Fine Food at a Small Price

Poor Girl eats well — and her blog teaches others who are cash-strapped how to do it, too

By Niesha Lofing
nlofing@sacbee.com

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Poor Girl gasps in exultation as she spies blackberries on sale for 99 cents during a shopping trip to Safeway.

"I can have dessert tonight," she exclaims.

Just seconds before, Poor Girl had carefully plucked a plentiful bunch of asparagus from the display near the blackberries. They, too, were 99 cents.

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Neither of these items was a planned purchase, and all Poor Girl had was $10, her sole discretionary income until the next pay day, still a week away. In fact, the trek to Safeway was intended only to yield cat food.

But with Friskies on sale, her budget stretched just far enough to squeeze in the alluring berries and asparagus. Her total was $7.83. The Safeway checker told her she had saved $8.97.

"Fabulous," says Poor Girl, who is better known outside the blogosphere as Kimberly Morales.

At poorgirleatswell.com, Morales chronicles her adventures in eating cheaply and her quest to help people stretch their food budgets to include healthy, flavorful, filling foods.

Morales lives paycheck to paycheck, in the waste-not, want-not land between barely making it and qualifying for government assistance. She's brutally honest in life and on her Web site about her financial status.

She recently blogged about how she came home one day and discovered that her gas had been disconnected.

"Poor Girl forgot to pay her gas bill. *hangs head in shame*," Morales wrote. She later explained that she had to forgo paying the gas bill for months in order to afford expensive asthma inhalers.

What's worse, she didn't have the money to pay the bill immediately. It was turned on May 11 — about three weeks later.

Despite this setback, Morales managed to continue to cook photo-worthy, flavorful meals, including a grilled steak, red bell pepper and asparagus wrap made with a George Foreman Grill.

"I debated a lot about posting that entry," she says, referring to her cash crisis confession. "I'm sure this is happening more and more to people. But you can still pull through and make something good."

Poor Girl is right; she is not alone.

An increasing number of Americans are struggling to make ends meet. In 2007, 37.3 million people were in poverty, up from 36.5 million in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That same year, 11.1 percent of households were uncertain about where their next meal would come from, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Despite those statistics, a "horrendous" amount of food is thrown out, says Gopal Kapur, founder of Family Green Survival, a program that promotes social and environmental awareness about food.

"On the average, a U.S. family of four tosses out $590 worth of groceries per year," he says. "More than a billion families worldwide survive on less than $400 per year."

This careless approach to eating, a monumental shift from the post-World War II mindset of not letting food go to waste, is beginning to change because of the economy, Kapur said.

"One thing I admire about our country is that once people become aware, people do change," he says. "Now I think change is coming and it will improve, but I think we need to do more education and more practice."

Morales' efforts to teach others how to eat healthfully and inexpensively should be commended, Kapur says.

"She has educated herself well, and that's the way we should all be eating," he says.

For Poor Girl, the greatest compliment has come in the form of a thank-you e-mail she received in February from a mother who was grappling with how to feed her family for a week after being denied food stamps.