The Cambridge Food Pantry is in a troubling position this week. It is heavily dependent on weekly deliveries from the New York State Pantry Food Bank. They were just informed that there will be no delivery until Thursday, and the heaviest traffic at the pantry is expected this weekend and next Wednesday.
While Sarah is not one to panic, the current situation at the Cambridge Food Pantry has turned alarming and has left her deeply concerned. The growing number of people who rely on the pantry for their daily sustenance, for themselves and their families, are at risk of going hungry.
Your help, no matter how small, can make a significant and crucial difference. Your contribution matters more than you know.
“We just got cleaned out this week,” Sarah said. We were counting on the food bank delivery. Can you help?” This food pantry and most others face growing traffic, shrinking resources, and government aid cutbacks.
We can’t supply all of what the pantry needs, but since most of the items on the Cambridge Pantry Amazon Wish List are under $10 (some are less than $3), we can help replace most items on the list. Please help if you can, and do what you can.
Thank you for helping. This is one of the most important projects I’ve yet to be involved with. We can only do our best we can for as long as we can. We are doing a lot already, and it matters.
Amazon delivers quickly, and the food we purchase will almost surely be there by Wednesday. They need everything on the Wish List.
Here is the list:
2. Kraft Original Slow Simmered BBQ Barbecue Sauce (18 Oz. Bottle,$1.98.
3. Happy Belly Thousand Island Dressing, 16 fl.oz, $2.31.
4.De Cecco Elbows Pasta, 16 Oz, $2.50.
5. Prego Traditional Pasta Sauce, 45 Oz. Jar, $3.99.
6. Grated Parmesan, 8 Ounce Pack of 1, S$2.95.
7. Del Monte Fresh Cut Beets, Clices, Canned Vegetables, 12 Pack, 8.25 oz can, $12.72.
8. Del Monte Fresh Cut Diced Canned Potatotes, 12 Pack, 14.5 oz Can. $19.06.
9. Stash Tea Black Tea Pack Sampler Caffeinated, Non-GMO., $16.49.
10. Seattles Best Coffee 6th Avenue Bistro Dark Roast Ground Coffee, 12 Oz. bags, pack of 3, $16.47.
If you need the Cambridge Food Pantry Wish link, here it is.
Wouldn’t it be better to show the hungry in the long run how to eat nutritionally.
Start with protein and fat (oil). Add flavors a la French. Maybe the teach the 5 basic French dishes. With greens and veg s elaboration.
Start with either a high protein (1) egg+ or (2) dairy (cott cheese, plain yogurt or kefir w some grains and fruit to be consumed within one hour of arising.
This food being posted above, while filling in the interim, will make its consumer weaker.
Miriam, thanks for your message. I’ve heard from several nutritionists and yours is the first one that is civil and even useful I thank you for that. I have to be honest with you, your message is also elitist, impossible and dismissive of reality.
What would be better is health and nutritious food that is both affordable and available to food pantries and families that cannot afford to pay for nutritious OR unhealthy food for themselves and their children.
My belief is that the least healthy food is no food, and that is what the pantries and their needy visitors are facing.
The messages suggest academic and elitist nutrition to me, not real life, and an unawareness of the difficulty in feeding people who cannot afford to feed themselves. The pantry doesn’t have the resources to gather, transport, staff and pay for the 5 basic French dishes or most organic and healthy foods that must be harvested in minutes.
When I see messages like yours (and yours was the most courteous, by far) I’m usually called a thief and liar or scammer by nutritionists for helping gather food for the pantry). Do you not know that state and federal governments are cutting budgets for food support?
I am not a nutritionist. I do not select or approve of the food that the food pantry seeks or that the needy families ask for, this is not my business, or frankly, yours. I try to gather what they and their patrons ask for, not what I might eat or choose.
The pantry and their exhausted and overworked volunteers scramble every day to offer enough food to keep the families and their children eating. Food depravation and hunger is balooning to alarming numbers in America, and I wish nutritonists and the other legions of PC food people would come and spend some time with the families who do not have enough money to buy food at all. Some people try to help, others enjoy crapping on them and second-guessing.
That is the real and very urgent scandal, not how many grains are in their food. I eat only whole grained food and nothing with sugar and I can buy fresh vegetqbles and fish and fruit.
But I am not unable to buy my food (your suggestions are at least five times more expensive than the ones the pantry can afford or their patrons can purchase, I’ve checked.
In 2022, more than 13 million children in the United States were food insecure, which is about one in five children. This includes 783,000 children who experienced very low food security, such as going without food. In November 2022, 13% of US households with children reported that their children didn’t have enough food to eat in the previous week. It’s much worse today.
I don’t intend to be the one who visits these families and tells them to let their children go hungry so they can get whole grain foods and the freshest eggs and vegetables.
Who, exactly is going to pay for farmers to go out and gather the five basic french dishes or the eggs from and fruit within an hour of arising and get them to food pantries, overwhelmed with skyrockeing numbers of food deprived people. Starvation makes people weakest of all.
You and your colleagues should step out of your magical castles and into the world these peoples live in before telling them what to eat or me to help get or making them feel awful about the food they are getting.
I am proud that I am helping to food these people and keep their childrens bellies full. Hunger is an awful problem for children, just do some Googling Perhaps you might consider buying some of the food you are suggesting and sending it the Cambridge Food Pantry, 59 Park Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. They would be thrilled to share it with their patrons.That would be better than starving or the latest French diet. Best, Jon
I’m not talking about any food other than what your donors can give.
(By the way, the day this is true let me stop living :
“this is not my business, or frankly, yours. “)
Yes, you are Miriam, the only food the pantry can get or the patrons can eat are the ones the pantry gets them and are given them. My readers are not rich, and they cannot afford the food you are suggesting either, nor are they able to go pluck vegetables out of the ground minutes after they arise and ship them to upstate New York. The goal is to get the poor and hungry food (dictated in most cases by state and federal law) to people for whom daily eating is a crisis. My readers are not restricted to what you choose to eat, nor is the pantry, no are the people who use it. I do not believe that is my business, I am not a nutritionists. If you choose to send enough of that food for the two or three hundred people who need it, go for it, it has nothing to do with me. The logistics of sending french meal and fresh vegetables to the pantry from all over the country are just ridiculous to consider. Go visit a pantry and see how they work. As to whether you live or not, that is up to you, not me. Good luck with it. The pantry is doing a wonderful job under the most difficult circumstances. They deserve praise and support, not a nutritionists fantasies.
None of the listed items are on your wish list. I will try to purchase some and have shipped to you.
They were removed, all purchased, the wish list has changed. The Army of Good did another wonderful job, and thank for wanting tohelp. Don’t ship anything to me, please, food goes to the Food Pantry, 59 Park Avenue, Cambridge New York, 12816. I’m afraid I can’t deliver food. There will be lots of opportunities to help in the future.