Hungry

The church closest to our kids' elementary school has a backpack grocery program. It's meant to bridge the weekend food gap for those families whose children receive free or reduced price school lunches, but basically, anyone who wants it can sign up to get a backpack full of groceries for their child to bring home from school on Fridays. Whenever our principal sends home the form to sign up for the program, many families ask how they can help, so the church forwarded a meal list with needed food items.

Tuna helper is on sale this week, and I didn't have much on our family's grocery list*, so I decided to buy all of the items for two Meal #2s. It doesn't sound like much, and it isn't much: 1 lg box muffin mix, 2 cans tuna, 1 box tuna helper, 1 jar squeeze mayo, 1 sm. box Bisquick, 1 can pears. The items don't even fill the bottom of one paper grocery bag. I cannot imagine being in the situation where Meal #2 would be all the food I have for my family for a weekend. I cannot believe that there are families going to my kids' school, living in our neighborhood, so to speak, who are in this very situation. There is something so wrong with that.

We have so much more than we need, so much more than we deserve. Granted, my hubby works hard to provide for us, we live within our means (after all, my twin mottoes are "why buy new when used will do?" and "why pay full price if you don't have to? And let me give you a hint, you hardly ever have to"), and have built up savings over the years. But for most in our country, the best country in the world, it wouldn't take much to push them into a downward financial spiral. For many, it's already happened.


*Our family's grocery list didn't have much on it this week because we've been eating from our freezer. We've been eating from our freezer because Hubby has been working out of town a lot. In fact, I need to get geared up to start filling the freezer again, but since he's gone again this week, and next week, and the week after, I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to actually cook again, so that I can double or triple the recipes to freeze some.