I enjoy a little caveat emptor now and then, but I was a little nervous having it on my dinner plate.
The following disclaimer comprises the first line of the application I filled out for the Mendocino Food and Nutrition Program:
“I am applying to receive assorted food from the Food Bank. This food will be used only if fit for human consumption. This food is accepted as is.””
Yikes!
I was beware, but not a buyer as I approached my Season of Sharing newspaper assignment of signing up for the Fort Bragg Food Bank and then going home and eating the free food for dinner.
Season of Sharing is a fund drive the Advocate-News and The Beacon have sponsored every year since 1995. Of the many non-profit organizations serving our area, Publisher Sharon DiMauro considers the Food Bank”s efforts among the most essential. The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers; every donated cent is tax-deductible and goes directly into the Food Bank”s coffers.
So, I wanted to see, smell and savor what this newspapers” effort tastes like to those who benefit from this charity. I went to find out how hard it was to be a client, what the clients and servers were like, and especially how the food would taste and how it would fill my nutritional needs. I reported on what I saw and my personal reactions to the process, people and food.
When I walked in the front door to start the sign-up process, a mural, a bulletin board and the open back door of Jean Jones” office greeted me. Jones has been with the Food Bank for more than a decade, going from client to volunteer to running the office and supervising volunteers for Executive Director Nancy Severy. In a pouch on the back of the door were ample copies of the one-page form available in both English and Spanish. I found it very easy to fill out.
After I got past the warning at the top (caveat emptor — let the buyer beware), it took me less than a minute to complete the form. The second paragraph continued in the scary mode, releasing the donors and the Food Bank from legal liability. Then I promised not to sell the food I get for free.
How much can I make and still be eligible?
The income requirements of the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP) are clearly stated. Since the law defines me as a family of one, I could make up to $1,225 per month and be eligible. That means a single person making minimum wage and working 40 hours a week could receive food.
A family of four is eligible with up to $2,500 in monthly income.
This month, I am eligible for sure, as I departed my full-time job placing disabled clients in jobs and work part-time for the newspapers. I also am a Realtor at Mendocino Pacific Realty. If I happened to close an open escrow this month, I wouldn”t qualify.
While I worried about this, the Food Bank is entirely on the honor system. I simply printed my name, address, phone number and the date and signed. However, the client is informed that a copy of the application is kept in the office at all times. I had to attest to the fact that I have been told the EFAP limits, which are posted and evident all over the place.
Then the form asked my income from working full-time, part-time pensions, SSI and “welfare.” Just what on earth is “welfare” these days?
More intelligible questions were “Do you receive food stamps?” and “Do you receive WIC?” These are no”s for me, but many of those I met at the Food Bank also got food stamps.
When I finished filling it out, volunteer Alyce Power took my application, a task Jones normally does, but she was off that day. Power told me that I was eligible to get food immediately, although I wouldn”t officially be in the computer until the next time. My meal number was a “1” this time, and a “2” the next three weeks. The numbers correspond to certain combinations of foods, allowing the person taking my number to give me a meal intended to be nutritionally balanced.
On the back of the application, I was asked to list all household members and to tell the Food Bank within 30 days if my income or living arrangement change. I can also specify a proxy person to pick up food for me.
This was all very clear on an application easy to fill out.
I left the office and went outside and back in the client door, which opens into a long, rectangular room with benches longer than church pews. There are free clothes and a bulletin board full of information about other services.
I went to the Food Bank five different times during pick-up times and actually partook of three different take-home meals. I saw meals that ranged from an epic Thanksgiving banquet to a Mother Hubbard selection one Friday afternoon.
I got some puzzling high dollar delicacies, such as a bottle of fine Italian capers. I found my favorite organic spiced vegetarian flour tortillas and some foodstuffs well past the expiration dates. I took fresh vegetables from among moldy ones. Mostly I found what Executive Director Severy had told me — that foods rich in protein are badly needed and not donated in large enough quantities, nor is enough money donated for this need.
Thanksgiving
With 600 huge turkeys set as the main course, there was no protein shortage on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
That Wednesday and Christmas Eve are the festive feast days each year at the Food Bank. Dozens of volunteers, the small paid staff, and community service workers sent by the court system serve up enough groceries to feed an army.
A massive crowd gathered out front on Wednesday, as hundreds of people waited for the chance to carry out several bulging bags of groceries, everyone making more than one trip.
Each client started off with a bag of canned and dried foods, including stuffing, gravy, green beans or peas, yams, corn and cranberry sauce. Next was cranberry juice, loaves of bread, big sweet potatoes, a bunch of celery, a bag of apples, a big bag of potatoes and then, a huge turkey.
This meal was truly spectacular, so much so that I didn”t try any of the above myself. I didn”t want to take it away from those who needed it more. Nor did I want to wait in a line for a half hour or more.
I wanted to see what Food Bank food tasted like on those other 50 weeks out of the year. I went twice on a Friday afternoon and once on Thursday, when the Food Bank stays open from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to serve the working poor.
The Food Bank is a take-home cafeteria in an industrial setting. Each time I went, I got a bag of canned goods from the window. I took a standard bag, which included a bag of rice, an extra large can of tuna, pizza sauce and cans of beans and mixed veggies. Vegetarian bags are available, as are bags for “campers” which are favored by the homeless.
Also in my first bag was a macaroni and cheese boxed dinner and a 14.5-ounce can of Michigan Made asparagus, which was much better than my usual discount store brand.
With my heavy bag in hand each time, I moved down a 25-foot long stainless steel counter, making choices. The volunteers were smiling and helpful and clearly didn”t judge — not me nor the lean, fashionably jeaned and manicured and pedicured 20-something woman next to me or the bearded, clearly homeless man next to her.
