I picked up my hamper from the Cambridge Self Help Food Bank the other day; I don't mind saying that I felt a little awkward as I did so. It is really hard to take something like food for free, and feel good about yourself. So, I was really glad for how friendly Sheila from the Food Bank was as she explained how everything worked and guided me through the process.
As I was picking food for my hamper, I was thinking about the need to try to make the food stretch. So, I tried to select food items that could be combined and used to make something like soup, or that would lead to leftovers that could be turned into another meal.
...it wasn’t as easy as it sounds... I tried to keep a running list of ingredients in my head, as one-by-one I picked-out food items from the categories available (such as first picking a can of vegetables from those available, then moving on to pick a cereal, then on to a can of fruit, and so on) based on the instructions Sheila provided as she guided me through the process. Without knowing what was going to be available, I had to try to keep my selections general so that they could end up being the ingredients for meals that I hadn’t planned yet. ...living off of a food hamper means planning ahead is really difficult. ...at the same time, I was glad for the choices that I could make: a can of creamed corn or a can of green beans...I went with the corn because it seemed the lesser of two evils and like it might be something to combine with something else to make soup.
...and as it turned out, dinner last night was soup, made from one can of creamed corn, a cup of rice, some water, and a few chopped carrots (I was lucky to get a bag of fresh carrots...jackpot!).
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