by Monica Palmer
This morning, I started seeing recipes for snow margaritas pop up in my news feed on FaceBook. Many of these posts were from moms going on their fifth consecutive day with kids at home because of snow days. It seems their genius for coming up with crafty ways to keep kiddos busy indoors had turned to developing measures to preserve their own sanity.
It’s been a long week.
Here in Mid-Missouri, we got the first public school cancellation call/text very early Monday morning, long before the snow even started. Apparently, the ice that coated everything last weekend was still causing trouble on some of the roads, and safety was a concern for the school busses. Thoughts of ice, freezing temps, and impending snow set off alarm bells in the minds of many, and soon the store shelves were stripped of staples as the survivalists among us prepared to hunker down to weather the storm.
There’s something truly panic-inducing about the idea of being cut off from civilization, shut up in your house, and faced with a hungry family to feed. Imagine if you lived with that kind of anxiety every day of your life. For the heads of food insecure households, that is a reality.
These individuals may not be facing a weather-related physical confinement, but they face a financial confinement that limits their ability to purchase food for their family. This leaves them having to rely on the services of food pantries, soup kitchens or federally-funded assistance programs.
One such program is the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which provides free and reduced lunches to school-aged children based on income eligibility. During the 2011-12 school year, 382,868 children in Missouri received this assistance. For some of these children from food insecure households, that school lunch was their only nutritious meal of the day.
Now, let’s think again about snow days. Moms and Dads certainly aren’t big fans, but every kid loves them, right? Not necessarily, because for some, a day without school is often a day without food.
Help address the problem of child hunger and support your local food bank by donating food, funds, or time. You could make all the difference in the world to a Missouri family weathering their personal storm.