Best Food Writing 2014 by Holly Hughes Page A

am.”
    The day after the Hunger Challenge ended, I went to Bi-Rite for groceries. I didn’t know if I’d feel Veblenesque outrage at the Bay Area foodie lifestyle, but instead all I saw was community. Bi-Rite supports family farms and small local businesses, and it donates or sells food at low cost to charitable organizations like St. Anthony’s. My week on the Challenge had made me feel stressed and alienated, but it also made me aware of all the ways, large and small, that we’reall taking care of each other instead of behaving as though we live in different worlds.
    With that in mind, it was as hard to adjust to abundance as it had been to austerity. My first meal after it ended was a rich bowl of tonkotsu ramen at a hip Mission spot that cost more than half of my food budget for the week. I threw it up.

W AITING FOR THE 8TH
    By Eli Saslow
    From the Washington Post

    In a year-long series that won him a 2014 Pulitzer Prize, Washington Post * staff reporter Eli Saslow examined in depth the struggling lives of Americans in the food stamp system. Here’s one poignant chapter in that big-picture story.
    S he believed you could be poor without appearing poor, so Raphael Richmond, 41, attached her eyelash extensions, straightened her auburn wig and sprayed her neck with perfume as she reached for another cigarette. “For my nerves,” she explained, even though doctors already had written eight prescriptions to help her combat the wears of stress. She blew smoke into the living room and waited until her eldest daughter, Tiara, 22, descended the stairs in new sneakers and a flat-brimmed baseball cap.
    â€œI look okay?” Tiara asked.
    â€œFresh and proper,” Raphael said, and then they left to stand in line for boxes of donated food and day-old bread.
    It was Thursday, which meant giveaways at a place called Bread for the City. Fridays were free medical care at the clinic in Southeast Washington. Saturdays were the food pantry at Ambassador BaptistChurch. The 1st of each month was a disability check, the 2nd was government cash assistance and the 8th was food stamps. “November FREEBIES,” read a flier attached to their fridge, a listing of daily handouts that looked the same as October’s freebies, and September’s freebies, and the schedule of dependency that had helped sustain Raphael’s family for three generations and counting.
    Except this month had introduced a historic shift. The nation’s food stamp program had just undergone its biggest cut in 50 years, the beginning of an attempt by Congress to dramatically shrink the government’s fastest-growing entitlement program, which had tripled in cost during the past decade to almost $80 billion each year. Starting in November, more than 47 million Americans had experienced decreases in their monthly benefit, averaging about 7 percent. For the Richmonds, it was more. Not far across the Anacostia River from their house, Congress was already busy debating the size and ramifications of the next cut, likely to be included in the farm bill early next year.
    It was a debate not only about financial reform but also about cultural transformation. In a country where 7 million people had been receiving food assistance for a decade or longer, the challenge for some in government was how to wean the next generation from a cycle of long-term dependency.
    Raphael’s challenge was both more pressing and more basic: Her monthly allotment of $290 in food assistance had been reduced to $246. She already had spent the entire balance on two carts of groceries at Save a Lot. There were 22 days left until the 8th.
    â€œMama’s version of the hunger games,” was how she sometimes explained the predicament to her six children, five of whom still lived with her, ranging in age from 11 to 22.
    Feeding a family on zero income always had required ingenuity; she took the lights out of their refrigerator to save money on