Timothy Hinkle, a disciple at the Providence Rescue Mission, helps serve the nightly meal to the Mission guests on Sunday. The mission expected to serve meals to 90 to 120 homeless and needy people.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

Two years ago, Robin McDuffie and her family often spent $150 a night for five meals at a favorite Spanish restaurant. On the menu? Lobster, filet mignon and arroz con pollo.

Then her husband lost his mortgage-company job. Now, McDuffie spends a little more for a week’s worth of groceries –– with money from the state.

“We went from making a hundred grand to making four grand,” says McDuffie, who attends a class on how to prepare healthy meals with less money. She no longer eats meat.

“I never thought I’d have to do this,” says the 38-year-old mother of three.

In Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is among the worst in the nation, the number of people who go to bed hungry is at a 10-year high, according to a new report from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.

“Poverty and hunger are facts of life for too many Rhode Islanders,” says the report, to be released Monday.

Between September 2008 and August 2009, emergency food programs served 13 million meals, a 30-percent increase from the year before, it says.

The state’s soup kitchens and food banks “are stretched to capacity,” says Andrew Schiff, the food bank’s chief executive officer. “The government has to step up.”

THE “STATUS REPORT on Hunger in Rhode Island 2009” follows a similar report released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the study, nearly 15 percent of America’s households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest rate since the federal agency began tracking food security levels in 1995.

“Although the numbers are shocking, they’re also a year old,” says Schiff. “Things have gotten worse.”

Hurt by a faltering economy, layoffs and foreclosures, some 123,000 Rhode Islanders now live in poverty, almost a third of them children, says the Food Bank report.

This year, demand for financial help through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (the former food stamp program) jumped by 31 percent, to 116,252 users, the report says.

The demand is creating a bottleneck that could be fixed by hiring more state workers and streamlining the application process, the report says.

The Food Bank’s network of 24 soup kitchens and 122 food pantries is scrambling to keep up.

At the Jonnycake Center of Peace Dale — where McDuffie gets food and attends class — the demand for meals has doubled in the last year, says Susan Gustaitis, the center’s executive director. And Gustaitis is worried about another surge this winter. “A lot of people are in trouble now.”

THE GOVERNMENT can help by providing more –– and better –– free breakfasts and lunches to students, even in the summer, the new report says.

Another suggestion: families who receive government help should be rewarded when they buy healthy foods from local farmers.

The “Raising the Bar on Nutrition” program, which is helping Robin McDuffie, should also be expanded, Schiff says.

The three-year-old program started as an experiment, but got a boost recently from a grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield.

The program, for low-income families, includes six weeks of cooking demonstrations. Participants learn how to cook with olive oil and prepare meals that cost $175 a week for a family of four.

“We’re showing people that it’s affordable to eat healthy,” says Schiff. “When people understand they can afford it, it changes the way they eat.”

McDUFFIE AGREES.

When her husband lost his job during the banking crisis, the family moved from a $900-a-month home in the country to transitional housing — a collection of old Navy apartments — at Crossroads in North Kingstown.

After she signed up for the Food Bank program, she got olive oil, measuring cups, a recipe book and groceries for the first few meals. “They even pay for my gas to go to class,” she says.

Still, it hasn’t been easy.

When she swaps black beans and rice for steak, her two boys frown. “They say, ‘Eww, what’s this?’ ”

But, she adds, “I’m saving money.”

BY THE NUMBERSPoor and Hungry

Nine-month average of people served monthly by food pantries

50,557

People served in 200937,991

People served in 2008

pdavis@projo.com