Make Home Ec a required course, teach them how to cook, what to do with fruits and vegetables, and how to shop for dinner on a budget. How to bake your own bread, mend a shirt, grow tomatoes and herbs in a window box. It will stand every one of them in good stead.
No, Johnny...growing “THAT” herb will not get you an “A”.
;^)
Make it mandatory that anyone applying for food stamps take such a course. It should also be emphasized to recipients that food stamps will pay for fruit, vegetable, and herb plants and seeds for growing your own.
I know all of this because I did have an EBT card for a while up until May 2011. My husband and i were busting our butts with odd jobs and selling my canned goods to keep a roof over our heads and our daughter fed and clothed. It was demeaning. I fully admit taking advantage of it because it freed up some cash so I could keep supplied in canning jars and freezer bags.
but I also stopped it as soon as I could - but had to do that by cutting up the card and sending it back because they insisted I was still eligible even when I no longer wanted it.
I apologize for my rant - but it infuriates me to no end that there is no accountability for those taking government handouts. I will never forget the day in the checkout line when I was ridiculed by the cashier for buying all of the ingredients to make lasagna from scratch with my EBT card and coupons and told I should do what the woman in front of me had done which was buying frozen Stouffer's lasagna. She had bought 5 family sized ones @ $14.99 each which fed her family of 3, 5 times. I spent $26 and was able to make enough lasagna for 10 dinners for the 3 of us with leftovers, and 2 more for dinners for 6. Hmmmm - who was the better steward of the "government" handout?
BTW - that woman is no longer buying those frozen lasagnas - she was recently convicted of numerous counts of welfare fraud.