Check out the comments at Oakland Press to see the reaction in the metro Detroit area.

There are no Costco stores in Monroe County, Mich., which is my local readership area. But there are locations in Toledo (I know some people who shop there), Commerce Township and Livonia. I can’t pin down the details as to when the Ohio and Michigan stores will be on line with this program, but at least you know it’s in the works.

Check through my Michigan Bridge Card archives to see what else you can do with a food stamp card in Michigan.

I did a post earlier this week about Michigan.gov’s new assistance referral site, Helping Hand. I saw the link on Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s Twitter.

But here’s a detail I overlooked – until the formal press release got forwarded to my desk this morning. In conjunction with the launch for this new web page, the state of Michigan now has the option for residents to apply for Michigan food assistance on line. Although you still can take care of the application in person at the Department of Human Services offices, online will be a really convenient option for parents of young children, caregivers and others who find it difficult to schedule appointments during business hours.

You probably know you can use the food assistance benefits on Michigan Bridge Card to purchase groceries from a supermarket, Angel Food Ministries, Great Food for All, or participating farmers markets such as Ciolino Fruit and Vegetable Market in Monroe and Temperance. You can also use those benefits to purchase seeds and food-producing plants.

But receiving food assistance via a Michigan Bridge Card also opens up other financial assistance possibilities for your family, including:

• Reduced rates for annual pass at Michigan State Parks.
• Automatic enrollment in free school lunches for your children.
• Possible reduction in pay-to-participate school sports fees for Monroe County students, because some of those discounts are based on whether the students get free or reduced-cost school lunches.

Are you eligible for food assistance? Find out here.

I did some research to see what on earth someone might have been planning to do while searching via that phrase. As best I can tell … there is no legal way to do that.

I understand the problem of having no cash and wanting to access every resource you’ve got in an emergency – but relying on food stamp or cash benefits that are yet to be posted on Michigan Bridge Card is not the way to do it.

The instructions posted on Michigan.gov and that you should have received with the card include: “Do not sell, trade or give away your food assistance benefits … People who break Food Assistance Program rules may be disqualified from the program, fined, put in prison, or all three; and must repay the food benefits.”

In addition the legal issues involved, there are financial issues.

Those food stamp and cash benefits are allocated on a month-to-month basis. If you use up the August and September benefits in August, … what are you planning to use to live on in September?

This is what you do instead: you make that cash and / or grocery fund allocation last as long as possible.

Specifically:

• Balances do roll over from month to month, according to Michigan.gov. If there’s a month when you’re not using the entire allocation, it can be used in later months.
• There are grocery-by-box programs available in southeast Michigan, specifically Angel Food Ministries and Great Food for All. A Detroit church also had a similar program sponsored on a local level. You can use Bridge Card benefits on these programs, and you will get more groceries than you would get on a typical grocery shopping trip.
• Purchase generic groceries, plan your family menus around the grocery sales, and use grocery coupons as much as possible for name-brand purchases such as cereal and non-food needs such as toilet paper. You don’t have to be a newspaper subscriber to get coupons – ask for leftover coupons from friends and family members, or ask your church or library to sponsor a coupon swap box. Local readers: There are coupon boxes at Dorsch and Milan Public Libraries, and I’ve heard that Ida Public Library now has one.
• If you live in Monroe County, there are free family dinners every night in the city of Monroe and once or twice a week in some of the nearby cities via the God Works! family soup kitchen. If you live near a God Works location, free dinners even once or twice a week will help stretch your funds.
• If you have school-age children, be sure you are taking advantage of the school lunch program rather than trying to pack a lunch box for the kids. Food stamp families are automatically approved for the free lunches, and kids also get free breakfast at some schools.
• If you live in southeast Michigan, go to Julie’s List to find a huge database of free and low-cost resources that will help you stretch your cash flow for a variety of family needs such as transportation, clothing and medical expenses.
• If you need ideas on how to handle everyday life in southeast Michigan on a budget, check through my archives for topics such as frugal living, back-to-school, holidays, and garage and Mom 2 Mom sales.
• If you have an emergency situation and funds are limited, call the United Way 211 hotline at 2-1-1. The longer you wait to deal with tight cash flow, the harder it will be to find a solution. But the United Way 211 staff is trained to point you quickly toward social services that are in their database files.

A snippet:

At least a dozen markets in the state were approved this year to accept food stamps, bringing the total to 29. That is the most of any state in the Midwest.

