Spring Sopita de Letras: Foodies Fighting Hunger

We’re gonna step back from the all day-every day Cinco de Mayo fiesta for just a minute. Hope that’s okay.

I’ve got something a bit more serious but very near and dear to my heart that I want to share with you today. A few weeks ago I was asked by the forever lovely, Whitney from Jewhungry,  if I wanted to join in a collaboration with other food bloggers to talk about a silent but growing issue in our society: hunger.

It goes without saying that as someone who thinks of basically nothing but food this is a topic that concerns me a great deal. More importantly as a mama of her own babies it pains me to no end to think about other kids, just like mine, who aren’t getting enough to eat in this very wealthy country.

What Whitney was proposing is that as talented recipe developers, we food bloggers could come up with meal ideas that would cost very little money (around $5) to pull off. We could also use our voices to spread the reality of what life is like for 15.3 million American children and hopefully urge our readers to take action and help fill the gap wherever we can.

We have teamed up with MAZON, a national nonprofit organization working to end hunger in the United States. They have given us the information we need to make this campaign accurate and help us find ways to stop this growing problem.

Here’s the facts:

• 1 in 7 Americans don’t get enough to eat. Just take a look at this interactive map that shows how many food insecure households reside in your state.
• Hunger exists even in a country abundant with food. It is a political problem that doesn’t allow equal access to healthy food.
• Local charities and food pantries cannot keep up with demand.
• Even military families are going hungry. Marine and Naval bases hold regular food distributions to families living on their grounds.

Here’s how you can help:

• Tell Congress to end hunger for military families now.
• Invest and improve child nutrition programs.
• Share this information with your loved ones so we can spread the word about this tragic epidemic.

I wanted my recipe to be something comforting, filling, and fun. This is a simple, but delicious soup that my kids adore, because of the little letter-shaped pasta. It makes enough for 4 generous or 6 smaller servings so you could feed a few people on a little bit of money. I will admit the ingredients did go a bit over my $5 budget but you could leave some things out if you are working with very limited funds.

The necessary ingredients are oil, onion, salt, tomato paste, and small pasta shapes. You could make the soup with just these 5 things and it would still be good. The others are extras that boost the flavor  but are optional and could even be substituted with different dried herbs or vegetables or whatever you have on hand. You could absolutely used frozen or canned vegetables too if that’s all you had.

Want more ingenious ways to make $5 into something wonderful? Check out these other recipes from the other Foodies Fighting Hunger:

Ramen Alfredo with Fresh Herbs from Jewhungry

Rice Bowl with Egg from Cooking In Heels

Black Beans and Cheesy Tortillas from A Nutritionist Eats

Vegan Kale Tortilla Salad from Greens & Fries

Crustless Veggie Frittate from Kosher Like Me

Avocado Toast with Foolproof Soft Boil Egg from The Kosher Spoon

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Overnight Oats from Let’s Eat Cake

Roasted Tomato Galette from A Jew’s Bouche

Dessert for Two

Fried Green Tomato Sabich from What Jew Wanna Eat

One More Thing

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