Can You Imagine What Hunger Feels Like?

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Can you eat on just $4.20 a day?From Jan. 26-Feb. 1, 2014, members, staff and clergy of Congregation Shaare Emeth will take the SNAP Challenge and try to live on the average food budget of a Missouri SNAP recipient – just $29.25 per week or less than $1.40 per meal. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as Food Stamps). Why are we doing this? To raise awareness about the struggles faced by millions of food-insecure households, to experience first-hand how difficult it is to afford nutritious foods, and to renew our commitment to do what we can to put an end to hunger.

Please join us by attending one of our hunger events, following our blog as we document our experiences (subscribe by email in the box on the right, subscribe to the blog feed, or check back daily), joining as SNAP Challenge participant and blog author, or participating in an alternate way. Let's all learn a little more about what it's like to live solely on food stamps.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Day Two

Our second day on the SNAP Challenge proved a little more  ... challenging.  Macey is used to either buying lunch or packing a turkey sandwich for lunch each day, but due to our limited budget he agreed to live with PB & J's for the week.  He came home from school today complaining that he felt hungry during the second half of the day.  Even with chips, juice and an apple he still didn't feel as satisfied as he normally does.  Macey also chose a snack that he could eat after school for the whole week - a bag of nuts, raisins, chocolate chips and dried cranberries.  He noted that even though he felt hungry enough to eat the whole bag after school today, he was worried about running out of the snack before the week was up and ended up eating a lot less than he normally would.

I also felt more hungry between meals than I did yesterday, as did Brett.  Thankfully, I was able to take my day off today and so I made spinach pie and split pea soup - which we had for dinner tonight and will last for leftovers for lunch and/or dinner for the next day or two. 

I am noticing how much more intentional I need to be when it comes to thinking about food for my family. This is taking extra energy that I don't normally put toward meal planning - extra energy that I don't really have.  But I'm glad my family is doing this.  We are talking about and experiencing sacrifice (on a small scale, to be sure - but still talking and experiencing) in ways we have not done so before.

Eat well, everyone!
Andrea

PS - I went ahead and splurged ($2) on the brown sugar.




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