Our SNAP Challenge

The SNAP Challenge encourages participants to experience what life is like for millions of low-income Americans living on the average daily allowance of only $4! 
The SNAP Challenge

 Taking the SNAP Challenge:

Eat on $4/day for a week, a month or longer if you so choose.  Check out our sample menus to help you get started...

Experience hunger for yourself. Learn about the daily struggles faced by our hungry neighbors!

Engage others by sharing your experience. Create a blog, post to Facebook, & encourage friends to participate.

Not that long ago, our family 'participated' in the SNAP challenge. Not as willing volunteers, but rather, out of financial necessity.  As the job search stretched from weeks to months, and the dollars dropped from comfortable toward nonexistent, food became a priority.

Long full shelves emptied. Canned foods, that had sat unopened for years, were cooked up. Rice became an evening mainstay...the real, long grain, slow cooking rice. Not the delightful minute rice I had used forever. 

Our daughter, who lived near, by over bags of groceries, as did our our son at home. The younger girls just ate what was there without complaint. A surprise box of powered milk created a day of kitchen fun as we created several different homemade hot cocoas from odds and ends in the baking supplies. 

But, it can be dreary and depressing, spending day after day after day in a home waiting for some GOOD news. So we would occasionally eat out. I know! Completely shocking, appalling and unacceptable. Ask any of the so called Christians who want the poor to bury their heads in the sand, or be flogged in public. 

Being poor is a worse crime in this country than murder...just ask George Zimmerman. Or is it being black is the worse crime? I get confused.

Anyway, we learned that a family of four could eat at ARBIES, off of their Dollar Menu for $6 plus tax. Everyone would get our own sandwich. Again, with the frivolous. We would share a package of fries and a drink. Thank goodness for free refills!

Best of all, we we out in the real world, at least pretending that everything was alright. 

So, I have thought about doing the SNAP Challenge in the past couple of months, but I am not ready to go back there...yet. I didn't need to do it before, during or after our own personal challenge. Being a decent person is always the right thing to do.

And, why don't we drug test people before we allow them do donate money to uber crazy political groups that are screwing with our planet, our health, our bodies and our civil liberties?

Irresponsible and LAZY

It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and LAZY. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. PERIOD.
Bill O'Reilly

People want black and white.

Good and bad.

“You get what you deserve.”

Because if that isn’t the case, bad things can happen to anyone, and who wants to believe that?

We were home owners for over twenty years in two different homes. Then, my husband lost his job of a quarter century, when a 110 year old business closed its doors. Our nest egg, retirement plan disappeared in a ‘short sale’ after our home lost over half of its value.

We were lucky enough to sell…no, wait. ALL of the programs to help people are for those who lose their home to foreclosure.

The first advice we were given was to stop paying our bills, but we were responsible people. So, we paid all of our bills through months of unemployment…until the money ran out. It didn’t take as long as it should have, because even with a severance package, the government took half in taxes. YES… half of our severance.

We THOUGHT we would get the money back at the end of the year.

No, years earlier, when life was great, and NOTHING could go wrong, we co-signed our children’s student loans~three children. That is what good parents do. One has graduated with a good job and is paying her loans back. One has graduated and can’t find a job that earns enough to pay those loans back.

And, saddest of all, the last had to drop out of school, after three years, when my husband lost his job. The loans still come due on minimum, part time work.

The tax return we were planning on to pay our bills, was taken by the government to pay past due student loan bills. The worst part is, thousands were taken and it didn’t even count as a payment. So, they were still counted as behind on their payments.

The system is set up to screw everyone.

We have a new job on the other side of the country. After having lost everything, we have yet to find our own footing. Helping our children out, isn’t even a possibility. We, however, get threats, as well, because, of course, good parents co-sign student loans. We can’t afford money taken for our paychecks with three additional adults and a teenager still living under our roof.

As we balance on maybe enough to survive, I still do guilt spending money on groceries. We can’t think about retirement, when we don’t have enough money to pay next month’s rent and it’s the 31^st.

Young adults are not the only ones caught up in the Student Loan mess.

Just don’t forget, it’s all because we are LAZY.

Why I don't believe in Drug Tests for Food Stamps

 I absolutely, 100% understand the sentiment behind the argument, if you have to take a drug test to get a job why shouldn’t you have to take a drug test for ‘FREE money’! I do, but...

1.       1.    A job is contract between you and your employer…a promise or expectation of certain types of behavior.  

2.     2.     There is no contract between food stamp recipients and government programs.  Government does not control people’s morals. If it did, it should also be able to withhold food stamps for illicit sex. Perhaps, porn. Oh, it was only R-rated, then it’s okay.  Wait you spent $5.00 on a movie ticket. Wasteful. A life outside of pain, suffering and looking for a job…we’re cutting you off.

3.      3.    When do we start testing for alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate?

Now, these are Government controlled Drug Tests, right? What could possible go wrong there?

1.     1.      Let’s say Mom does drugs. Bad mom, shame on you. No food for you, or son, or daughter, or little baby.

