Got hunger? Pol has just 2 cents left
Tuesday, May 15th 2007, 4:00 AM
At a Woodside supermarket yesterday, Queens Councilman Eric Gioia tried to do the impossible - get nine meals for $3.56.
He quickly found he can't turn water into wine - but he did score a dozen English muffins on sale for $1.99.
"I walked in here thinking I would buy pasta sauce for dinner, but the English muffins were too good a deal to pass up," Gioia said as he walked out of Food Dynasty on Skillman Ave. toting a less-than-full bag of groceries.
"Now I can make some tuna melts and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!"
At lunchtime last Thursday, when the Democrat began his quest to live for one week on the average food-stamp allotment of $28 per person, he bought $24.44 in groceries.
Four hunger-filled days later, all that was left in the cupboard were a few slices of processed cheese, a can of tuna and some corn, carrots, ramen noodles, pasta and a jar of swirled peanut butter and jelly.
"Living on food stamps is far more difficult than I imagined," he muttered, clearly frustrated, as he arrived at the store and flipped through the sales circular. "I feel weak. It's 3:30 in the afternoon and I'm really hungry."
Unfortunately for Gioia, he won't get a bellyful until lunch on Thursday, when his food stamp experiment concludes.
Other than the dozen English muffins, all he was able to afford yesterday were three bananas and three yogurts. The yogurt and the English muffins were on sale, but the pasta sauce he really craved - unless he wants to eat plain pasta - wasn't.
"In many ways, the choices were made for me before I walked in the door," he said. "I can only really afford what's on sale."
But as he struggles through his next nine meals and makes a visit to a food pantry, one thing is certain - he'll be eating a lot of English muffins.
"I can't remember the last time I was excited about English muffins," he said.