Adventures in Free Food!

Like many people I know, I grew up big and strong by eating Church Basement potluck dinners, (and I capitalized it, since I think someone should use it as a brand name for a line of microwave dinners~ wouldn't you buy something called Church Basement 3 Bean Salad, or Church Basement Baked Beans??). The point of all this ---well, to be honest, this is going to be the point-before-the-point, so if you're feeling overwhelmed already, you might want to bail out now--- The PRE-point is that I love free food. Think about it. I'd never make a Spinach Pie in my own kitchen, but if you serve it to me at your house, chances are I'll love it. Or, when I'm going through the supermarket, and there are free samples of stuff -stuff I KNOW I don't like and I'll never buy - I still take the free sample! And then I stand there with a thoughtful look on my face and murmur things like "Hmmm, it's not so bad. Maybe I'll add it to my list next time" but I know I won't. I just don't want to hurt the feelings of the nice lady who's handing out the Dixie cups full of free food. So that's my pre-point. I love free food. I think maybe judging by the size of the congregation on Church Basement pot-luck days, other people do too.

Now, onto my main point. Even better than getting free food, is giving free food...so other people can have it for free. And there are no dishes for you to wash!! I've added a link on my sidebar for The Hunger Site. It's a website that allows you to click the box that says "Give Free Food". You can click every day, and each click donates 1.1 cups of staple food to folks who need it via The Mercy Corps and America's Second Harvest. (There is info about these organizations on the site). I've known about, and frequented this website for a long time now (Thanks to Melanie for pointing me in its direction). There is also an on-line gift shop associated with it. Every item purchased (and there are some really nice ones!! ) results in more free food for somebody! When you look at the stuff in the shop, along with the price and product description, it also tells you how many cups of food will be donated if you purchase that item. Christmas is getting closer, and if you tend to do some of your shopping online anyway, you might want to check out The Hunger Site. The only sad part is that while folks will get good healthy food, nobody's going to be lucky enough to get a "Church Basement Jell-O and Olive Salad".