Montgomery Community Media

Smart Sacks is a special program here at Manna Food Center. The program allows Manna to serve over 2100 Montgomery County students with supplemental weekend food. This school year, students noted some changes to the contents of their weekend bag: food in portions large enough to serve a family, more whole grains, and lower-sodium foods. […]

Author Jon J. Muth said, “It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.” Manna Food Center is a place where it’s hard to forget we are the ocean. We might want to just come to work, put lunch in the fridge, fold the umbrella, hang the coat, […]

  Manna’s Director of Nutrition Programs, Jenna Umbriac, recently shared a great article with  me about healthy shopping on a budget. A registered dietitian in New Jersey successfully shopped for a family of four–that’s 21 meals plus snacks–for $126. She used some important grocery shopping techniques we use here at Manna Food Center. In our […]

Manna Food Center opens at 8 a.m. At 7:15 a.m. in Gaithersburg, the cold sky promised rain, and the air chilled those exposed places on your neck and ears. Jackie, Manna’s Executive Director, arrived early to start her workday to find a woman waiting at the locked doors of Manna’s warehouse. At the height of […]

On Friday, I visited Oakland Terrace Elementary School in Silver Spring to speak with 85 second graders about hunger. The second graders at Oakland Terrace spent the past six weeks studying nutrition, and recently conducted a Healthy Cereal drive for Manna Food Center. Go second grade! In my visit, the 85 students and I discussed […]

In the last year, Manna served over 36,000 Montgomery County residents facing food insecurity. It is impossible to imagine distributing food to the children, seniors, and families of our community without the 32,000 volunteers (last year alone!) fostering Manna’s mission alongside our staff. Even on evenings, weekends and holidays, these gracious individuals donated 64,626 hours […]

Last week, while our Executive Director Jackie DeCarlo attended Maryland’s Hunger Action Symposium, the entire Nutrition Department (that’s Jenna Umbriac and little me) attended the Capital Area Food Bank’s Northern Virginia Hunger Summit: Love Food Hate Waste. In 2011 alone, Americans generated more than 36 million tons of food waste, with only four percent diverted […]

This week, I headed back to Family Service Agency for a new “Manly Meals” cooking class. Many of the men do indeed cook for themselves, and I was challenged by the Director of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services to come up with a class focused on the tastes (and cooking methods) of men. Well, if we’re going […]

It is a beautiful sight at the farmer’s market. Inching towards October we are, forgive me, on the Blurred Lines of seasonal produce, colors and flavors abound. Peaches piled alongside pumpkins, basil bouquets tucked near the Brussels sprouts. Our clients are able to enjoy this wonderful produce too, through our Farm to Food Bank Program […]

This month, Whole Foods teamed up with Manna Food Center for National Kids’ Day of Service, an awesome event. Approximately 100 Montgomery County youth packed Smart Sacks, weekend food assistance bags, to help students and their families.  Manna’s Karen Goldberg Smart Sacks program began in 2005 and has grown over the past 8 years to […]