To help even our footing, I have asked her to teach me something in which she is fluent and I am not: tortillas. She has been in the States for about five months, and she spends her days cooking most of the family meals, watching the smaller children, and cleaning house. Still, I want to feel like I'm contributing, so I'm focusing on helping Inez, Dolores's fourteen-year-old daughter, with her English. By my calculations I'm spending about one-fifth of my money on food, and more than one-third on rent, but work doesn't seem steady enough to justify spending down what little of my reserves remain on groceries for dinner, particularly when the only barrier between me and the good, home-cooked meal in the next room is my pride.
My own funds are limited, too, and my cash reserves are dropping steadily. Here I am, a single person, eating the food of a seven-person family with funds so limited that they fill their cupboards from an informal food pantry twice a week.
There has been sufficient time since my inaugural bowl of soup for a little guilt to seep in about this state of affairs. Sometimes the other boarders eat with us, but rarely. I handle my own breakfasts (coffee and bread), and pack my own lunches (PB&J and cheese sandwiches), but when the sun begins to drop behind the Coast Range and the evening breeze picks up, there's a loosely communal meal on offer, and I am always invited.
Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.Read more about the author and her experience investigating for this book in William Heisel's Q&A with Tracie McMillan: Going Behind the Scenes to See How Americans Eat.ĭolores and José have fed me nearly every day since I moved in. Excerpted from THE AMERICAN WAY OF EATING: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table Copyright © 2012 by Tracie McMillan.
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