How to (almost) make it on Food Stamps

I am starting this post to record how I buy groceries, plan meals, and eat on my present $87.00 a month in Food Stamps.  I am 65 years old, on a fixed income, which I live on.  I will share what I have discovered while trying to survive on Food Stamps. 

I also eat the "old way".  My family comes from southwest Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and were all farmers who lived off the land.  They raised their food, their animals, and whatever they got from what the land provided wild.  I think this is a simple way to eat and live.

I don't embrace the tofu culture.  I'm sure that everything I see in magazines and new cookbooks is healthy, but it is also expensive and it requires a whole new way of eating.  I prefer to stay with what worked for my ancestors.  Not to say that I do not try new dishes, or have anything against them.  I just think it is hard to eat like we are "supposed" to because of the cost.  I will explain my views as I go along.

My Camping Adventure

I am a 63-year old woman who has this compulsion to travel now.  Not to travel the world, just a little part of it.
I'm also retired and living on a fixed income, and so I must travel cheaply.

So I have a 1961 Apache Eagle pop-up camper that I can pull with my car, and my intention is to hit the road as soon as the weather warms up enough, and go down the road and see what happens.

My companion will be my little pug, Zee.

I have been planning and preparing for this adventure all winter.  I've spent hours hunting my ancestors on Ancestry.com, and I want to see where they lived, what the country looks like, and try to imagine how it must have been for them. 

My grandmothers and grandfathers came from England and Germany (as far as I've found so far), and they came to the American colony in the 1600's, and settled near Norfolk, and along the coast northward.  They then migrated through the Shenandoah Valley to Salisbury, North Carolina, and then followed the Wilderness Road to southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, East Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky. 

I want to travel the roads in the areas they did, and just soak in the scenery.  I want to find a campground, set up camp and rest and explore the area, and then move on whenever I feel like moving on.

I feel as if this may be my last opportunity to do this, as my health seems to get worse and worse, and next year may be too late.  So I am going to try to make it happen.  It may not.  I'm going to take it one day at a time, and hope for the best, and accept whatever happens.

I've had two little experimental trips before, so I will start out with the story of those mini-trips, and record how I am preparing for this trip.