Most expensive groceries in the country...

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

a meal costing only 3 dollars … typical average "mom and pop" retired couple today own "5, 10 or even 12 homes.

With a lifetime of meals costing just $3.00, (or the equivalent adjusted for inflation), logically the average retired mom & pop could easily afford 5 or 10 homes.  While saving for the 20% down payment funds needed for each property it might require mom & pop to invest in the stock market, tobacco & IBM in the 1960’s with their paper route and babysitting money, Apple in the 1990’s at penny stock prices.  It can be done.

Here in Puna, to afford $3.00 budget meals might take a lot of breakfasts with coconuts grown in our yards and the good old days of farmers market papayas at 10 for $1.00.  Which extrapolated from administration data announcements certainly equals 5 or 10 homes in Pahoa or Keaau. 

I would calculate the average cost of a home in Puna, and how many budget meals it would take to buy each home, but I would probably be admonished for stating incorrect numbers, without any mention of what the more accurate figures might be.  Or any comment on whether $3.00 is in fact a reasonable amount for lunch or dinner, or if a dozen or so homes owned by average retirees is in the ballpark.

[leilanidude]

Seems pretty easy to have an under $3 meal, especially if you are on S.N.A.P. considering how the extra 50% bonus for fresh fruits and veggies would help out. Rice is very cheap, a chicken thigh is maybe $1, and as noted, some fruits and veggies are also quite cheap. Heck, at $9 or less per day, a single person could spend under $270 in the month and have $130+ left to sell off their EBT card at 50 cents on the dollar, leaving them an $65 in cash.

[HiloJulie]

Seems pretty easy to have an under $3 meal, especially if you are on S.N.A.P. considering how the extra 50% bonus for fresh fruits and veggies would help out. Rice is very cheap, a chicken thigh is maybe $1, and as noted, some fruits and veggies are also quite cheap. Heck, at $9 or less per day, a single person could spend under $270 in the month and have $130+ left to sell off their EBT card at 50 cents on the dollar, leaving them an $65 in cash.

I must say, that your typical stereotyped and systemic canned response, and with all due respect to the memories of Rob Reiner, but your Archie Bunker take on SNAP recipients coupled with your justification of a clueless Agriculture Secretary's sheer ignorance, was done so with the utmost kindness, love and with sheer and utter politeness! 

As they say, its nice to be important, but its more important to be nice! Right?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Seems pretty easy to have an under $3 meal

Some years ago there was something called the ice bucket challenge. I don’t have any recollection of what was involved other than there was a bucket and some ice and it was very popular for a time.

I’d love to see a $3 meal challenge.  People could prove their point that’s it’s pretty easy to create a budget breakfast lunch dinner menu (for $9!) by posting pictures of meals they’ve prepared at that price.  And would have to eat them and nothing else for let’s say - - a week?  Would they make it a week? A day?  I would bet cash money - - not a chance.

[ironyak]

HJ - One more thing to add - Hawaii is the worst State to drive! So, we got that going for us too.

Saw that too, but when you look at the details the score is heavily weighted towards the cost of gas and maintenance (living 3000 miles from anywhere tends to have a price), rush-hour congestion (a la Honolulu daily commute), and commute time (a la rural bedroom to town traffic), so it all becomes a bit of a "obvs fam" result for anyone who actually lives here. Hawaii actually ranks quite high on the safety metrics (side benefit of all that slow moving traffic ;)

Edujusan - I’d love to see a $3 meal challenge.
Well funny enough, musubi are $3 MSRP at any local Minut Stop, and can have a piece of Chicken [spam], many pieces of rice, a wrap of seaweed, and one other thing (is it furikake? tamago? shoyu? have to take a bite to find out but oishii desu ne?) The fact that a musubi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, only gets you ~1000 calories a day (but a couple days worth of sodium) means that the long term consequences of such a diet aren't great, but maybe that's the goal anyways. Lots of "useless eater" rhetoric being thrown around, especially from those lacking a sense of common humanity, much less any aloha.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

have to take a bite to find out but oishii desu ne?)

You could get meals in Japan for $3 if you follow the locals down roji to their favorite Midnight Diner, or even prepared mini bento at grocery stores, and they are generally healthy decent meals but then there’s the pesky price of that econ seat ticket on Zipair to get there.  

Otherwise if anyone started the $3 breakfast challenge this morning and are ready to cry unko there’s always The Sumo at Ken’s House of Pancakes (with gong!) to make you forget the bitter taste of reality.

Sumo!

   

[leilanidude]

Going out to eat, getting prepared foods does not seem to be part of the $3 challenge...

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Going out to eat, getting prepared foods does not seem to be part of the $3 challenge...

In Japan you could!  That’s the irony.
In America nope.  Not even in a grocery store.  Maybe at the HPPNW food pantry because it’s free.  Last month they provided for 900 families, in a subdivision with a population of 12,000.

And they accept donations so the 900 might steer clear of that seemingly irritating .0?% tax expense to the middle class.  Who pay most of the taxes.

   

[MyManao]

Going out to eat, getting prepared foods does not seem to be part of the $3 challenge...

Ok, Dude, since it is your boy's buddies who suggest a human can live a good, nutritious, life on something shy of 10 bucks in food a day (does that include taxes?), how about you tell us how it's done?

I am all ears brah.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

how about you tell us how it's done?

“one corn tortilla, one piece of broccoli, one piece of chicken, and one other thing”
I’m most interested in what that mysterious one more thing is in the meal plan. Perhaps a plate? Or a fork? I don’t think the reveal will be greeted with cheers and wonderment as when Steve Jobs added “one more thing…”