Spam, a canned meat product (or some may cheekily say ”meat-like product” or “meat by-product”), was the staple in American kitchens during the Great Depression.  Parents back then, desperate to save money but still serve their families some protein would “butcher” a can of Spam. 

With everyone trying to cut back on spending, it looks like Hormel’s Spam is once again helping Americans feed families.  The New York Times reported that since July, production of Spam at the Hormel plant in Austin, MN has been relentless:  two shifts, seven days a week at 149,000+ cans of Spam per shift.

What is Spam?  People know Spam as “junk e-mail”, but Jay Hormel, the son of the company founder, says that Spam is a combination of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a “hint” of sodium nitrite “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color.”  Spam is available in regular, Low Sodium, Spam with Cheese, and Spam Hot & Spicy.

Find Spam recipes here.

Tip # 4:  Have a Game Plan — Plan your healthy meals and snacks in advance.

Tip # 7:  Stash Snacks — Stash a supply of filling snacks to grab when you need a bite.

On a normal work day I do not eat breakfast, I have a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then a mid-afternoon snack.  I am ashamed to confess that for the most part, the snacks come from the vending machine.  The items there cost between $0.50 to $1.00 so I will just average it out to $0.75 per item, which makes it $1.50 per day.  Lunch costs between $6.00 to $10.00, so an average of $8.00.  So everyday I spend around $9.50 on lunch and snacks at work for a total of $47.50.

So on Sunday I went grocery shopping and planned my lunch and office snacks for this week.  Lunch will be my favorite frozen entrees.  They cost $1.78 x 5 = $8.90.  Since those darn things never keep me full until dinner, I have a variety of snacks:  chocolate animal crackers (they are great with tea, and satisfies my craving to have the chocolate taste in my mouth), fresh cherries, fruit cups  and yogurt-covered raisins.  Overall I spent less than $20 for this week’s planned lunch and snacks, and they are much-healthier alternatives than the vending machine and fast food selections.

The evidence is already clear:  if I stick with my plan this week and not be tempted to go out and get sushi, my savings this week is at least $27.50.  50 weeks of that comes to $1,375!  Wow, that’s more than my monthly mortgage payment!

I am eagerly awaiting the other half of the desired results:  losing weight.

What about you, what are you doing different this year?

Finding fast, cheap, easy and healthy lunches on the go is challenging. Usually the fast, cheap and easy lunches you will find out there are not so healthy. 

I have never been a Subway fan until they started giving customers the option of toasting their subs.  To me, a warm meal feels for filling than a cold one!  My favorite one to order was their Chicken & Bacon Ranch sub.  However, Subway came up with a selection of $5 footlong subs.  The Chicken & Bacon Ranch sub footlong was approximately $2 more, so I decided to go for the cheaper subs.

Meet my new favorite: the Oven-Roasted Chicken Breast from Subway’s Fresh Fit menu and part of their $5 Footlong Subs.  I order it with Italian Herbs & Cheese bread, admittedly not the healthiest bread there is, but I love it and would rather not give that up.  I top it with American cheese, spinach, tomatoes and cucumber, then some ranch dressing.  I do not care for their shredded lettuce, hence the spinach for alternative greens.  The tomatoes provide a nice sweet counterbalance to the saltiness of the cheese and ranch dressing, while the cucumber gives the sandwich a crunchiness reminiscent of my favorite bacon, without the fat and cholesterol.

The best part?  I only eat half the footlong sandwich for lunch and eat the other half either for dinner or for lunch the next day.  That’s a $2.50 lunch plus tax.  What a great deal!

It doesn’t last until dinner however, and by mid-afternoon my stomach starts asking for snacks.  I don’t mind that too much.  I usually keep a stash of fruit cups or crackers in my desk.  Eating snacks also keeps me from being desperately hungry in the evening and which allows me to cook dinner at home instead of going through the drive-through.

Here’s to a healthier, no-longer broke New Year !!!

What is your favorite Subway sub?

A neighbor, who was with the three hours earlier at a block party commented, “It is very heartbreaking. All this came about over a hamburger. It’s a terrible situation.”

Two Rally’s hamburger wrappers were found in front of the home, attacked by a swarm of ants.

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Lesley Davis fed her baby condensed milk, and all sorts of unhealthy food throughout her daughter’s life. Now her teen Georgia Davis is the “fattest in all of Britain”. Lesley’s excuse for letting her daughter’s weight get so out of hand? She was unemployed and broke.

I grew up in another country where labor was cheap. We had a live-in maid and a laundrywoman (I do miss those days!) Our laundrywoman Lina had a grade school education, was married to a laborer who drank and gambled, and they had three kids. When Lina’s youngest child was old enough to be weaned from breastfeeding, the child sometimes literally had sugared water in her bottle. Later on, I knew they sometimes only had rice sprinkled with salt for dinner.

Lina’s child, unlike Lesley’s child Georgia, grew up to be healthy and of average weight. I think the main difference between these two mothers is this: while Lesley coped with poverty by comfort eating with her daughter, Lina was busy doing odd jobs here and there with her own daughter.

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The article talks about cans used in canned food have a plastic lining built into them to separate the food from the can itself. Though no one really heats up cans so as to release bisphenol A into the environment, the plastic liners can deteriorate over time, especially if the contents are acidic. 

That is really too bad, as canned goods make up a big part of a broke person’s menu. They are handy to have around for a quick side dish, and you can buy several at a time when they go on sale at the local grocery store. Canned goods are also the cheapest way to store food for a longer period of time.

There is no telling how long before the plastic lining in the can starts deteriorating, nor do we know how long ago a particular canned good was “born”. Unlike beer, canned goods have expiration dates, not born-on dates.

What is a broke person to do? While I have no plan to totally eliminate canned goods from my pantry, I will at least make sure not to buy canned tomato-based products. I can also start keeping an eye out for frozen vegetables that are on sale, and start experimenting with using dried beans in recipes instead of canned beans. Little changes — that is really all we can do at the moment.

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