huge loaf of white bread. That was it.

[eternalburn]

11. February and March of 2002...

Rice-a-roni got us through.

Unfortunately my s.o. and I are in our late 30's. Times get hard.

[htuttle]

12. About 6 years while growing up, 4 years while in college,...

...and about 18 months while homeless during Bush Sr.'s reign.

Growing up we were just broke, but Mom always scraped something together (and sometimes it was quite literally 'scraping' something together). She started cooking a lot of Chinese and Indian food, since it was mostly rice (at least the way my Mom made it...).

In college, it was Ramen city, but I had roommates and we shared on the food, so we all got by.

All in all, I ate the worst when I was homeless.

I never took to dumpster diving like the kids today, but stuck to the local 'rescue' mission, food pantry, and begging for handouts at the back door of a few restaurants known to be sympathetic.

There are worse things than being hungry. Being hungry, cold, and wet is one of them (or being hungry, cold, wet, and unable to find any cigarette butts to score tobacco from -- that's bad...).

[HamdenRice]

15. For about a week, in Liberia

This is a very interesting question. When I was a student, I sometimes ran out of money, but always thought I could scrounge off other students. In fact, I used to cook a lot for others, just in case, so I could always freeload off people I had fed.

Shortly after college, I went on a volunteer trip to Liberia (Crossroads Africa) and toward the end of our stay in the village of Nyempha's Town, there was a rice shortage. Even though we had enough money to buy food, there was no food to be had in the markets. It was quite strange. Also, I had caught a parasite and was too sick to keep any food down, and I had severe diarrhea. That was the hungriest I ever was.

BTW, did you know that there few words in English that end in "gry"? You would think there are more.
Angry and hungry are two of them.
There are only three words in the English language.
What is the third word?
The word is something that everyone uses every day.
If you have listened carefully,
I have already told you what it is.


<edited, because I wrote the riddle wrong the first time -- sorry>

[htuttle]

20. A hungry mob is an angry mob!

[northzax]

47. actually, there are four

you cannot forget "aggry" {a typr of historic bead) or "gry" itself (a unit is distance roughly 1/10th of an inch)

so there.

[HamdenRice]

50. Actually, the answer is ....

"language"!

[northzax]

57. I understand that

the whole 'third word in the sentence thing" but I like pointing out the fallacy of the entire thing! :)

[CO Liberal]

16. A Week At a Time During Boy Scout Camp

:-)

[SemiCharmedQuark]

17. Never. My grandma made sure of that.

My grandma put what little money we had into beans, rice, tomato sauce and potato and flour. We got our bread from the discount bread store for 4 loaves for a dollar. And since I had never had anything else, I didn't know that this was not how most people ate. She stretched our food budged far. We rarely had meat (my grandma would say "meat is a taster-gooder not a filler-upper") and we very very rarely ate out. I remember going to McDonalds being a big event to look forward to.
Anyway, thank God those days are behind me, for now. I don't eat like a king now, but I recognize that I'm really really really blessed. But it's important to remember, "there by the Grace of God go I". If not for my grandma, we would have eaten horribly. My mom worked very long hours to support us and she just wouldn't have the time to make us anything. When my grandma was visiting our relatives in TX and Mexico, I lived on canned corn and canned ravioli.

[elehhhhna]

18. Never, only 'cause I could float a check at the grocery

near my apt. (right out of college). American cheese, bread, and Gallo. Yum.

Had a neighbor once who told me she'd only had one can of green beans in the house (hubs developed mental problems, wasn't working, 4 kids--). This was weeks after the fact.

I hurt over that. I know her pride stopped her, but if she's given me ANY IDEA, she'd never have had that problem. Ever.

Edit; we got foodstamps when my Dad was dying. Thank God for that & Social Security survivors benefits.

[trotsky]

19. Never.

Even though I grew up far from well-off, we always had food to eat. Sure, I ate a lot of boxed pasta in college but at least I had it to eat.

