Food Bank Birthday Party

In my most Tom Sawyerish way I celebrated my birthday a day late by inviting friends to come volunteer at the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC in exchange for lunch. I was not sure anyone would fall for this trick, but am so thankful for the wonderful friends who selflessly gave up a good chunk of their day to drive all the way to Raleigh to sort food. I wanted to show off our new headquarters before I am just a civilian there.

The Tom Sawyer part was that after the orientation we went to the volunteer area where there were giant crates of cucumbers and peppers which needed to be bagged into “shopper size.” Everyone put on their rubber gloves and gathered four or five to a pallet and carefully checked each vegetable to ensure it was not spoiled and then put it in a net bag. I on the other hand never donned a glove, but went from group to group talking as they worked.

After they had put in some good work I took groups on tours of the new facility explaining how the Food Bank actually works, which was a revelation to most of these dear friends.

My friends are great workers and quite competitive so they wanted to finish bagging their whole 2,000 pound pallets worth of vegetable before they would stop for lunch. It was an impressive showing because they bagged 6,780 pounds of food in less than an hour and a half.

The vegetables were beautiful and Denise found a whole bag of smile shaped cucumbers and we held them up for our photo. We didn’t need the artificial smiles because everyone already had a big smile on their faces from the actual fun they had bagging.

After the work was done we went to a community room and had lunch. My Dad had brought the famous Midtown market chicken salad that I requested in another Tom Sawyer trick. I am a famous over feeder and over estimator of how much food we need. You can tell it is a genetic trait because my father got 50% more than I asked for, forgetting that I had already requested more than I needed.

I also made six pies for the celebration, three chocolate chess and three lime pies. I whipped a big bowl of cream which turns out was enough for 100 people. Now I am noodling ideas on what to do with left over whipped cream.

Thank you to my dear friends who made the long trip and spent the better part of their day at the Food Bank. It meant the world to me. I was so happy to share my passion for their mission with you. Now if you want whipped cream, give me a call.