Why MoCo Pantries Like FISH Need You
Published on 3/9/2024
What would you do with frozen catfish, frozen strawberries, canned chickpeas, dried split peas, and fruit cocktail? Could you make dinner from such ingredients and what else would you need to succeed? Foil, oil, salt, pepper, breading, eggs to fry up the catfish or bake it. Then you’ll need an oven or stovetop and pans. You’d want tartar sauce, right?
How does that go with the fruit? Toss together for a fruit salad? Or, if you have a well-stocked kitchen, puree the strawberries into sorbet.
Do these pair well with those chickpeas? Should you make hummus? You’ll need tahini, lemon, garlic and olive oil, along with a quality blender. If you have diced tomatoes, celery, onions, garlic and peppers, you could throw together a soup. You’d need some salt and other veggies to make it super delicious. Herbs would help - cumin or oregano.
Would you save the split peas for another meal? Perhaps if you have a ham hock and carrots, a bay leaf or two, you can slow cook it into split pea soup for a comforting winter meal.
These five ingredients came as last month’s free government commodities which are delivered to FISH and other local food pantries, in quantities limited by the number of visitors the previous month. FISH’s job is first to get those to locals in need of food, and also, help their visiting clients figure out how to prepare them.
But if you’re a family living in the Motel 6 you don’t have a stove or oven, much storage, pans and utensils, let alone a bevvy of spices and herbs. You might have a microwave and a mini-fridge. Because Food Finders, and therefore, FISH often run short on eggs, dairy and meat, you’ll have limited quantities to work with. It’s hard to pull together a palatable, home-cooked meal.
In our previous segment on Food Finders, we wrote of a food bank’s mission and capacity. Food Finders is a food bank, which does far less direct distribution to clients. It warehouses large donations for West Central Indiana, and when it does direct distribution - like its fresh market - other pantries have to get in line to stock their own shelves.
As FISH director Linda Cherry noted, “Food Finders has a big picture idea of serving 16 counties, but it's just a really different perspective here when you’re doing the boots on the ground in a local situation.”
The many services helping the hungry work like a funnel. At the top is Feeding America, a national organization that developed a points-based purchasing system and incorporates a lottery to try to equalize distribution of high-demand items like cereal and meat to regional banks. Before this system, a regional bank near a Ben and Jerry’s plant might end up with 2000 quarts of Chunky Monkey, but no breakfast foods. Somewhere else, General Mills donated several hundred flats of cereal. With Feeding America, they take turns bidding first to fill their warehouses and hopefully even out the glut.
Food Finders allows local pantries to make an appointment and pick up food, some of which costs the local pantry. While the pantry doesn’t pay Walmart or Kroger prices, if they don’t get an appointment on the first day after Food Finders restocks the warehouse, they often leave without the food their clients need and want to eat.
FISH director Linda Cherry says her volunteers often don’t get an appointment until Wednesday, when they drive several cars to Lafayette, and when they arrive, what’s left would supplement their clients’ diets, but not make a breakfast, lunch or dinner. So FISH relies as much or more on local food drives, donations - corporate and individual - as well as grants. If they end up with pallets of soup after the souper bowl drives, they still need breakfast food, peanut butter AND jelly, meat, rice, potatoes, and vegetables. Every donation counts. What food isn’t delivered to them from churches and local corporations is food they must pay full price to stock. They spend $3000-$5000 a month, depending on the need to stock their small space.
Cherry’s job is to ensure they can serve everyone and she wants to give clients dignity and choices, so they can pick groceries that meet their dietary needs. Without donations growing at the same or faster pace as the need, FISH staff will have to resort to the unthinkable, turning people away. So far, they’ve been able to mitigate some of the need, but it’s growing fast.
Two years ago, when all government agencies and many corporations were focused on pandemic interventions, it wasn’t so bad. In early 2022, FISH “barely served 300 households a month, but that number climbed to 400 households a month in mid-2023 and now, they serve nearly 450 a month,” said Cherry. Proportionally, those increases are huge jumps and make it more challenging to stock the types of foods that provide for a nutritious breakfast, lunch and dinner. FISH aims to provide oatmeal, cereal, bread, peanut butter, jelly, rice, grean beans, pasta and spaghetti sauce, along with meat, eggs and milk. (Also they provide linens, socks, underwear, soap and hygiene products as well as feminine sanitary products.)
That includes meats that don’t have to be cooked or can be heated on site at FISH for the dozen or so regulars who are living in their cars or tents.
“I set aside spam, hot dogs, lunch meat and microwave a bowl of something for them, so they can have a hot meal,” Ellen Simpson, FISH coordinator said.
Food is just one resource that local pantries need. They also need volunteers, vehicles, freezer and fridge storage as well as board members.
FISH opens four days a week for two hours each. Five volunteers help for three hours. For the first hour, they shelve and label what’s available, indicating how much each household can shop for, then they help with shopping and checking out. That means they need twenty volunteers a week just to open. On top of that, they need stronger volunteers to help with deliveries, pickups and deliveries.
Like Food Finders’ Lafayette Fresh Market, FISH prizes choice and dignity. Visitors range from many elderly living on fixed incomes, families where both parents work full-time and can’t make all their bills and households living in motels, vehicles or worse. Many clients work three or more jobs, cleaning houses, working at a gas station, doing door dash. One couple, parents of seven kids, recently showed up. While they own their home, recent utility bills rose so high that they couldn’t put food on the table and keep the water on, even though both adults worked full time. Another couple had to move into their van though one spouse worked full-time. The other partner’s health issues meant she couldn’t work. Having waited months to find housing, Ellen advised them to contact Lafayette Transitional Housing (LTHC), which now has a case worker in Montgomery County, and a couple weeks later, they were moving into a home.
FISH is able to provide an average of 45 pounds of food twice a month for households of four, up to 60 for larger households. It gives smaller amounts twice a week to the dozen or so homeless. FISH creatively makes the best of their limited resources, stocking shelf-stable milk and teaching clients how to use it in cooking, saving any fresh milk for the cereal and drinking, but the need remains. If you are able to volunteer or donate, please contact Ellen Simpson at (765) 362-3474 or follow them on Facebook for calls for donations and help.