I spent Monday
afternoon in a church basement, deep in the belly of the town food bank. I’ve been meaning to volunteer here for
some time now, but it wasn’t until Monday that I finally got there.
That afternoon I put to bed some of my own misconceptions of food banks. Years of experience, understanding and
endless care have been put into selecting each hampers contents. Fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs,
vegetables and bread (all ordered) constitute the bulk, with non-perishable
(and mostly whole) foods to last for the rest of the time between pickups. Regular hampers are received every 60
days (when’s the last time you went two months without grocery shopping?), though
emergency hampers are available on request once a month. Vegetarians, celiacs and
dairy-allergies are all accommodated with great care. Begrudgingly the volunteers have kept supplying recipients
with select processed foods, including: Cheez Whiz, Kraft Dinner and canned
spaghetti. Though the nutritive
contribution of these foods may be low, the comfort they provide can’t be
discounted. A warm blanket of
cheese sauce could soft-sell broccoli to almost any reluctant school age kid. When they tried to take Cheez Whiz off
the shelves, there was an outright furor.
I killed hours
getting orders together (I’ll be volunteering as a “Filler”, not the most
glamorous title), taking great pride in supplementing each order as best I
could. The families with young
kids would get a few packs of Shake-and-Bake and Jell-O, teenagers would get
jars of butter chicken sauce, single adults would get little gifts of hot
sauce, coffee, chocolate. When I
left, many shelves were empty and my heart was full. I have to wait two weeks before my next training shift. 13 more sleeps.
-S
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