Hungry Heart

It’s not a secret that I love food. I was the kid who got the Easy Bake oven when I was eight—even though I wanted to eat the batter we produced, as I had no patience for the baking part. Ok, maybe it’s not a secret that I love to eat. Growing up in a big family, there never seemed to be enough to satisfy our appetites. At dinner I would eat my first helping with my eye on the remaining amounts, eating rapidly so I could be the one asking for seconds first.

It’s perhaps not a surprise that hunger turned into my #1 social issue. How could people go to bed hungry in this “land of plenty”? It didn’t seem possible. Over the years I directed my volunteer time to support local hunger initiatives. Can you rescue unsold produce from farmers’ markets? Got it. Stuff a Bus with Thanksgiving turkeys? I’m your girl. Try to rescue food that would otherwise go into a trash can and redirect it to people in need in the community? Count me in. Let’s feed people.

When COVID-19 hit and people lost jobs and routines and began their lockdown, food issues loomed even larger. Restaurants, grocery stores and other organizations had a lot of food to “dump” all of a sudden. College residence halls, where every student had a refrigerator stuffed with food, needed to be cleaned out; grocery stores had inventory they needed to toss; restaurants that closed quickly had perfectly good food to distribute. Through a local community food rescue group, Haven’s Harvest, we worked to get that “disposable” food out to the community. Let the people eat.

As the weeks passed and we all hunkered down, hunger began stalking people who had been able to buy a cheap burger or a carton of yogurt when they were hungry. Long lines of cars lined up near community centers as people patiently waited for a couple of bags of groceries from their local food pantry—up to 70% of those people had never had to turn to this community resource to fill their tummies. The hunger was real.

I am lucky—I am safe, warm, and well fed. I also live with two wonderful people, my husband and nephew, both of whom are excellent cooks, and all three of us had spare time. (More on them later.) If we set up a meal-making project in our kitchen, and proved we could help others with food, maybe we could grow the project and ask our neighbors to support it in some way?

Our Food Project was born. We connected with a woman who runs a daycare/school in town, but who also helps a senior center with their food needs. How about if we cooked some meals once a week—would that help? We decided to start small and scale up.

Week One, we baked ziti with meat and sausage. For 50. Before we had even delivered the meals, my nephew said, “We could easily double this with not much more labor.” And we did. This is our story.

Easy Bake, eat your heart out. We’re cooking.