Asha, great ideas and thank you. I can totally do this right now with what I have in my own garden. too cool.
I went to the Cornville food pantry today and got my free monthly box. I got meatballs, a frozen potato-chicken meal, a dried rice casserole, a bag of white rice, a bag of egg noodles, some milk, some canned veggies and fruit, dried prunes, tortillas, some gorgeous red potatoes, rice crispies, several beautiful loves of artisan bread, bagels, bananas (a little brown but i always have ideas for those), two kinds of melon plus a watermelon, a cookie cake from father's day, a box of apple turnovers, a gallon of ice cream, a box of fudge cookies, and a few random extra vegetables.
This is just from ONE box. I have other food pantries i can hit. So many in fact, that I could actually visit a pantry every single weekday and get gobs of lovely free food.
This is stuff the bakeries, groceries and specialty stores would have tossed anyway to make room for other shelf items. Very good stuff and plenty of it. Even they don't have enough people to keep up with the fresh stuff! Much of the bread/produce the pantries have still gets tossed because not enough folks are coming in to claim the foods.
I hope this is encouraging some of you to take a look at the resources in your community. Take advantage of the largesse set aside for your area, help keep good food out of the landfills, and enjoy some free nutritious additions to your diet.
One absolutely could live off this food, and all communities have such pantries. No one should have to go hungry in the USA. I can't speak for people in other countries, but I will repeat, there is no excuse for hunger here.
