Eating on $4/day

sseamom
Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:07:17 +0000

I have some experience working with some people in the same communities, waiting. It’s fortunate that your community not only knew what to buy to stock a kitchen well, but where to find it all affordably, even on a tight budget. You and yours were/are very fortunate. But 1)not all lower income people live near places like Goodwill, and some of those smaller thrift shops carry only a few good, usable used kitchen items. Dishes, yes. Unbent, sturdy pots and pans? Not so much. And if you don’t KNOW what a good vegetable peeler is like, or what kind of pot won’t scratch up the glass top in your rental, who would tell you? Where would you ask?

I read about a family taking just such a cooking class as mentioned above a few years ago. They came from a refugee camp and the mother had never seen a stove. It terrified her. It was a huge victory for her to learn to use one. And I’m guessing someone had to teach her to buy the right kitchen ware. She was neither itinerant nor indigent, nor ignorant.
There’s a huge need for these classes and it would really help to be given some basic kitchen ware for many immigrants, actually. One little girl in D’s kindergarten brought a jar of peanut butter in for lunch one day. That’s all. Somehow they had the impression peanut butter from a jar was an American lunch. Again, not indigent or itinerant.