l'astronave: food shelf

Showing posts with label food shelf. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Tuesday Warm-Up: Dolls, Food, Love

It's warm: in the 30s, heading for the mid-40s. And sunny!
I wish I could take a walk, but my knee is still dicky.

Kirsten emailed a couple days ago: Do old dolls ever get donated to the store? she would like one.
Yesterday this doll came in. I've never seen one like her.
Would K. like her?
Yes!

A pal, a regular customer who used to be a doll dealer (before the Internet), happened in yesterday afternoon.
I ran and got the doll.

"Beautiful!" she declared---"all handmade. Fully jointed cloth body, with mohair hair, the face is a fine papier-mache... Unmarked so not as valuable to a collector, but very like dolls by Lenci or Käthe Kruse."

BELOW: Dolls by Käthe Kruse, who began making dolls in 1909 in Berlin, German:

II. A favorite photo of mine

Me, below, left, holding yellow book, with coworkers (Big Boss in Santa hat; Jester, E.D., and Mr Furniture) pose in the donation door for a photo advertising our Wednesday Food-Giveaways during Covid.
This cracks me up because we're so scruffy, and it's so cute, me waving.

Due to politics, Society of SVDP no longer has a food bank. All grocery stores & distributors now give their expired/ excess food to one state-supported distribution facility, Second Harvest.
This is efficient–-monopolies are--but knocking out little rag-tag operations is a loss.

Also, groceries from the Society's food bank supplemented the staff's minimum wage, so it was a big loss to us. I've written about this before--sometimes my coworkers make their meals from the expired bakery that still gets donated directly to the store.

(The wonderful Sisters Camelot is one of the few indies in town who still operate. They handle a lot of produce, and they give out free meals from an old school bus.)

BELOW: I took this photo yesterday to show to the folks at the Food Shelf where I get free food to make hot lunch for my coworkers every week.
I aim not to cook red meat very often because some people don’t eat it (and especially not pork), but I take whatever looks good. Last week, organic (!) hamburger.

III. James Baldwin on Holding on to Your Humanity:

"There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see.
But there is some.
...
I may know six people, but that's enough.
...
The world is held together, really it is—held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people."

I've watched this (1 minute) a dozen times:

--Meeting The Man : James Baldwin in Paris.
Dir. Terence Dixon, 1970.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Reimagined Saturday

Ongoing tech challenges notwithstanding, I woke up refreshed this morning. I work this Saturday and it looks like a nice one (and no Asst Man). After weeks with no rain at all, we’ve had rain for days —and nights, including last’s —and it looks spring green out there. Plus fallen autumn leaves.

Last night Big Boss was to give a talk to the Society that runs the thrift stores and parish charitable group, and he’d asked me the day before if I could lend him a bear I’ve repaired—he wanted to use it to illustrate how broken things (including our broken selves) can be restored.

I dropped off a bear AND a doll for him yesterday —the girlette Puck who’s gotten a bionic leg —purple and multi-jointed (from a broken action figure), and Pyx the Unknown Bear, who’d been donated with his button eyes safety-pinned to his ear for reattachment. I’d also mended a tear in his white fur with a flowered patch.

I wrote a note saying “re-imagined” might be another way of thinking about what happens rather than “repaired”

or “restored”—we are not returned to the way we were but become something different. Sometimes strengthened, sometimes fragile at the broken places.

It’s all alchemy.

Yesterday’s food shelf haul had changed to autumn colors too—nothing green… And nothing very great for making work lunches except the butternut squash—I’ll make soup.

Would my coworkers eat quiche?

Thousands of strawberries though—you could take two flats if you wanted—each flat holding maybe 20 cartons of berries. I couldn’t carry them, or I’d have taken them for work.

Butter was in abundance too:

“Take a whole box, or two!”—each box holding 10 lbs. I rarely cook with butter but took two pounds. Got home and one stick had black spots on it-/put them all in the compost. And the same with the Indian naan bread—every piece was fuzz moldy.

Ah, the ongoing adventures in the humiliations of poverty. Now I understand why Mr Furniture won’t eat my lunches—I’d told everyone where the food is from—and he calls it prison food. He’s right—this food isn’t good stuff from generous people, it’s food fit for pig troughs from grocery chains happy to offload what they can’t sell. It’s cheaper for them if a charity hauls it away than if they have to pay garbage service. I expect they get tax credit too.

