SOUL FOOD:

Before they spent their first dollar on groceries, critics started picking nits. Or as one detractor put it herself, “quibbl[ing] about the details.”

The Food Stamp Challenge first cropped up in 2007 when four members of Congress along with two of their spouses announced they would live on an average food-stamp budget — $21 a week, a dollar a meal — from May 15 through 21.

That $21, critics griped, was the average food stamp allotment. Even though Food Stamp Challenge, which was extended to all members of the House and Senate, read: “The nationwide average monthly benefit in [fiscal year] 2005 was $94.05, approximately $3 a day or $1 a meal.”

Allotments are determined based on a compendium of rules lengthier than this column.

If you want, you can read the eligibility requirements at the government program’s website, www.fns.usda.gov/fsp.

You can even use an online pre-screening tool to see if you could qualify. Qualifying, however, doesn’t guarantee a maximum allotment.

Assets — such as savings and investments and in some states motor vehicles — and income affect qualified recipients’ allotments. Some get more. Others get less.

The idea is it’s based on need. Whatever their financial resources, in addition to the food stamps they receive, all recipients are expected to spend 30% of their own money on food.

In the fall of 2007, board members and staff of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the organization’s “There Shall Be No Needy Among Us” campaign by taking the challenge.

They ate on a weekly $21 food budget during the High Holy Days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Lutherans and Roman Catholics and many other people of faith also took up the cause. The 2007 Congressional Food Stamp Challenge, however, didn’t get many takers on Capitol Hill.

And when several readers of this column (most of them involved with the Roman Catholic Hunger for Justice campaign during Lent that year) sent e-mails to me suggesting I take on the challenge, I wasn’t a taker either.

I can’t honestly recall why. But I can guess.

Shopping for groceries and menu planning are among my least favorite things, even if I’m not on a tight budget. Call me lazy.

Now that the number of Americans (one in 10 or nearly 32 million) receiving food stamp benefits is higher than it’s been in 50 years, I’m again getting e-mails asking me to consider the Food Stamp Challenge. This time — during at least one week in Lent, which for me started Monday — I’m going to do it.

I’m thinking of making it a month. As one food stamp recipient posted on the blog set up during the Congressional Challenge, “I would feel better if these people tried it for a year. A week? Ha, that’s nothing. I get $16 a MONTH in food stamps and my disability check doesn’t help much. It’s not easy.”

A year, I don’t know. But a month gets closer to an apples-to-apples comparison; one can at least buy things in bulk when it makes sense.

For now, I need to plan some menus and a shopping list. I found a PDF booklet titled “Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals” at the website for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

It looks promising, with a few hitches. I’m a vegetarian and in the “Vegetarian” section of the “Main Meals” chapter, there’s one recipe for cheese-stuffed baked potatoes.

Most recipes rely on ground beef or poultry. Recipes that don’t, with few exceptions, still include eggs, milk or cheese.

I don’t as a practice eat vegan. But during Lent, as an Orthodox Christian, I’m expected to abstain to the best of my ability from dairy products and eggs as well as meat.

So these recipes will need some tweaking. I should find other low-cost meals in my Lenten cookbooks.

As Rep. Jim McGovern wrote in his blog in 2007, the purpose of the Food Stamp Challenge was “to spark a real discussion about the real-life difficulties that many in America face in trying to put food on their tables.”

With unemployment on the rise, and with it food insecurity, I hope to do the same thing here in Huntington Beach.

The Food Stamp Program — which, since the 2008 Farm Bill Nutrition Title became law in May last year, has been renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — has its naysayers.

In response to the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge, Mona Charen wrote a column titled “Can You Live on Food Stamps? Entitlements run amok.”

In it she noted that 70% of food stamp recipients are unemployed.

She did not mention, though, that only a small number within that percentage are employable — due to either disabilities or to age (too young or too elderly). The program does have strict rules regarding employment.

Employed food stamp recipients must earn less than 130% of a poverty-level income. By current standards, that’s $867 for an individual, $1767 for a family of four.

So it’s not uncommon for the food stamp allotment to become the grocery budget for a household.

As anyone who has worked with the food insecure knows, a simple car repair or a winter utility bill can eat up income that might otherwise have been spent on food.

Though not many on Capitol Hill participated in the Food Stamp Challenge, they did see to it that maximum Food Stamp allotments increased.

The best estimates I can find suggest that in California that might add between as little as $1 or as much as $4 to Congress’ earlier $21-a-week average.

So unless I turn up more accurate figures, I’m going to go with an even $25. I expect that will still be a challenge.

In my own low-cost cooking file, I have a 1992 Los Angeles Times food section article with the headline, “Three Meals, Four People, $10 Cooking By the Numbers.” In it, three food writers offer menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner for four on a budget of $2.50 a person.

They pull off the challenge nicely. Their menus are even healthy.

But that was 16 years ago. I can’t help but wonder what their shopping lists would cost today.

I’ll soon let you know how my menu planning and shopping go.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].