October 26, 2022

The Calvary Episcopal Church Food Pantry is much more than distributing food on Saturdays. Walking through the doors of the Center of Hope you are welcomed by the Pantry family just as you receive friends into your home. Our Pantry family takes the time to chat with the neighbors while shopping with them, receiving the milk, eggs, and produce, or as carts are moving toward their transportation. Our Pantry is successful because of the camaraderie among our volunteers and neighbors and I must include our support from you in the community, especially our area churches. Some of you who are homebound keep up by reading our newsletter and have emailed me that you have collected toothbrushes or even egg cartons for us. Your Executive committee is more than a group that meets once a month. They are picking up items outside the regular MANNA deliveries such as (bread etc.), crunching numbers for the numerous reports needed for purchasing weekly food, grants, attending meetings/workshops for United Way, MANNA, Hunger Coalition, garden, sharing our story at local schools, coordinating volunteers who come periodically who are local or outside our community to volunteer for a day. To be clear, our mission is to help reduce food insecurity in our community through our weekly food distribution. I felt impassioned this week to share how our pantry family and the community ARE making a difference in the community. I'll end with two stories. One of our neighbors came to the Pantry not because he needed food that week, just to say thank you and to volunteer. Another neighbor told Carol he had lost 20 pounds since coming to the Pantry. Carol, somewhat alarmed, said she would see if we could help with more food. He smiled and said, I'm eating healthier here, fresh produce, low sodium canned products, and light syrup in our fruits.

Chef Martha provided three different recipes using items from the pantry to use with the WLOS videotaping of the Carolina Kitchen. Neighbors over the next month will be able to sample pumpkin spice pancakes, hot spiced cocoa, and lentil soup. 213 households representing 402 individuals and ten new neighbors shopped for healthy food choices this week.

This week St. Andrews Gleaners brought in yummy eggplant, food items were delivered from Lutheran Church of the Nativity, Calvary Episcopal Church, and Fletcher First Baptist Church. Bright Farms donated boxes of Harvest Crunch lettuce. Flavor-First donated tomatoes and green peppers. Individuals picked up the milk from MilCo, and items from Savor-Mor, Ingles, Bimbos, Dollar General, and City Bakery. Shopping locally, we purchased items from Ingles (canned goods and meat), Sav-Mor (milk and eggs), MANNA, and JMJ Tomato Company (potatoes, onions)

On behalf of the executive committee, thank you to our volunteers and our area churches, civic groups, local merchants, and families for all you do to feed our community helping to reduce food insecurity.

Kathy Noyes