[AngryAmish]

22. Spaghetti+oil+garlic+dried basil+pepper

About ten days in a row. God did I smell.

Then, bread and bbq sauce sandwiches for a week.

[CitySky]

33. hey, that was college food

the year I studied in Italy!

But never JUST that, 10 days in a row. We ate at the (Italian government subsidized) student cafeteria and got a good lunch every day. As a foreigner, i paid the "top-tier" highest price -- so the 3-course lunch cost me a little under $2.

The pasta with "aglio-olio-pepperoncini" (that's all of the above minus the basil) was often dinner. Mmmm... memories! :P

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

56. Garlic ... luxury!

(I did that for 2 months whilst fruit-picking only with melted butter instead of oil)

[Bouncy Ball]

23. I grew up malnourished.

I was horribly thin as a child (underweight) and often we could not find enough to eat.

My mother had all kinds of personal problems (mental illness and prescription pill addiction) that were pretty severe and as a result, she wasn't the best mom a kid could have.

Until my teen years, we scrounged whatever we could get. I can remember flicking a roach off of a sleeve of stale saltines because we were so hungry one night.

My brother got in trouble in middle school for stealing food out of the cafeteria line (he'd smuggle a foil-wrapped chili dog in his jacket).

In college, of course I was broke all the time. I didn't eat meat for about six months at one point because it was just too damn expensive. You could get 36 packages of Ramen for a dollar back then. I ate a lot of soup. And crackers. And drank water. Soda was a big luxury.

The first year I was married was hard, too. I was still in college and my husband was bringing home $900 a month (he was in the Army). We did ok, but after our first anniversary, I was finally out of college and working and one of the first things we did was go to the grocery store and buy nicer foods to eat. We were so excited.

[HamdenRice]

27. That sounds like a very difficult childhood ...

nt

[Bouncy Ball]

30. It was.

I left out about 90% of the really difficult stuff. But you know what they say about stuff that doesn't kill you making you stronger! ;-)

[ultraist]

41. It did make you stronger...and very compassionate!

:hug:

[Bouncy Ball]

44. Aw, thanks doll.

:hug: :hi:

[bertha katzenengel]

32. BB

"We were so excited" -- hell, yes. I know that feeling so very, very well. We've much in common.

(I was walking through the grocery store one day... passed the produce section, then went back in and stood staring at the broccoli. I thought, "I could have fresh broccoli if I wanted it!" The thought was stunning.)

[Bouncy Ball]

35. Oh yes I remember that feeling.

Only mine was with MEAT (I'm a veg now, so this tickles me a bit to remember).

We stood in front of the meat cases and just MARVELED that we could buy some.

We didn't go whole hog (no pun intended) and buy steak or anything, but we bought hamburger meat and pork chops and thought we were in heaven. Ate ourselves silly that night.

That was when I got my first real paycheck out of college and was making a whopping....wait for it.....$19,000 a year!!!! As a teacher!

WHOOOO-HOOOOO!!! Compared to the zero I was making in college, I thought I was rich.

[gollygee]

24. My baked potato diet

I was working two jobs for almost nothing right after college, and could barely cover rent and gas to get to the jobs. I would buy a big bag of potatoes and eat potatoes for almost every meal. I lost more weight than I should have, and I was thin in the first place. I got pretty sick.

[Bouncy Ball]

29. OMG you are bringing back memories for me.

I did the same thing! Right after I got married. Only problem is, the potatoes must have already been a bit old, because by the time I had been eating on the sack of them for just a few days they had BIG eyes. Well, I cut the eyes off and kept going, but by the end of the week, there was no eating those potatoes. I had another week to go until my husband got paid again and I threw them away and just cried.

I was too embarrassed to ask my roommates for help (husband was stationed about an hour away and we saw each other on weekends, so I still had roomies). I would just pinch little bits off their food in the fridge so they wouldn't notice.

I lost weight, of course. I would tell myself the hunger pains were good for me, that they would pass, and they always did.

God those were awful days. I had totally forgotten about those potatoes that made me cry.

