nothin Bagel Rescues Senator On Food Stamps | New Haven Independent

Bagel Rescues Senator On Food Stamps

On his first day of trying to eat for under $5, Chris Murphy found the first sustenance he could afford en route to a flight at 1 p.m. — and he had to forgo the schmear.

Murphy, Connecticut’s freshman U.S. senator, has decided to restrict himself to the daily $4.80 food budget of the average American on food stamps (under SNAP,” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which covers 427,000 people in Connecticut) to get a firsthand look at the realities of maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet on an extremely limited budget.”

Day One proved a challenge. He began the day at home in the district, met a local reporter at Cheshire’s Main Street Cafe, then hopped a flight to D.C. from Bradley. Murphy described the day to the Independent as he prepared a Ramen-noodles dinner at 9:15 p.m.:

I didn’t have anything to eat [at home] at breakfast. We had run out of fruit. Everything else was going to cost too much. Even having an English muffin, which was in the fridge at the time, would have broken my budget for the day. It’s going to be upwards of 50 cents or so.

Normally in the morning I have an iced tea or a diet soda on the way to work. Clearly I couldn’t afford that. If I had bought my normal iced tea at the Main Street Cafe, I would have spent half my budget for the day. So I just politely answered questions as the reporter sipped coffee. And I drank nothing.

You get into your habits. One of my habits is to have caffeine in the morning. I generally have a diet soda. [But] a diet soda will cost you $1.50 to $2. I’ve had a little bit of a lingering headache today without caffeine.

I didn’t eat anything until got the airport at 1 o’clock. By that point I was absolutely starving. I was not interested in sitting in a hot plane for an hour with my stomach screaming for me. So I searched the airport for whatever I could find for a dollar. The only option was a bagel. Adding cream cheese and or butter would have almost doubled the price. I got the everything bagel,” plain, for $1.11. I got a little extra flavor [from the everything toppings]. But it was still a pretty meager lunch.

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Murphy.

I got down to Washington around 3:30. I was in meetings up until about 7:30, which was the first opportunity I had to go to the grocery store. I just got back from the grocery store with the cheapest chicken I could find, which was chicken legs. It was $1.99 a pound. So right now I’m cooking six chicken legs for the week, which approximates to about $4 of food. I’m going to try to stretch the chicken legs out over three days for lunch. And I’m cooking some rice now as well. I’m trying to have chicken and rice for lunch the next couple of days.

I’m think I’m probably going to have some ramen noodles for dinner [tonight]. When you have to have a meal on a budget, you revert to things you bought at 19. Because it’s already 9 o’clock at night and I haven’t eaten, I’m going to take time to make healthier food for the next couple of days and just throw down some ramen tonight. I think I can eat two packets of ramen for a dollar. I might have enough money left over to have a banana.

I’m starving! It’s absolutely amazing to me that people have to go through this every day. I realized in the supermarket today how price-unconscious I really am. I don’t do a lot of the family’s grocery shopping. But when I’m in the store I do pay attention to price — just not to the extent I have to today. I try to buy less expensive food, but not the least expensive. I didn’t buy apples today because they seemed a little pricey. Bananas at 69 cents a pound seemed the cheapest way to get calories from fruit. Apples were over a buck-twenty five a pound. That seems a little excessive.

I had dinner scheduled with [U.S. Sen.] Chuck Schumer for tomorrow night. But I am going to reschedule the dinner. I wasn’t real excited about having to sit across Chuck as he ate a nice dinner or I merely watched or alternatively chomped on a bread stick. He was glad to reschedule; I’m not sure he wanted to eat while I wasn’t either.

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