Community

my own pantry in September, now much depleted after holiday cooking and gift giving.

I’ve been volunteering a couple hours a month at the local food shelf. I’ve always given money to food shelves, and the most fun I ever had volunteering was sorting food and filling boxes at the Chicago Food Shelf about 15 years ago. Which is odd, because I really hate grocery shopping. But it turns out I love giving people food.

Our local food shelf has been operating a long time. When clients come in, we check their IDs to make sure they have a local address, and new clients have to fill out an application and show proof of residency, usually an apartment lease, signed, in their name. I can’t imagine turning anyone away and sometimes I see a card marked “will bring proof of residency next time.” Most of our clients are referrals from Catholic Charities or other social service agencies. They can come to the food shelf once a month, and they get food based in part on the number of people in their family. We pack boxes with a mix of staples and then we ask about other things– pancake mix and syrup? brownie mix or cake mix? pizza sauce? taco shells and spices?

Everyone gets meat, eggs, bread, butter, cheese and a voucher for a gallon of milk. We always have some produce, lately a lot of garden potatoes and also bagged lettuce, last week bags of tricolor organic carrots.

When I was working my shift in December, six people came in the two hours I worked. I would say we took in more donations than we gave out food. It was Advent after all, and people were in a giving move.

What stunned me was the visit from a local farmer. He came in wearing his cap and Carhart jacket, and had two other older men with him to help. “I have a truckload,” he said, after the volunteer I was working with greeted him by name.

stock photo

Then he and the other two guys started bringing in the goods. First, a very large box with stacked cardboard pallets of eggs. I transferred them to cartons between customers, I’d say 10-12 dozen.

Then a large box of homemade jams, all different kinds. “Did Monica make these?” my volunteer partner asked. “His wife Monica is amazing,” she said to me. We filled the shelf with jams. Next, a large bag of potatoes and another of onions. We’d keep those with the produce and put a few in a bag for each client.

Some miscellaneous boxes with other run-of-the-mill canned good donations, cans of soda I doubt they drink, some canned soups and cereal.

Then, to my shock and amazement, a dozen bottles of maple syrup they made last year.

And finally, a box of large canisters filled with walnuts. Black walnuts from their trees. “Monica thought people might like these for Christmas baking,” the farmer said.

If you want to know about harvesting and preparing  black walnuts, click here.  Here’s an opening excerpt: “The flavor of black walnut lends a gourmet touch to cookies, breads, cakes and other baked goods. The nutmeats are often expensive and difficult to locate.”

Of course, my greedy and acquisitive nature at first inspired jealousy. “Oh my god, how can I get my hands on that maple syrup and black walnuts!” I felt similarly in October when the freezer at the food shelf was filled with donated packages of farm-raised lamb from a local farmer. (That was not as intense, since I can buy his lamb at the farmer’s market.) Perhaps I should get to know Monica!

But those feelings were very quickly replaced by the joy of being able to be the one to give people these delicacies. And there were clients who were very happy to receive, especially, the walnuts, for baking. We also had flour and sugar to offer if they didn’t have any. And eggs. And butter.

And also, it has been hard to wrap my mind around this food shelf. We don’t log in or weigh or record any of the donations. It is quite common to receive garden produce, and we always have home-canned jellies, jams and honey. We wouldn’t give people fully prepared foods, like home-baked cookies, but we would put those things out on the table in the waiting area, sort of a “take at your own risk” area.

It was not like this at the Chicago food shelf. To my recollection, a LOT of the food we received was expired, and one of our chief tasks was to check cans for expiration dates, possible botulism, broken seals. We threw a lot of stuff away. And many people clearly were cleaning out their pantries from “weird” foods that people were unlikely to want to eat unless they luckily fell into a particular ethnic group. Red bean paste, jackfruit, stuff like that.

When that farmer arrived with his helpers to make the big delivery, I felt like I was seeing another old and unexpected tradition, another vestige of real, deep community. This food shelf is quite small, and only open four hours a week. But it is above all a place where neighbors help neighbors.

Later in the afternoon one of the nuns, a Lodermeier, who grew up on a farm that is famous in this area for its U-Pick strawberries, came by with another box of jams she preserved. She wanted a little tour, so we brought her back into the room full of shelves stacked with food. “I just wanted to see what was in here,” she said.

It is a real pantry. Of course there are plenty of cans of Campbell’s soup and boxes of Cheerios. Lots of brownie mixes and taco seasoning packets and jars of spaghetti sauce and boxes of pasta. But also in the mix are some extraordinary things, items I never expected to see in the food shelf pantry, real gifts of a community with a long history of feeding its neighbors.