“We saw this huge need of ensuring fresh, healthy food to all people of the state regardless of their socioeconomic status,” said Dru Montri, manager of the Michigan Farmers Market Association, a group of state officials and growers that has assisted markets in making the change since 2007.

The list includes Eastern Market and three other farmer’s markets in Detroit, along with locations in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

What are the options for my local readers in Monroe County?

• Ciolino Fruit and Vegetable Market locations at 2101 Mall Rd., near Lowe’s in Frenchtown Township; and at 6150 Lewis Ave., Temperance, are listed in the state of Michigan pdf database as accepting Michigan Bridge Card.
• Project Fresh is available to clients in the WIC (Women Infants Children) program. This uses coupons instead of the EBT cards that Michigan Bridge Clients have, so the participating markets don’t need electronic checkout equipment. The current allocation is $20 worth of coupons each harvest season.
• Senior Project Fresh is available from selected senior centers. Local readers will want to watch for those announcements in The Monroe Evening News. In recent years, Senior Project Fresh has been available through the Bedford Area Senior Center in Temperance.
• Michigan Bridge Card also can be used to purchase groceries from Angel Food Ministries and Great Food For All, both of which have delivery sites in Monroe County. Angel Food recently announced that customers can purchase “specials,” which includes its produce boxes, individually without including them in a bundle order as has been the previous policy.
• Michigan Bridge Card can be used to purchase seeds and starter plants for your home garden.
• And when you check out the produce selections at the supermarkets, buy what’s in season or locally grown.

You can now order any of the special boxes as an individual purchase. There will no longer be a signature box or alternate choice as a required purchase before you buy a special box. So taking a look at the August menu, if all you want to purchase is the chicken grill box plus the fresh fruit and veggie box, you can do that. In fact, that may be what I will order on the next round.

There are Angel Food delivery locations in Monroe, Dundee and Bedford Township, Mich.; and in many other communities in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio. Orders can be placed starting Saturday July 25 for the August 29 deliveries in our area. Some locations take on-line orders so that all you have to do is go to the pickup date and time.

If you’re wondering what this program is all about, check out the Angel Food web site or my Angel Food Ministries archives.

A similar program that is also available in many southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio cities is Great Food for All.

You can use the Michigan Bridge Card (food stamp card) to purchase groceries from either Angel Food Ministries and Great Food for All.

I have a post that details how fast you can expect results on certain techniques.

But let’s think through some of the equipment and supplies you need immediately or will want to add fairly quickly to your inventory if you take on specific DIY, money-saving or self-sufficiency efforts, and how you can deal with those expenses.

• Basic home maintenance and repairs: Tool kit with hammer, screw drivers, nails, basic saw and measuring supplies. Paint brushes, paint cans, roller painters and drop cloths. How-to book.
• Gardening: A garden space at your home or at a community garden. Seeds or starter plants. Fertilizer. Watering can or watering hose. Garden tools and work gloves. Gardening charts for your region.
• Home canning and food preservation: Canning jars with lids and rings. Freezer jars. Fresh produce. Pectin and spice kits. Recipe and instruction book. Hot water bath stock pot. Pressure canner. Tongs and funnel tools.
• Handcrafted cards: Blank cards. Specialty envelopes. Specialty markers. Rubber stamps and ink pads. Paper punches. Computer clip art. Photo paper. Crafter books or magazines for patterns.
• Sewing supplies: Sewing machine. Sewing kit or box that contains items such as needles, thread, buttons, rulers, pins, Velcro and scissors. Sewing patterns. Fabric. Lace, rickrack or binding tape. Pillow stuffing. Cutting board. Iron. Ironing ham or tabletop ironing board.
• Couponing and rebating: Newspaper subscription. Possibly an Internet connection. Possibly an Internet site subscription. Binder or box to sort those coupons. Binder pockets or other space to keep the sales fliers and rebate fliers.
• Camping: A tent. Ice cooler. Picnic gear. Fishing gear. Sleeping bags. Lantern. Grilling supplies.

