SEAN COLE: Jen Peterson is a candidate for city council, and early last week she and her eight-year-old daughter Harley and I all piled into her minivan for a drive to the local food shelf.
JEN PETERSON: The Friends in Need Food Shelf in St. Paul Park.
This wasn’t a campaign stop. She was dropping by to pick up some food for her family. It was just her second visit this year.
JEN PETERSON: But I see a trend developing.
COLE: In your life?
JEN PETERSON: Yeah in this need.
Jen knows that trend well. When she was a single mom with four kids she had to lean on all kinds of state aid. She and her current husband, Tony, both work two jobs, and after a big child support settlement in 2004, they were able to make do without assistance.
JEN PETERSON: So we were, you know, living pretty happy, middle class, dual-income parents.
Except both Tony and Jen’s ex are in the building industry, and after the foreclosure crisis hit, she found herself back at the food shelf for the first time in four years.
JEN PETERSON: It’s just hard to keep the cupboards full without having to spend more and more money, and this is, you know, the food shelf is the one way that we can supplement that.
[b] How to write this and not sound like a total ******* . [/b]
Have we forgotten how to stretch a food budget? 10 lbs of leg quarters for $5 or 6 dollars; dry beans; rice (even scarce rice); grits; Puffed wheat / rice; powdered milk; pasta; cornbread & biscuits; organ meat; etc. My grandparents & parents knew how to do this and if you went away hungry from the table, it wasn’t because there wasn’t anything to eat.
D Hamilton, you hit the nail on the head. I grew up in the thirties and sometimes the only meat we had was the fish my dad caught in the local streams, or the game he got when he went hunting in the fall and winter. One night we had only soup and crackers but we made it. Yes I know what it is to eat cornbread, biscuits, pinto beans and a lot of other staples. Our family also had a vegetable garden (that I dug and raked when I was old enough to handle garden tools) and my mom knew how to can the surplus. Praise the Lord for all his blessings to us.
Not to sound callous, but don’t food banks always go through a slump period outside of the Thanksgiving to Christmas season?