Lakeview Pantry West

Location: Lakeview Pantry West

Date: Saturday, July 20, 2013; 10:00 am-1:30 pm

It was going to be a two project day and I was running late to get to Lakeview Pantry on time.  When I did arrive, I found that besides Drew, we had Carrie and Hannah as volunteers and also Jason - whom I had met at Brunson, Sara - who leads the program over there, and Lisa - with whom I have done several projects.  I had stood in for Drew the previous month, though this was the first time that we were meeting.  Carrie was there as well and proudly showing the pictures of her beautiful daughter.  I caught up with Sara, since I have not been to her project in quite some time, and we discussed her field trip at the end of the last school year.  The food delivery wasn’t in yet, so the first task was to sort some of the produce that was already there.  This included Strawberries and boy, was that a lot of fun!

Strawberry fields forever!

As much as I love strawberries, I do a terrible job of picking the good ones at the produce aisle.  Some of the strawberries in these boxes were looking a bit iffy, but I did not know if that meant they needed to be thrown away.  My philosophy on food has always been not to waste, but I also evaluate if it’s something that I would eat myself.  If it isn't good enough for me, then it should not be for anyone else.  Lisa joined me for this activity and there were a lot of boxes that we threw away and some that we kept.  The mold on a few of the strawberries made our decision easier, but there were others on which we debated a bit.  After some disgusting discoveries, we were moving rapidly through the boxes and with more strawberries in the garbage bag, I decided to start taking out the trash.  I was joined by another Lakeview Pantry volunteer and we managed to throw away the garbage and since we were already doing this, we were assigned to load Lakeview Pantry’s van with empty crates.  It was extremely hot as we transported the crates and unbearably so inside the van, as I realized when I climbed in the back to adjust the crates. 

In the meanwhile, food had been delivered from various places like Plum, Trader Joe’s and an anonymous source and it needed to be sorted and weighed.  Carrie asked if I could help with the weighing and taking down the readings, and so for the next few minutes it was me putting all of the food bags on the scale and separating by the donation source as well as type – Produce, Bread, Dairy and Meat!  By the time I was done, we had weighed over 500 lbs. of food.  Please process that number for a bit.  If not for the donations, almost 500 lbs. of food would have gone waste!  Now, it was going to feed a lot of families and no amount of praise is enough for these donors.

The pantry shelves

The guests had started assembling outside and it was time to start distributing.  Carrie handed out assignments and said that she was appointing me junior leader for the day – deputizing me, I joked.  She said that while the volunteers were distributing out in the front, she required someone at the back with Jason, to sort cans and store them in the pantry.  This was going to be a long arduous task and Carrie warned us about it being so.  So for the next couple of hours, while others distributed food, Jason and I worked our way through boxes upon boxes of cans.  Jason would look at the expiry dates and then either keep or discard.  Being cans, we kept a lot of them, and it was my task to shelve them in the right place. This proved to be an unusually challenging task since the pantry was full and I had to make space, so that the cans could go in the right sections.  The most common cans were for tomato sauce and since there were plenty of those, I soon had to start creating new piles for them.  The main caveat was that per standards, the food had to be at least 6 inches from the floor and so I was using upside down crates as stands and putting boxes on top of them.  It was a little easier for veggie cans, but even then this was a lot of food – which in the grand scheme of things is excellent. 

Jason and I made a very good team and got along very well.  Carrie checked on us occasionally and thanked us for doing this “unglamorous” task, though we both assured her that we did not mind, since someone had to do it and why not us.  The food distribution was over and Lisa came to check on me.  She asked if I had ever stacked grocery shelves before and I said after today I was glad I didn't.  I was exhausted as I took the train for my next project, but glad that we really did get through sorting many of the cans - a process that would have taken Carrie a lot of time by herself.  Plus in doing so, I gained further appreciation for the work that she and her team do over there.