Category Archives: Deb Heinrich

Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. My family has decided to feed one more person at our table each day … Since we have four people in our family, we will feed an extra person by pledging one-quarter of our monthly food budget to our local food pantry. I’ve reached the seventh and final day of my SNAP Challenge. It has been an incredible experience and I am very glad that I tried it. I started the Challenge with two goals in mind. First, I wanted to experience first-hand what it would be like to live on a budget of $4 per day for food for one week. A good friend of mine often quotes “Idealism is proportional to one’s distance from a...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. I am sitting here, staring at the computer with a raging headache, trying to concentrate on what it is I might want to write in today’s journal entry. I’ve had this headache on and off for two days. I’m on the sixth day of the Challenge. I am finding that even when I eat enough so that I don’t feel hungry, I am still not feeling well. I can’t help but think it has to do with a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Today’s menu is much like the past few days: oatmeal with brown sugar for breakfast, lentils and rice for lunch,...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. After a fifth morning in a row eating delicious and nutritious oatmeal with brown sugar, we’ve decided that this should actually be called the “SNAP at you challenge.” Yes, I was a bit grumpy this morning. My mother, however, loved the oatmeal. I brought the one left over tortilla with refried beans and rice with me for lunch for us to share along with, yup, you guessed it, black beans and rice. I also decided to eat my second apple. Can you believe it? I forgot the salsa. Lunch. Bland but filling. I was so thankful that my mom didn’t complain. I might have...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. Analysis Again, I started the day with oatmeal with brown sugar. I like oatmeal a lot, but I am having a harder and harder time putting the spoon in my mouth. Eating like this does lack a bit of variety. I know that eating a variety of foods gives you a better chance of getting the nutrients you need. I was feeling very hungry and tired yesterday so I did a little analysis of what kind of nutrition I was getting. First of all, I want to say that it is not as easy as one might think to figure out what you are...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. Today is the first day that I have really felt very, very hungry. I started the day with my obligatory bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of brown sugar. At about 11a.m., I started longing for lunch and feeling a bit tired. For lunch, I had an apple dipped in about three tablespoons of peanut butter. I chose a red delicious apple because I recently read an article that said the skin in a red delicious apple has more vitamins in it than any other apple variety. It filled me up at the time, but at about 3:00 pm, I got really, really hungry....
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. Day 2: It is hard to concentrate when you are hungry. I woke up craving eggs this morning. I had oatmeal with brown sugar. One serving today. For lunch, I wrapped leftover black beans and rice in two soft taco shells with salsa and packed it away to bring with me to work. It traveled better than I thought it would. My colleagues went out to lunch together today. I did not. For dinner, I made lentil soup with onion, celery, carrot and the diced tomatoes. I missed putting potatoes and zucchini in it. I put in extra salt in place of the pepper,...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. In this entry, Deb recounted the social isolation of people who are food insecure. Morning Ritual Looking at my schedule today, I realized that I was going to have to make the bulk of my food this morning since I would be gone most of the day (church, kids’ soccer, 9/11 Memorials, etc,). We would have to go right from church to soccer so I’d need to bring a lunch. So I set the alarm an hour earlier and got to work in the kitchen. First I made some oatmeal for breakfast. Though this was the real oats that you make on the stove,...
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Editor’s Note: Deb Heinrich, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s liaison to the state’s nonprofit community, agreed to take the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge this month and live on $4 a day for food for a week. We are posting her experience in this blog over the next few days. September is Hunger Awareness Month and to help increase awareness of the thousands of people in this state who are food insecure and those that live their lives hungry, I am going to take the SNAP Challenge. What is the SNAP Challenge? Well SNAP used to be called Food Stamps. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. People who qualify for SNAP receive $4 per day to spend on food. The challenge is to try to live on those $4 per day for food. I’m going to take the challenge for one week. Therefore, I have $28 to spend on food for the week....
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