2.       2.    And what happens if there is a false positive? Couldn’t happen? When is the last time you took cold medicine? Meth-head!

3.      3.     Please, please, please tell me you are for smaller Government. Then, tell me you want another Government Agency to keep food out of the mouths of babies.

4.       That is okay, though, because they already want you to vote to keep people form have the right to VOTE in AMERICA! Photo ID! Trust me, if it kept the GOP voters from voting, it would NOT be under consideration.  It is to keep Students, Poor and the elderly away from the polls. Typical Democratic voters. 

   

      Voter Fraud is the FRAUD. Doesn’t exist. But, let’s make people (yes, people, not scum and villainy) take the little spare money they have and spend it on IDs and NOT food.

What happened to compassion? This is America.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Have we come so far from our humble beginnings, that now, the poor can lie starving in the streets while we watch 350 channels on our flat screen TVs untouched.  $97 a month is the cost for food stamps…how much is your cable bill? What is the value of one child’s life?

**~~*~~**

One last ‘random’ fact. As I read people complain about the $100 a month insurance program, it strikes me how selfish and judgmental people are.  Do you know how much uninsured people are expected to pay a month without insurance? $1500. A MONTH. I can’t afford that, can you?


$100 is affordable for most families, yet I keep reading Christian posts (Yes, it always seems to be the MOST Christian among us) stating how the Poor shouldn't have to pay. Judge people for NOT being self sufficient, then keep self sufficiency out of their reach. So why don't YOU well to do people pay the $1500 to support the insurance companies and let the rest of us get affordable insurance. Sound fair to you?

They worry for the poor , but won't give a hand up.

I love when people request help with something and get the response, “I’ll pray for you.”

That is just great. The person in trouble is still stuck on the side of the road and so called ‘praying person’ is warm and snug in his/her home.

Imagine if God had PRAYED for mankind instead of sending his SON down to Save us. Or if JESUS had only prayed for the Sick, the Poor and Outcasts, instead of helping them.  

I honestly don’t need to spend hours reading the bible trying to interpret what God wants from ME. I simplify. 

 I AM WHO I AM.  Exodus 3:14

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:

 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Matthew 22:37-39

Enough said.

A Man or A Muppet

Radiator Springs June 15th

 My three children and I camped in the plaza in front of Disney's California Adventure the night before the Re-Opening. Getting in line at 9:00pm, we slept on the cement pavers, watched the blimp fly over head and cheered with crowd for "Good Morning America".

After eleven hours, we watched the backs of people's heads for the Grand Opening Ceremony. Buena Vista Street was packed to capacity, and we were in the middle of it. We saw the morning fireworks and heard Mickey Mouse.

Once the official opening was complete, the crowd surged toward Cars Land. We held back and picked up fast passes for "Radiator Springs Racers". A 9:20am-10:20am time...not bad.

A quick ride on Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, which had no line, at all, and then then a fly through Luigi's Flying Tires, who's line was about fifteen minutes, and it was time for the Racers.

We got in the Fast Pass line and the ride went down...

With Cars Land packed to the rims, we headed back out to explore Buena Vista Street. Some photos with Mickey, Chip and Dale and a bag filled with secret 'treasures' from the Imagination Studio (Opening Day Pins and such) and we headed back to Cars Land, again.

The Fast Past line wove out past Stanley's Statue into the main stretch of Route 66 toward the Cozy Cones. Getting into the end of the line, we waited for about ten minutes before the Racer's ride went down, once again.

With reluctance, we decided the "Radiator Springs Racers" would be experienced on another day. Our DCA opening day fast passes  for the Racers will be unique souvenirs for our Disney scrap book.

So, you could say we waited over 20 hours to NOT ride the new "Radiator Springs Racers" on June 15, 2012.

POTUS on Jobs

Obama:

And given the urgency of this moment, given the hardship people are facing. Folks gotta get together, but we’re not going to wait for them. We’re going to see if we’ve got some straight shooters in Congress. We’re going to see if Congressional Republicans will put country before party. We’ll give them a plan then we’ll say do you want to create jobs then put our construction workers back to work rebuilding America? Do you want to help our companies succeed? Open up new markets for them to sell their products. You say you’re the party of tax cuts? Well then prove you’ll fight just as hard for tax cuts for middle class families as you do for oil companies and the most affluent Americans. Show us what you got.

The time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now. No more manufactured crisis. No more games. Now’s not the time for the people you sent to Washington to worry about their jobs, now’s the time for them to worry about your jobs.

Link

APPLE-OATMEAL CRISP

APPLE-OATMEAL CRISP
1 1/2 lbs. apples (4) 1/2 c. butter 3/4 c. packed brown sugar 3/4 c. oatmeal 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 c. flour Arrange apples in casserole (sliced). Melt butter; add sugar, oatmeal, flour, cinnamon until crumbly. Sprinkle over apples. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Apples from our own 'State Fair' apple tree. COOKS.COM