Banking on a Healthy Meal

I don’t just worry about feeding my kids. I worry about feeding all kids. I know we’re lucky. Privileged. We eat well at my house. Our cupboards are always stocked. Our fridge is full. Lunchboxes are chock full of goodness. My sons’ full bellies fill my heart.

Food is a way of life around here. I grow it. Cook it. Read about it. Write about it. We’re the kind of family that talks about our next meal whilst eating our current meal. My husband and I even have a restaurant journal to keep track of some of our favorite places on all our travels. Heck, we choose our travel destinations based on food alone.

My sons have fortunate palates that would make any foodie swoon. They are not picky eaters and savor a wide range of flavors. We eat our way around the globe in a week’s time. It’s our culinary version of Around the World in 80 Days.

We never want for food.

Beyond that, we are lucky enough to eat healthy food. We grow many of our own pesticide-free vegetables and for the most part, buy organic, local foods. My worries are more about feeding my sons healthy choices than putting food on the table. While we all experience our share of financial woes, mine never include stress over going hungry or not.

There is always food on our table.

Think of the kids who get free/reduced meals at school. What are they eating on weekends? Kids who only get two meals a day. Kids whose bellies are never full enough to feed their brains. I shudder to think what summer must mean. And before anyone rolls his eyes and gets political on me here, let me just say that THESE ARE CHILDREN I’M TALKING ABOUT. Children who aren’t responsible for their plights and have tattered bootstraps they can’t pull up. Helping to feed our children is a duty we all have, political bias and judgment aside.

And for the record, the hungry roam among us. They are in school with our children. They swim at our pools. They take our blood pressure. They frolic on playgrounds. They sit beside us at the dentist office. They greet us on the street. They chat at the watercooler. They walk in our social circles. There’s no stereotype of who’s going hungry. Especially these days. People just like you and me struggle to make those proverbial ends meet. And sometimes that means the Food Bank is their only hope when they must choose between paying for meals and the electricity bill.

Here’s an excerpt from the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina’s website:
“More than 250,000 children in our 34 counties are in the free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs at school. For them, summertime doesn’t mean a fun filled vacation; for them, no school means no meals.

Kids Summer Stock is a community-wide food and funds drive to provide the additional food needed to support these children and their families, as well as supporting summer meals programs. Through a series of concerts, festivals, and events, collection of food and funds will help fill the empty shelves of Food Bank warehouses in Durham, Greenville, Raleigh, Sandhills and Wilmington during the summer.

You can support the Food Bank branch in your community by holding food and funds drives, attending an event or by donating. For every dollar donated, the Food Bank can distribute $8 worth of food, or 4 meals.

I’m heading to the Kids Summer Stock Social Media Mixer on June 3. I’ll be there with Bird, Deal, and Mac Daddy in tow. Can’t make it? Well, it’s your lucky day! You can donate here. For my readers who live elsewhere, I bet these very same issues haunt your community too. Check out your local food bank. Every little bit really does help.

Turn your good luck into someone else’s. And when you sit down for dinner tonight, be grateful for every little morsel that makes your life fulfilling.