So, how do you manage these up-front expenses? Here are some tricks to use:

• Garage sales: One of my aunts saw a 1960s-era sewing machine at a garage sale in Dayton, Ohio. She grew up at a time when every family had a sewing machine, and she got it for me. What a wonderful gift! I spent about $50 to get the machine refurbished and it works just fine. I’ve also bought some of my crafter rubber stamps and fabric pieces at garage sales in Monroe.
• Leftover supplies: My friend Candy set up her coupon binder with leftover office supplies that her husband had bought for another purpose. And I had leftover canning jars that I purchased two years for a Christmas gift project to contribute to my mother’s canning sessions this summer.
• Estate closeouts and sales: My sewing kit got a huge boost in supplies after my grandmother died and my mother was splitting up her stuff. I acquired some threads so old they were on wooden spools! And at estate sales, I’ve seen boxes of tools, nuts and bolts, ribbons, vintage greeting card tags, wrapping paper and silk floral pieces that can be easily be repurposed.
• Coupons: If you craft or sew, you need to get on the preferred customer mailing list for Jo-Ann Fabric and any other craft store you might shop at. You don’t have to use those 40 percent off coupons on the big purchases. It is perfectly OK to use those discounts on a roll of tape, a spool of thread or a bottle of glue if that’s what you need during the coupon run. There also are currently coupons in circulation for canning jars. Did you see those coupons in your Sunday newspaper packets?
• Michigan Bridge Card: If you have a Michigan Bridge Card, which is the food stamp card in Michigan, did you know you can use those benefits to buy seeds and starter plants for your home garden? The card is also accepted for fresh produce at some farmer’s markets.
• Military discount: There are a few times a year in which those with military ID can get special discounts at the hardware stores. Watch the sales fliers for those deals. You’ll find them typically around Memorial Day, July 4 and Veteran’s Day.
• Loyalty points: Are you racking up loyalty points on a shopper card or a credit card promotion? Use those promotions to help you purchase DIY supplies.
• Birthday and Christmas gifts: Start asking for gift cards to your favorite hardware or craft store as birthday and Christmas gifts.
• Clearance sales and other discounts: Given the turmoil in the retail industry, you can’t expect the clearance sales to keep to their usual pattern (as in after the holiday). Sometimes the clearance sales start BEFORE the holiday. I’ve also noticed in the past couple of years that huge discounts can be found just before a “season” starts. Example: School supplies, some of which can be useful for DIY projects, have been on big discounts during July — but school doesn’t start for most Michigan students until first week of September. And Black Friday isn’t the start of the Christmas shopping season any more – I’ve been seeing promotions in early November.
• Mother’s Day and Father’s Day sales: You don’t have to be shopping for a mom to get a bread-making machine or a hand mixer at a Mother’s Day sale. The same rationale applies for getting a tool set at a Father’s Day sale.
• Public library: Go to your public library to find how-to books and reference material. The Monroe County Public Library branches have free wireless Internet connection and public access computers. Local readers: remember that Dorsch and Milan libraries have coupon swap boxes. If you can’t afford, or don’t want to get, a Sunday newspaper subscription, then get your coupons out of those boxes.
• Extension service: These offices aren’t just for farmers and 4-H club advisors. They’re also for anyone who wants information and expertise on  traditional domestic skills. For example, the Michigan State University extension service in Monroe has information and resources on how to help your yard and garden grow better, and how to safely preserve and can food.
• Community education: Hardware stores often have DIY clinics – check your favorite store on line or at signs posted at the stores. I’ve also got a sidebar specifically for my local readers about DIY classes in the Monroe area.
• Business and information expos: Go to the Earth Day fairs, the sewing expos, the computer shows, the health expos, etc. Most of the vendor and information shows in Monroe County have no admission or parking fees. If you go to a show in Gibraltar, Novi or Toledo, then consider carpooling with a friend to save on parking costs. Think beyond collecting freebies such as a yardstick with a logo at the expos and look for informational handouts, talk to the vendor reps and collect coupons for products and services.
• Try it out before you buy: If you’d like to learn a new skill or art, ask a friend or relative to show you how to use their equipment. You’ll figure out real quickly whether or not you want to spend money on the supplies they have acquired, or whether you are even interested in that technique.

The agency cited the report, “Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation,” produced by the Food Research and Action Center. On an average day in July 2008, there were 42,244 low-income children in Michigan getting a free lunch at one of the participating sites.

Some of those kids live right here in Monroe County.

In the past couple of years, there have been two summer lunch sites open in the city of Monroe. One is at the Salvation Army of Monroe County, 815 E. First St.; and the other, which is run by the Monroe Housing Commission, is at Speckled Frog Learning Center, 900 Greenwood Ave.

For information, call the Salvation Army at (734) 241-0440 or the housing commission at (734) 242-5880.

