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METROPOLITAN, 2001
(available in paperback from Owl, 2002)
IN 1998, at the age of fifty-seven, the writer and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich was pounding the pavement looking for a low-wage job. Her goal: to discover firsthand how millions of women about to be tossed into the labor market because of welfare reform could possibly make ends meet. The result is Nickel and Dimed, an account of Ehrenreich’s experiences working as a waitress, maid, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. Her descriptions of the challenges and indignities facing low-wage workers and her analysis of why, in the face of this “state of emergency,” the middle class stays silent paint a frightening portrait of class inequality and indifference in America.
Ehrenreich explains one of the ironies of poverty as she feels herself slipping into its downward spiral. The less money she makes, the fewer options she has for saving money. Ehrenreich applies this principle to food choices: “If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can’t save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store.” Workers who lack kitchen facilities tend to buy the most convenient—and most expensive and, often, least healthy—prepared foods.
As a waitress at two restaurants in Key West, Florida, Ehrenreich falls into just such a pattern. Tabs at the low-budget restaurants where she works are low, meaning small tips for Ehrenreich. Her wages and tips amount to just minimum wage. Although she is lucky enough to find a $500-a-month efficiency with a kitchen, she is not ready to go the “lentil stew route” yet, because “I don’t have a large cooking pot, pot holders, or a ladle to stir with (which would cost a total of about $30 at Kmart, somewhat less at a thrift store), not to mention onions, carrots, and the indispensable bay leaf.” Instead, she lunches on unlimited refills at Wendy’s, or grabs a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich from the drive-thru. Dinner is two or three mozzarella sticks, hastily eaten while standing at a restaurant counter between shifts.
But even as she immerses herself in the lifestyle of a typical low-wage worker, Ehrenreich knows that she can never fully experience the pressures around food and money that plague her coworkers. In an interview given after the publication of her book, Ehrenreich said, “I don’t understand how some of the people I worked alongside could get through an eight- to nine-hour shift without eating. It took me a long time to realize that they weren’t dieting. It was not that at all. They actually did not have fifty cents in their pockets.”
Rich and gooey mozzarella sticks are one of the dishes that Ehrenreich, as a waitress, serves her customers in abundance and eats during her experiment as a low-wage worker. Serve these sticks with Marinara Sauce (see p. 285).
NOTE: To save time, you can use prepackaged mozzarella sticks (string cheese) in place of brick mozzarella.
2 eggs ¼ cup water 1 cup Italian-style dry bread crumbs ½ teaspoon garlic powder ½ teaspoon dried basil |
½ teaspoon dried oregano ¾ cup all-purpose flour 1 1-pound brick of mozzarella, sliced into finger-size sticks ½ cup vegetable or canola oil for frying |
Beat the eggs with the water and set aside.
Mix the bread crumbs, garlic powder, basil, and oregano. Set aside.
Place the flour in a plastic bag. Place the cheese sticks in flour bag and coat with flour. Remove the cheese sticks and dip them in the egg mixture. Coat each cheese stick with the bread-crumb mixture.
In a heavy skillet, heat the oil to 360°F–370°F.
Place mozzarella sticks carefully in hot oil and fry approximately 15–20 seconds or until golden. When golden, remove from hot oil and drain on brown paper or paper towels. Serve immediately.
Yield: Approximately 18 sticks
The economic and class issues explored in Nickel and Dimed sparked the interest of the League of Women Voters’ Book Club, an official group of the local League of Women Voters of Corvallis, Oregon. Although the group reads a variety of fiction and nonfiction, Nickel and Dimed tapped into the group’s interest in community activism and social change. Founding book club member Corrine Gobeli reports that the League of Women Voters of Corvallis encourages citizens to participate actively in government and politics, and studies the impact of public policy on people’s lives. “That’s what this book brought up: What happens when economic power is concentrated in a large corporation? How does this affect, for example, food security and family farms? Our discussion went way beyond [Barbara] Ehrenreich’s experiences to larger policy issues.”
The League of Women Voters’ Book Club was interested in Ehrenreich’s book for another reason. “She’s a Reedie!” said Gobeli, meaning that Ehrenreich graduated from Reed College in nearby Portland, Oregon, where she studied biology and chemistry. Ehrenreich later earned a doctorate in biology at Rockefeller University in New York. Of her science background, Ehrenreich says: “The disadvantage is that I didn’t spend years studying history or political science or something that would have come in more handy. But I’m not sorry, really. It gives me a way of seeing the world, an analytical strength.”