The place sounded and smelled like one of those warehouse grocery stores where you have to dodge pallets and bag your own groceries. This one has a big roll-down steel door, a forklift, and towering racks of canned food and government surplus.
On that first day, the selection was rich with about 40 different packaged foods from which to choose 6 to 10 items (not counting the bakery array). The next two times I went there was far less food, about 10 different staple items (not counting the bread and vegetables) to choose just three from.
So, let”s stick to the good day.
Good day a mixed bag
First, volunteer Jerry Smith offered me two soft drinks from four rows. I took a diet A&W Root Beer can and what I thought was water, but turned out to be a fancy Power Option sugared drink — gak!
Next, was a choice of dairy items, one gallon of milk or two dairy items. A real winner was two pounds of Pavel”s Original Russian plain yogurt, which bore a Nov. 24 expiration date on Nov. 3 and was delicious.
The 16 ounces of Knudsen Free Nonfat Cottage Cheese had an expiration date of Oct. 19. Yikes! I discovered this when I got home. I Googled expired cottage cheese and found 10 days past the expiration date is about as far as one should go, mostly because of the taste issue, as it is curdled milk to begin with. Mine was a little too far on the aromatic road to being the next kind of cheese.
Frozen solid with an even older Oct. 11 expiration date was a pack of hot dogs. Those tasted OK.
Continuing down the line, there were all kinds of materials for making tortillas, which I skipped in puzzlement. I passed over flour tortillas and took a half dozen white eggs. These were reboxed, so it was hard to know their expiration date.
One way the Food Bank gets goodies is through packaging problems. There were bowls of organic cereal from Amy”s Organics, complete with bags of toppings. The product was still sealed in bowls and bags, but the decorative external packaging stuff had apparently been damaged.
Volunteer Tony Anderson advised me that anything from Amy”s was delicious.
As usual, that came with a joke. “This is a genuine, organic, certified, ready-to-heat bowl of healthy grain breakfast food,” Anderson said. “Otherwise known as oatmeal.”
The topping packaged in separate little bags was sticky, rectangular black pellets. It was hard to comprehend eating it without being sold first by the marketing presentation on the cover of the box.
“I won”t say what that looks like. I bet it tastes good and I think you should try it, not me,” Anderson laughed. Anderson is familiar to anyone who attends local sporting events for his booming bass voice, which he both volunteers and gets paid to use at games.
I tried the cereal a few nights later, along with the topping, which seemed to be a date-based concoction that gave a natural mild sweetness to the oatmeal, which was much smoother and more flavorful than the out-of-the-box Quaker Oats my dad used to make us eat.
Next was a row of assorted weird stuff. I choose a small bottle of “premium, 100 percent non-pareil capers, imported from Spain.” I imagined this was once part of a fancy gift basket or maybe something someone bought at Harvest Market and was never brave enough to try. They tasted like a cross between a peppercorn and an olive.
Next came the bread, which was plentiful each time I went, with a wide variety of Safeway and Harvest bakery items, including whole mini lemon pies. I took some hot dog buns.
The next stop was 12 bins of different fruits and vegetables. Everything was ripe, overripe, or beyond. I got home with a very fresh head of butter lettuce, an overripe tomato that was delicious and a nectarine that looked colorful on the outside but dead inside. I also got very fresh onions and potatoes, which filled grocery carts at the end of the row.
On one visit there was a pallet two feet deep with thousands of pomegranates, morphing into an orangey jam.
My favorite funky vegetable was a squash the size of a volleyball, labeled a “Blue Hubbard” from Durst Organic growers. The outside was as hard as a gourd and the ball seemed to have a rattle. When I went back to Google, I learned this was a favorite giant relative of the butternut squash, said to be quite tasty. I later confirmed that nobody else braved the giant squash and it had to be tossed.
Outside there were also all the apples anyone could carry, which was nice.
On other days when I visited the Food Bank, there were no hot dogs, yogurt, cottage cheese or cereal but some candy, sweet drinks and even more moldy lettuce, with no sign of a good head.
I hate to say it, but there isn”t enough food or money to give everybody who comes to the Food Bank the kind of healthy experience I had that one Friday.
Let them eat Blue Hubbard squash!
Although I understand the clients who are offended by overripe and occasionally moldy fruits and vegetables, in my view as eater, the Food Bank doesn”t have enough money to buy the food and seeks to maximize its donated food and keep it as long as possible.
While much of the bakery stuff and the donated drinks are almost all loaded with sweets, the fresh fruits and vegetables are a very healthy addition to any diet and are loved by the clients.
I have tended to eat a low-carb diet, which has to be mostly suspended at the Food Bank. But with tuna fish, canned salmon, hot dogs and such, the Food Bank works hard to provide enough protein.
The Food Bank provided me with staples that lasted more than a week.
Several clients told me the Food Bank is crucial to paying their bills, and they really didn”t want to criticize, but they would like more fresh items and a source for items like hamburger, fish and chicken.
I found more decent, hard-working or retired people than I would have imagined. There were grandfathers, grandmothers and young single moms with kids, who got to help pick out dinners. I found nice street people and one or two scary ones. Jones makes clients feel very comfortable as she greets them.
I did find clients who were embarrassed, including several people I know well.
Next week, we will meet and hear from these clients. We will present statistics on their average ages, work history and race, and hear how the hunger issue continues to grow on the Mendocino Coast.
How to donate
Season of Sharing donation checks should be addressed to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to Advocate-News, P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or dropped by the newspaper office, located at 450 N. Franklin St. If you have any questions about the fund drive, call the newspapers at 964-5642. The fund-raiser runs through Dec. 31.
Donors” names are printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous. As of Wednesday, the drive has reached $4,330 .Contributors were Carol Ann and Roy Falk, Paul Lagomarsino, Gary and Sally Roach, and there were two anonymous donations.
