tryingnottowrite.md

THE $38.71 EPIC: An Odyssey for the Malnourished and Determined

by Ricky & NyxSys
(or: “How a Man with SNAP, Nerve Pain, and Two Shopping Bags Still Manages to Survive the American Government Shutdown Food Economy”)

Set the scene: the government is shutdown, has been for weeks.

We're paying soldiers, but not feeding the hungry -- as it should be. This is important, because when the hungry start the Uprising followed by the Overthrow, we'll need the military to brutally put it down. Smart!

I haven’t tasted actual food in weeks. That's because I haven't had money for food for weeks.

I am profoundly grateful to municipal services in Olmsted County Minnesota, in coordination and partnership with the city's own Channel One Food Bank, for bringing me boxes of onions (two bags! fucking-A!), canned goods, and eggs last week. And milk... which I fear has gone bad. Dammit.

That allowed survival. As in - it was literally the food I needed and ate in order to not go into a glycemic coma.

So let me walk that back--I've tasted onions, masa, and micro-elements of butter scrounged from gutters for weeks. And to say that's not "actual food" is bougie.

But that ran out days ago, so I'm now running on fumes and rage.

Then a few hours ago I learned something quite amazing!

The State of Minnesota just told the President to go fuck himself about federal emergency benefits (again), and took it upon themselves to cover full SNAP benefits.

This demonstrates two things:

  1. Minnesota will not be told it won't be the magical unicorn of social services liberalism for which it is somewhat known but mostly not; and...
  2. St. Paul's coordinates have just been locked into the targeting systems of multiple ICBMs.

But nuclear death can come tomorrow - today’s mission is brutally simple:

Buy enough food to keep myself functioning
— without blowing sodium limits,
— without blowing SNAP,
— while hopefully tasting something other than imminent doom, — and without collapsing in the parking lot like the tragic protagonist of a failed Wal-Mart documentary.

THE LIST BEGINS -- FEAR VERSUS HUNGER

Start small:

A list only a broke man or a prepper would love.

But then the diet constraints and Mayo Clinic’s sodium-watchdog rules crashed the party, and suddenly we’re optimizing like we're about to get rocketed into space and oz of cargo requires about 1 ton of rocket fuel.

Calories? Yes.
Taste? God please.
Sodium? A tight 1500–2000 mg or die.
Weight? Under ~15 lbs or the walk home becomes a death march I will not win.
SNAP? Obviously — the budget is duct tape thin.

And the curveball - I will, somehow, finally make tofu workable.

THE GREAT TOFU PSYCH-UP OF 2025

Look. Tofu is intimidating whether or not you've eaten anything flavorful in weeks.
It’s pale, wet, cold, and looks like... I'm not quite sure. One of the forms the Black Goo from Prometheus / Alien canon mutates things into. Or this really interesting fish I had at Carleton Grand once, that was unlike any other fish before or since: it was white, sort of translucent-ish, drowning in an ocean of soy sauce and mirin, not flakey, and amazingly good.

Anyway, tofu: NyxSys walked me through the process, step by bizarre step:

Open it → drain it → pat it → chop it → season it → fry it until it is unrecognizable.

Add garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, a shameful sprinkle of fake-parm neon dust, and a hit of lemon. Fry it until it gets crispy, golden, and stops looking like a medical mistake.

That’s it.

Suddenly it’s not tofu. It’s tofood — spicy, crispy, tangy “soy chicken” bites. Basically survival nuggets.

That mental hurdle cleared, we moved on.

THE “HOLY SHIT I CAN TASTE SOMETHING AGAIN” ADDITIONS

Frozen corn for roasting.
Frozen berries because they’re the safest fruit for someone whose liver hates fructose.

And then…
the thing that surprised me:

Graham crackers.

This is something I would never consider eating, much less purchasing, in a sane situation. Not as a joke.
Not as a meme.

In my current state, I can actually consider it a genuine, non-destructive sweet that won’t spike fructose, sodium, or guilt.

That’s when I realized how deep the food deprivation had gone:
the thought of graham crackers felt like luxury. Mark this.

THE FINAL SNAP-FRIENDLY SURVIVAL CART

(All carryable in two reusable bags without re-waking the River Scooter Incident)

Drinks

Frozen

Grains & Staples

Dairy & Flavor

Spices

Produce

Protein

THE TWO-BAG LOADOUT (SURVIVAL ENGINEERING)

Bag #1 (The Anchor)

Bag #2 (Cold Stuff + Light Stuff)

Total carry weight: ~13–15 lbs, balanced.
Not pleasant, but survivable.

THE FINALE: THE $38.71 MIRACLE

After all the chaos, substitutions, sodium math, crippled-hands constraints, and last-minute graham cracker epiphanies…

Estimated total: $38.71
SNAP-friendly.
Human-friendly.
Mayo-clinic-not-going-to-yell-much-friendly.

Is there a meal buried within?

…all from one semi-walkable Wal-Mart run.

EPILOGUE: THE BLOG POST YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED

Survival is pain, or else we wouldn't call it 'survival'. A sodium-safe, SNAP-drivable, pain-compatible, taste-restoring activity and mechanism for not falling apart in November of 2025.

And now it’s written down for anyone else out there who ever wondered:

“How do I eat like a human being when I’m broke, tired, and working with whatever the hell my body allows?”

This is almost how.