Starting Out on the Challenge

by Kevin McGuire, Executive Director, Family Investment Administration, Department of Human Resources
Today I started the Food Stamps Challenge. I hope I know what I am getting into. We went out to buy our food at Santoni's Super Market here in East Baltimore. It was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed very nice. We created a bit of a media circus with a reporter from the local public radio station WYPR tagging along. I actually was able to buy what I hope will be enough to eat for the week. I got sixteen items including meat, fruits and vegetables, dried beans, some pasta, spaghetti sauce, powdered milk, bread and a jar of marmalade. It all came out to 20.62 so I still have all of thirty-eight cents left to "splurge". That said it is clear that twenty-one dollars does not offer a heck of a lot of options or variety in one's diet. In addition, I have discovered it is very hard (and time consuming) to plan on something inexpensive, yet nutritious to eat. While I have committed to the Food Stamp Challenge for one week I am all too aware that this is not an option for over three hundred-fifty thousand of my fellow Marylanders who receive Food Stamps. They are "challenged" with having enough to eat every day.

Enough of that. Time to go eat.