…Once again, I knew this but I didn’t have the personal experience of being on the receiving end.

The food-shelf workers where I go are as respectful as can be—I love ❤️ them!—and I know they work to cull the donations of actual garbage, the same as I do at work, but the food is ALL on the edge of sell-by dates, and while that doesn’t matter for canned goods, it does for everything else. You have to cook or freeze everything immediately, and who has that sort of storage room?

So, yeah—grocery shopping it is not.

Once again, a wealthy volunteer has given me a gift card to Aldi to buy lunch-makings—that’s better—I can plan a meal.

Yay!

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Dolly Parton delivers!

Had I mentioned that I recently dreamed I was talking with Dolly Parton? I don’t remember what, but I woke up with a good feeling mood that has stuck around.

This afternoon while the vegetarian posole simmered in the crockpot, I popped over to the food shelf a couple blocks away, hoping the line would be shorter mid-afternoon. It was—I only waited 5 minutes. The shelves are picked over toward the end of their day, but I was mostly hoping for meat to cook for my coworkers—a lot of them big carnivores. Bingo! Ground beef AND chorizo. Vegetarian no more.

I’m gonna need a bigger crockpot.

BEST OF ALL: Dolly Parton’s sweet cornbread mix!!! I will make it to share, but I’m keeping the box.😊

UPDATE:

I made cheesy cornbread for work this morning, with the Dolly Parton's Cornbread Mix I got at the food shelf. I had all the ingredients but an egg, so I substituted an overripe peach, also from the food shelf.
It was really good! I'd add a peach on purpose next time.
I'd also cut back on the cheese--a cup and a half is a lot.

Here's the recipe from the back of the box.
Dolly's Favorite Jalapeno Cornbread

1 16-oz. pkg Dolly Parton's Cornbread Mix (or make your own, cheaper = corn meal, flour, sugar, & baking powder)

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (I'd half that next time)

1 medium jalapeno, seeded & chopped (I used Trader Joe's bottled Sweet & Hot jalapenos)

1 cup milk
1 egg (I substituted a mushy peach)
1/3 cup melted butter

Stir the mix, cheese, and jalapenos together.
Stir in wet ingredients.
Pour into 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan or skillet, or muffin tins.
Bake at 375º for 20–30 minutes.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Happy Haul!

I waited an hour in line at the food shelf, but it was worth it: I got a great haul for hot lunch at work! [I'd written earlier today about my decision to start looking for free food so I can cook for my coworkers once a week or so.]

I'll keep a few things I got (Greek yogurt, cheese and crackers), but most will become pork stew for work on Monday. I'll take the bars in too, and the candy if I don't eat it all. (I probably will--I have a liiiiittle problem with compulsive overeating of sweets. AS I WELL KNOW, I shouldn't have even picked it up.) I dislike sweet peanut things, however, so I won't eat the bars.

The food selection was very nice, but of course a lot of it was donated by groceries because it's expired, or about to. The meat was frozen, so it's okay--thawing in the fridge. The sliced peppers were not rotten, but a touch slimy, and the mushrooms are on the edge, so I'm cooking the sauce right now, as we speak.

Oh! I have an eggplant in the fridge. I'll cook that up and make a vegetarian version too. Also, one of the guys is Muslim and doesn't eat pork.

After a very hot and humid week, today the weather is beautiful, and it was pleasant to wait outside. Folding chairs are set up under the portico that runs alongside the church--below, right.
The food shelf is in a church building behind the church itself.

This, above ^ is the view from where I sat at the end--just outside the door to the food shelf. I attend Mass at this church sometimes, but I'd never gone back here, behind the church.
On the left is the old rectory. A beautiful, big, old building, looking pretty crumbly. I saw the priest going in there, I wonder if he actually lives there. That would be somewhat unusual these days--maybe he just has his office there?

The whole process was friendly and respectful. There's no vetting--anyone can come. It's set up like a grocery store--a few people at a time go in and help themselves. Labels tell you how many of each thing you may take. As many cucumbers as you want! But only one pork tenderloin.

They weigh your food basket/cart at the end, to keep track, but ask no personal questions. The food shelf is open some weekdays too, 11 to 4--perhaps the line is shorter. I'll try on one of my days off.

For today, this is a big win. When I left, I teared up, thinking of how many people work for free to help make this work.
I'm as grateful for the kindness as I am for the items.
________________

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