SOUL FOOD:

Advertisers can easily convince us that we need far more than we do. But I suspect we often don’t need their help; our avarice and imaginations delude us well enough.

During Great Lent, when I took up the Food Stamp Challenge (see “An extra food challenge for Lent” March 5), I got to see the distance between what I need and what I think I need from a new perspective.

One of the first things I learned was that I didn’t know the meaning of meal planning.

In the battered copy of the “Better Homes and Garden Cookbook,” which my father used to plan meals for his family of four, page 1 of chapter 2 says, “Meal planning is a game that’s fun if you play it with imagination and zest.”

Maybe it was for my father, but it’s not for me.

My approach to shopping for groceries has long been this: find a recipe I want to make; buy the ingredients. Lucky for me, my husband has never complained about my breaking our grocery budget.

But for the Food Stamp Challenge I could spend only $25 a week ($100 for the month I committed to), roughly the average allotment for a recipient of food stamps in California. A document published by the United States Department of Agriculture suggested $25 wouldn’t go far.

The “Thrifty Plan,” the lowest level of the December 2008 “Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels,” puts the weekly cost of feeding a female between the ages of 51 to 70 years at $35.20. Its “Low-cost Plan” estimates $43.60; its “Moderate-cost Plan,” $54.10; its “Liberal Plan,” $64.40.

I got the impression it was going to take some imagination, if not zest, to devise a meal plan for a budget of $25 a week. In the end, what it took was thinking like a minimalist — or a monk.

The sage words of some church fathers and saints published in the margins of “When You Fast . . . Recipes for Lenten Seasons” proved practical as well as inspiring. Instructions from Gregory of Sinai became my compass.

“There are three degrees of eating: self-control, sufficiency and satiety,” wrote this monk who was born in Smyrna in the 1260s. “Self-control is to be a bit hungry after having eaten. Sufficiency is to be neither hungry nor full. Satiety is to be slightly full. To eat after reaching the point of satiety is to open the door to gluttony . . . ”

This suggested something else that was mentioned in the cookbook my father once used: food portions. Faced with the words of St. Gregory, I had to confess that portion control pretty much meant eating until I’d had enough — which meant eating until I felt full, or beyond.

So to Lent’s prohibition of dairy foods and meat, I aimed to eat, at the most, to the level of sufficiency. What’s the point, after all, to abstain from some foods while still overeating?

Gluttony is gluttony. From a margin in my Lenten cookbook, the words of St. John Climakos speak mouthfuls.

“Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach,” wrote this monk who lived at St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai some 600 years before St. Gregory. “For when the stomach is glutted, it complains of scarcity; and when it is loaded and bursting, it cries out that it is hungry.

“Gluttony is a deviser of seasonings; a source of sweet dishes. You stop one spout, and it spurts up elsewhere; you plug this too, and you open another.”

I decided to take in earnest St. John’s advice to “master your stomach before it masters you.” I aspired to eat with self-control, according to Gregory’s definition — remaining a bit hungry when I could.

In planning my menus, I was determined to keep them simple. I wanted to fast from spending excess time on meal preparation, too.

One goal of Lent is to spend less on food in order to give more alms to those in need. Less time spent eating and preparing meals means more time can be devoted to prayer.

A bit of wisdom handed down from St. Maximos the Confessor encouraged me. “To fast well is to enjoy simple foods in small amounts and to shun people’s praise,” he wrote.

Even as a child, I delighted in simple foods: a wedge of raw potato from the hand of my mother while she readied a meal; a fresh tomato seasoned with a dose of pepper and a pinch of salt.

I wanted to buy and eat as little as possible while keeping meals nutritious. When looking for recipes, I focused on grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits.

The Food Stamp Challenge budget put the kibosh on soy substitutes for dairy and for meat. I’d used them during Lent before but now, for the most part, they proved too expensive.

My penchant for eating beans, grits, oatmeal or cornmeal for breakfast was a boon. I was loath to give up coffee in the morning or at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, though.

By brewing smaller and fewer cups, I managed not to do entirely without it. My taste for an alcoholic beverage at dinner time was another thing.

But alcohol, in any case, is circumscribed and off-limits during most days in Lent. So that nearly settled that matter.

As for many Orthodox Christians during Lent, peanut butter sandwiches were, as always, a staple lunch. I was only surprised by just how cheaply they could be made.

Vegetarian soup or chili provided hearty lunches on other days. Leftover chili added to a baked potato became dinner on some evenings. Other dinner menus included spaghetti with a mushroom-olive marinara sauce; eggplant cutlets with spicy basil marinara; mashed potatoes with mixed vegetables and beans — a sort of simplified “shepherd’s pie”; a stew of cabbage and potatoes with meatless “meatballs”; and a mildly spicy dish called “Recetatas de Lola” — found on a bag of small red beans — served over rice. I ate fruit at breakfast and vegetables with lunch and dinner. I often rounded off dinner with warm San Francisco-style sourdough bread and sometimes dessert.

For those of you who have been asking if — and how — I stuck to my budget and still ate well, come back next week. With simple foods, I did it and I’ll tell you how.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].