Another Participant Chimes In

My wife, Sara, and I started our food stamp challenge after most of the other folks at OASHF, we started on Sunday. Very close friends of ours who are tough to get a hold of had dinner scheduled with us for Saturday night (it had been on the calendar for months!) Sara and I started to talk about the Foodstamp Challenge and how it was going to be hard to give up our leftovers and I noticed our friend Layne doing some mental calculations. Then she looked up and said, "Three dollars a day, that's generous!" Turns out that while she was recently pregant her, Rob, and the baby only had $80 per month of food assistance after Rob's position was eliminated while he was in school (students have to work at least 20 hours per week to be eligible for assistance.) They only had student loan overage checks, food assistance, and Medicaid to live on for awhile. In Rob's words, "Yeah, it was real fun there for a minute." This conversation was really a great way for Sara and I to gather inspiration and find meaning in what we were about to do.

On Sunday we went shopping and managed to come in $6 under our allotted forty two. We were feeling like pretty savvy shoppers until we got home ad looked at what we had purchased. It quickly became apparent that we were going to have to be creative with our meal choices. While we won't be eating as many fresh fruits and vegetables as normal, I think we are going to make it by. This is going to be quite an experience for the two of us... But, maybe that is just the point, for us it is an experience, for millions of Americans that $21/person/week is all that is there week after week after week...

Zach Reat