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Living off a Food Bank food hamper for a week
This week, members of the Cambridge community are undertaking the “Do the Math Challenge” by eating from a typical food bank hamper in order to draw attention to hunger and poverty. Participants are experiencing first hand what it is like to live on a diet that many people on social assistance experience regularly. This is to draw attention to the provinvce-wide Put Food in the Budget Campaign, calling for a $100 Healthy Food Suppliment.
People representing a broad cross-section of our community, including: business, faith community, nonprofit sector, health care, education, and local government, will be participating, including our very own Kris Cummings, Director of Community and Voluntary Sector Investment.
On the 4th, participants went to the food bank and received their food for the next 5 days. They were instructed to eat only from this hamper and limited quantities of five pantry items. Participants have been encouraged to record their thoughts, observations and send these as well as photos to be posted on our Do the Math Challenge Cambridge blog. On October 8th, participants will gather to wrap-up the challenge and share their thoughts and reflections.
We will be sharing Kris’ thoughts here on our blog... My First Day - picking up a hamper
I picked up my hamper from the Cambridge Self Help Food Bank the other day; I don’t mind saying that I felt a little awkward as I did so. It is really hard to take something like food for free, and feel good about yourself. So, I was really glad for how friendly Sheila from the Food Bank was as she explained how everything worked and guided me through the process.
As I was picking food for my hamper, I was thinking about the need to try to make the food stretch. So, I tried to select food items that could be combined and used to make something like soup, or that would lead to leftovers that could be turned into another meal.
...it wasn’t as easy as it sounds... I tried to keep a running list of ingredients in my head, as one-by-one I picked-out food items from the categories available (such as first picking a can of vegetables from those available, then moving on to pick a cereal, then on to a can of fruit, and so on) based on the instructions Sheila provided as she guided me through the process. Without knowing what was going to be available, I had to try to keep my selections general so that they could end up being the ingredients for meals that I hadn’t planned yet. ...living off of a food hamper means planning ahead is really difficult. ...at the same time, I was glad for the choices that I could make: a can of creamed corn or a can of green beans...I went with the corn because it seemed the lesser of two evils and like it might be something to combine with something else to make soup.
...and as it turned out, dinner last night was soup, made from one can of creamed corn, a cup of rice, some water, and a few chopped carrots (I was lucky to get a bag of fresh carrots...jackpot!).
