Your story about problems in getting people off on welfare (Page 1, Aug. 4) referred to a “poor man’s meal” of eggs, oatmeal, ground beef, spaghetti and black-eyed peas.
What is so poor about that type of meal? When my wife and I first got married in 1974, we were working our butts off in entry-level jobs as a waitress and welder, respectively. Even though we had college degrees in zoology and math, we accepted the first available work so that we could start saving for a family. We bought the big “value packs” of ground beef and big five-pound bags of kidney beans and made a large pot of chili that would last all week. We ate this with saltines.
Oatmeal was a regular meal at breakfast. It was good-tasting and nutritious. I still eat it just about every morning with some brown sugar and raisins. Spaghetti, also known as pasta in trendy Lincoln Park and on Armitage Avenue, is full of nutrition and low in fat and cholesterol. There certainly is not anything “poor” about pasta.
Hard-working people everywhere who eat like this every day have a problem with people on welfare who think this is poor folk’s food.