[catmandu57]

26. When I was a young blowing in the wind vagabond

eating was pretty irregular. It was the raygun years, and there wasn't work to be had where I lived, so I was on the road, living hand to mouth.
I finally settled in at a friends house for about a year, if it weren't for the food stamps, and poached deer we would have starved.

[supernova]

28. Mostly when I was married

he didn't work or was underemployed a lot of the time (grad student) and I was trying to feed us on office assistant wages.

While we weren't hungry, exactly, there were many weeks when we lived off of pasta and jarred sauce or lentils and rice. We didn't have our apt lease renewed at one place, so we moved down the ladder into an older, dingier apt, but oddly, roomier. :shrug:

That was my late 20s and early 30s.

Today, I get whatever the hell I want and I share whenever I can. I am so thankful to have a roof, food and clothing.

[mtnester]

31. 1.5 years....as a single mother

I bought food and everything that was needed for my child...however, it meant I had to do without. I went from a size 12 to a Size 0..I was not healthy, and I ruined my teeth forever. I would not ask for help, although I had family that would have helped me if I had asked. I never told them until many years later how desperate I was. I was taken to task for it too, I might add.

To look back on young and stupid when you are middle aged and better informed is to cringe.

[MrSlayer]

34. Never.

I might have missed a few meals while on 4 day coke binges but never have I been deprived. Food has always been there when I wanted it.

[Q3JR4]

36. I've never had it really bad,

growing up my parents made sure we were always fed. I think that there were times when they might have had a little less than they could have, but none of us starved.

Now that I'm in college, there have been times when I've had to live off of Ramen for a week.

[MissB]

37. Growing up, our dog ate Prime Rib

We ate lots of potatoes and homemade canned veggies. The Prime Rib always smelled so good. :shrug: (My mom was a waitress and brought home meat scraps for the dog.)

I've never experienced food insecurity. Mom cooked from scratch and always had something in the cupboards. It wasn't fancy, but we were never hungry. The fridge always had too much in it- my brother and I used to avoid opening it as there were always a few too many fuzzy things in there.

[Danmel]

38. The food in college was pretty bad

I went off the food plan in my sophomore year when I saw worms crawling on the lettuce leaf on my tuna sandwich. The director of food services didn't want to refund my money for the balance of the semester. So I walked the sandwich upstairs to his office and said- "You cut me a check now or I walk this sandwich over to the Board of Health." Needless to say, I had the money to buy groceries and pots and pans that day!

I also spent a week in Columbia South Carolina about 10 years ago. Got to say that is not a good food town.

[Lisa]

39. halfway through my first semester of grad school

At the time, I was in a faculty that didn't have teaching posts for its grads -- there were some research assistantships, but those accepted at the last minute (like me) were out of luck. I was sharing a house with a bunch of other people, and even though I'd loaded up on groceries at my folks' place an hour's drive away, my roomies ate most of the stuff by the following day. I was reduced to hanging around the campus conference center, trying to mooch leftovers from the sandwich plates that they'd have for high-level confabs.

Also, I was on a research crew that spent the summer in the Arctic. Freak ice conditions prevented the supply boat from getting through, and we basically had to subsist on tea, rice, and powdered milk for several weeks.

But I can't imagine what it must be like to have to worry about feeding kids -- the above situations were bearable because I knew they were going to end eventually, and I had nobody depending on me.

[bertha katzenengel]

40. I must have some serious demons to exorcise, because here I am,

all 270 lbs of me. Thinking of photos of myself when I was a kid -- a stick with blonde hair. Frequently mistaken for Jodie Foster. We didn't eat well. And now, when I eat too much -- which is daily -- lately I've been thinking about WHY I eat too much. I must be afraid I'm not going to get enough.

[Bouncy Ball]

43. Check your PM.

And :hug:

[Lisa]

48. we've got a neighbor who grew up as a WWII refugee ...

She looks like a buxom Bavarian grandmother now (and is!) -- but as a child, what with the Depression and the war, she never got enough to eat. There are no photos of her from that time (family too poor to own a camera).