Have you ever checked out the area’s Wonder/Hostess Bakery Outlets? I’ve just started going to them in the last month and I’m a new convert! You can save up to 50% on Wonder Bread and cakes and they have numerous other products as well such as cereals, snack sausages, bread crumbs, snack cakes, etc. And they do accept the Bridge card as well! …

You can stock up on hamburger/hotdog buns and Texas Toast as well and I’ve never bought anything that was stale! Its wonderful to pay only $1 for a loaf of bread that sells in the stores for $2.29

Yep, I know about those stores. There was a Wonder Bread / Hostess Bakery outlet near my home when I was growing up. My mom frequently stocked up on bread and baked goods that would easily keep in the freezer.

There’s a Wonder Bread store near my daughter’s college in South Bend, Mich., and I’ve taken her shopping there too. Seriously, people: if you buy Twinkies in the vending machines or convenience stores on a regular basis, then start buying them ahead of time at the bakery outlet.

Based on what Julie found and additional sites I picked up at the store locator here is where you can shop at the Wonder Bread stores.

Southeast Michigan locations:

• Dearborn (6870 Telegraph Rd.)
• Romulus (35790 Goddard Rd.)
• Southgate (14750 Fort St.)
• Westland (6507 N. Wayne Rd.)
• Livonia (37051 Amrhein)

Northwest Ohio locations:

• Toledo (5405 Telegraph Rd.)
• Toledo (5311 Airport Hwy.)
• Northwood (8071 Wales Rd.)
• Northwood (3818 Woodville Rd.)
• Holland (1045 S. McCord Rd.)

In the meantime, I am aware there is an Aunt Millie’s bakery outlet in Temperance, Mich. I am not familiar with what’s in the Aunt Millie’s stores and haven’t found an on-line store list. But it would be worth a look if you live that way.

If you, or a family you know in Michigan, is receiving food assistance (aka food stamps) via the Michigan Bridge card, the monthly allotment amount for that program is scheduled to increase on April 1.

The increase will be 13.6 percent as compared to what the families have been receiving.

The Center for Civil Justice in Saginaw, which is part of the Michigan Food Stamp Partnership, sent that announcement this week to the media. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm also has an announcement posted at michigan.gov regarding the increase.

This additional funding was made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the president’s economic stimulus package.

In the meantime, the Center for Civil Justice reports many working poor families who are eligible for food stamps are still not yet using the service. Last fall, there there was a change in how the day care expenses were calculated in the eligibility formula – making it much easier for working parents to meet the requirements.

“Families who were told their income was too high to receive help – even though much of it was going to child care – may now be able to qualify for the program,” said Demetrice Smart, project coordinator for the Michigan Food and Nutrition Program Helpline.

If you need help figuring out whether you or a loved one is eligible, call the Food and Nutrition Helpline at (800) 481-4989 or go to www.foodstamphelp.org.

Now, how can the food stamp program help Michigan families beyond the obvious use of buying groceries at the grocery store?

• A Michigan Bridge Card means your school children are automatically eligible for free lunches at school.
• You can get food and nutrition information services from the Michigan State University cooperative extension service. (They’ll explain the best value for your small budget at the grocery store.)
• You can use food stamps / Michigan Bridge Card to purchase groceries from Angel Food Ministries, which has monthly deliveries in Monroe, Dundee and Lambertville.
• You can use food stamps / Michigan Bridge Card to purchase groceries from Great Food for All, which has monthly deliveries in Dundee.
• You can use your Bridge Card to get a discounted yearly pass to Michigan state parks such as Sterling State Park in Frenchtown Township. (If you don’t have a state park pass for 2009 yet, you might want to wait to see how the proposal for free admission for Michigan residents works out.)

I have other resources and links at my food assistance sidebar and my grocery shopping on a budget sidebar.

There’s been off and on publicity campaigns during the past year or so to get media personalities and community leaders to live on food stamp budgets, which in Michigan is accessible on the Michigan Bridge Card. I haven’t formally taken the challenge because, well, the point is made much more effectively when you take someone who is used to spending lots of money at the grocery store and then have them figure out food stamp budgets.

Besides, the real trick is how to plan family-pleasing menus with whatever can be purchased cheaply.

I have a lot of links and resources at my food assistance and my grocery shopping pages. The food assistance page is specifically intended for my local readers, but both local and national readers will find useful information on the grocery page — including several frugal recipe sites.