It is our last day taking the Food Stamp Challenge, and it’s amazing how much this experience has raised our awareness and changed perceptions about food on many levels.  It’s been a difficult week, and while I know that the whole family is excited for me to go and do our ‘normal’ grocery shopping trip tomorrow, there are several things we will all take from this going forward.

One thing that became very clear through our experience participating in Hunger Action Week was…

As anyone who has utilized Basic Food (Washington’s food stamp program) can tell you, it is difficult to strategically put together meals that both taste good and fill you up. It’s even more challenging to make tasty and sizable meals that meet your nutritional needs—using roughly $7 per day for a household of one. While addressing hunger is the main goal of federal nutrition programs such as SNAP, satisfying nutritional needs should also be a concern.

As found by the USDA Healthy Eating Index, obesity…

With Hunger Action Week and the Food Stamp Challenge in less than two weeks, I’ve been thinking about baking bread on a budget. When I first moved to Seattle about a year ago, I was eager to save money by baking all of my own bread. At the grocery store, I waltzed self-righteously past the bread aisle and made a beeline for the flour and yeast. It was certainly cost-effective to bake all of my own bread.

My love of baking bread began two…

I have a confession to make and it’s pretty bad… I’m not taking the Hunger Challenge.  The reason why I’m not doing it is even worse – it’s because of coffee.  It’s been the most common denominator in the plights of our bloggers – one they’ve overcome in some creative ways.  Coffee is expensive and a luxury for many, but it’s something I’ve grown to love and respect… and expect on a daily basis.  I just couldn’t give it up –…

I figured I’d start out this post with a old adage I’ve heard more than a few times in the past week:

“A hungry man is an angry man”

Ellen Gustafson started off her presentation at the Hunger Action Forum with this quote, and in her work with a military defense think tank, she found it to be true – areas where there is very low food security are the same areas of the world that are the most violent and…

To Plan… 

The folks over at Rainier Valley Food Bank are showing us just how important planning is to this challenge.  The Executive Director of the food bank, Sam Osborne, writes that although he is a thrifty shopper and a practical cook, the “very thought of shopping for food on a budget is giving me the willies”. Follow Sam as he gets over his shopping-on-a-budget phobia and finds a way to spend only $18 a day for his family of three.…

Why focus on hunger?

As we go through our daily routines, living, working, and playing in a community as beautiful and abundant as Seattle and King County, it’s hard to think that anyone here, or in our great country, can possibly be going hungry – but it’s true.  Often an invisible problem, hunger and food insecurity affects 1 in 6 Americans – that’s 49 million people (Source).  Right here in King County 13% of our population is food insecure and 1 in 5…

United Way of King County is shining a bright light on hunger and we’re asking everyone including teenagers and children to think about their relationship to food.   Who has food, who doesn’t, where does your food come from?

As parents or educators you might be wondering how you can get your children/students involved in Hunger Action Week. Whole families can participate in the Hunger Challenge (eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, spending only $7 a day—the same amount allotted to a single person on food stamps),…

As a 10 year employee of United Way of King County, I’ve been lucky to visit many of the agencies that do incredible work in our community. I’ve had the chance to meet and visit with the people who work very hard every day to help as many people as they can. When I think about the food banks I’ve visited, I recall lines of grateful people, thoughtful volunteers bustling about and stacks and stacks of food.

It takes a lot of work to run…

We’ve wrapped up Hunger Action Week, five days dedicated to raising awareness about hunger in our community.

So now what?

It’s time to take action. There are many ways you can get involved, and we’re sure that you can come up some creative ideas too. Here’s what Mary Shaw, one of our staff members at United Way of King County, said she chose to do.

“I thought I could get involved by doing a virtual hunger awareness lunch. OK, I guess I am not

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