As long as we've known her, she has been baking cookies and cakes -- giving them away to people up and down our street. What you said about exorcising demons -- I think you're right, since with her the cooking seems to be her way of coping. When I was old enough to learn about her past, it was all I could do to refrain from crying whenever she rang the doorbell and presented us with homemade stollen -- she equates food with love, and this is such a fierce and palpable feeling that, 3000 miles away from her, I cannot forget it.

[bertha katzenengel]

49. "she equates food with love" -- oh, my god...

All I ever bring Mrs. V. is gifts of chocolate or some such when I want to give her a little gift. She doesn't much like stuffed animals collecting in the corners, and with cats, cut flowers are a bad idea. Yes, I too (and my sisters, also large) equate food with love. I have so much to learn.

Thanks for telling me about your dear neighbor.

[doodadem]

42. As a kid, supper some nights

was cornbread and milk, but nobody starved. Five kids on a salesman's commissions, moms did not work back then, and two of my siblings were juvenile diabetics with no health insurance. Amazingly, we survived just fine, my sisters always had their insulin, and my dad would have never dreamed of applying for any aid.
When I first got out on my own, I would buy 4 for a dollar cans of spaghetti, and that was supper for many months.
The good thing we learned from hardship here though folks, is how to do what I call, "hunker down" during lean times. I've had to remember that a few times now during this recession. You stretch groceries farther, and you make do. Survival skills. Alot of people out there don't have them, who were raised on MacDonalds and microwave dinners.

[LostinVA]

45. Excluding college, nine months

When I was laid off in the very early 90's, and thanks to Poppy Bush, couldn't find a real job for over a year. My roommate skipped out, I had a student loan that couldn't be deferred, etc. I ate NOTHING but ramen noodles, generic mac & cheese made only with water, boiled potatoes, eggs if it was a good week, etc. It was horrible. Sometimes friends would take pity on me and feed me. I didn't even own a car or have cable.

The kicker? I didn't qualify for food stamps: I made too much money. WTF???

[ultraist]

46. When I was a kid...

After my mother divorced, we were very poor until she remarried when I was 8. I lived off of Swiss Miss and Instant Breakfast for years.

My mother worked and as far as I know, did not get food stamps. I think she must have been able to qualify but she had a lot of pride. I was very skinny and during the summer, when we didn't get school lunches, my sisters and I went to bed hungry, many a night.

In College, I lived off of one meal a day, or one partial meal. After my husband and I started making a decent living, we were thrilled we could buy quality foods or eat out whenever we pleased, but, one never forgets.

My early experiences definitely influence my strong support for increased minimum wage and social programs for the poor. I'll always be a bleeding heart liberal!

[youspeakmylanguage]

51. This is so hard to put in context...

...since so many people on this planet go without basic nutrition, it is hard to even imagine my diet being "limited" by financial concerns.

I am and always have been overweight. Growing up, we always had a ridiculous amount of food. My parents sometimes went without when they were kids, so I think they overcompensated for us.

I have eaten through lean financial times, but I noticed the calories and fat went up as the grocery money slimmed down. Fast food, JIF peanut butter, boiled eggs, peanuts, and pasta all dominated my diet and added to my waistline.

Incredibly, it is much easier to fill your diet with fat, protein, and sugar on a slim budget than fresh vegetables, grains, and healthy meats. Maybe I am wrong on this, but it's just a personal observation.

[cap]

52. get unfashionable veggies in season...

kale kohlrabi rutabaga turnips...

[leftofthedial]

53. I went about three days once

it was hell

better get used to it now, though

[BlueIris]

54. There were two separate years in college during which time

I basically starved. I don't state that casually. I simply didn't have a way to pay for rent, textbooks, car insurance and food. So I didn't eat enough. Five years after college, I am still rebuilding the nutritional deficit I hollowed out for myself during those times.

[bertha katzenengel]

58. Kick. Some sad, interesting, honest tales. Any others?

:kick: