Food

Amanda and I had one of our lovely lunch dates at Chick-fil-A today, followed by a sisterly secret adventure. :) I will always be a CFA fan, but they've gone up on their prices and shrunk some of their portion sizes. (For example, the chicken-strips combo used to cost $4-something for four strips; now it costs $5-something for three strips.)

Lately I have been making a point not to throw away food at lunch. Instead, I eat as much as I want and then, as long as what's left is presentable, I wrap it up and give it away. Our town doesn't have a lot of obviously homeless people, and the first time I walked out of Jersey Mike's with half my sub, Matt and Stephen made fun of me for thinking I could find anyone who would want it. I was just worried I would offend people. But so far everyone to whom I've offered my leftovers has accepted without hesitation.

Today Amanda and I had leftover chicken nuggets and gave them to a man who actually walked up to us and asked if we had any food. That just does not happen around here -- it's never happened to me, anyway. Maybe we were looking particularly approachable or overfed today, I don't know.

This brings me to a point I've been meaning to make for a while: There are a lot of hungry people right now. Food banks are facing shortages, which is affecting the food pantries that rely on them, which is affecting a whole lot of people. A recent article in our local newspaper quoted a food-bank employee saying that every dollar donated multiplies to $8 worth of food for distribution.

Last week I was giddy about all we got for "only" a few hundred dollars at the outlets. There is no way I could honestly claim that we can't afford to give money and/or food so that fewer people in our community will be hungry at night.

This News & Observer editorial makes the case more eloquently than I do. Please read it and consider helping however you can.

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Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina