These diaries are for trading recipes, hints, tips, tricks, and workarounds for eating well while poor and/or disabled, since they go together in America these days. It's not about the politics that keep us down...there's other diaries for that. If you want to know what I'm dealing with, please look at the FSG:Prequel diary here. Trolls have high nutritional value; first come, first served, and share the meat with everyone.
When you're poor, you have an increased likelihood of having various things wrong with you that you can't fix. The big ones affecting food around here are orthopedic issues and teeth.
An inescapable fact of my existence is that I have a lot of foot and ankle pain, and back pain, and I have to factor that in to my plans as the household cook. I do a lot of my chopping prep seated, whether on a stool or at the dining room table. I precook hamburger, shredded beef and chicken, shredded or grilled and diced, or roasted whole, so that I don't have to stand there and make it happen on the days where I am having trouble walking. I plan things with nice long chunks of simmer time or bake time, during which I can go take a load off and keep well within the day's standing budget. I've also learned to make sure to stretch my hamstrings and my deep hip flexors on a regular basis, or pay the price. It's also been worth it to get and keep good cooking tools; knives that make my work efficient and safe, my stand mixer, and my slicer to name a few.
But I can't just cook anything I want. I'm the only one in the house with a full set of their own teeth. This is partly genetics and partly poverty. When you're poor, they don't offer you a root canal, they just pull the tooth. How do you bite off bits of a nice fresh apple if you have no front incisors? How do you chew up a nice raw carrot if you have lost your opposing molars?
The answer, of course, is that you have to presoften and prechew your food in the cooking process. I tend to steam vegetables, which manages to cook them through without losing too many nutrients. Potatoes round here are eaten either baked or mashed; I"m really the only one who can handle a potato chip. Roasted meat is sliced thinly for tenderness before it reaches a plate. In Dad's case, I often puree vegetables and add them to sauces and stews, so he can get the benefit of them without having to chew them up. Plus a pureed carrot will very nicely correct the acid of tomato sauce without requiring sugar to be added. I braise chicken and turkey, not roast it, to increase juiciness and tenderness.
And then of course there's the illnesses that one medicates with food. Dad is diabetic; I try to give him a balanced diet without a ton of sugar and simple carbs in it. I have IBS; I have a certain fat and fiber content my gut is used to, and I don't deviate from it. I make sure I eat a half cup of cooked white rice daily, and this gives me a much easier time in the bathroom daily. I make sure there's something not involving milk products that J the caretaker can eat.
So, the floor's open. How do you work your food prep and consumption around your disabilities? And how do you do it without breaking the bank?