On a blistering-hot June day in Birmingham, Alabama, Elena Vasquez Garcia sautéed chicken and bell peppers over the stove, ingredients for tacos topped with "expensive" avocados for her three children at home, after she'd spent the week at a food pantry catering to community members who can't afford meat, milk and produce.
Feeding four people is especially difficult for her, as a single mom to three kids. Vasquez Garcia takes home about $500 a week and spends about half of it at the grocery store.
When her children – 15, 18 and 22 – are home all summer, "They're bored and eat everything in sight," she said. She's barely scraping by, but would rather keep the healthy meals coming than deprive her kids. One of them is heading to college in the fall, which will offer some financial relief, she said, "but it shouldn't be that way."
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