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Rusty Rickshaw
Apr 30, 2008

SmokaDustbowl posted:

I am very poor and don't have a car or anything and taking a bus to the food bank is so embarrassing I'd rather die

this means I don't eat very well and also the most honest thing I'll post

I've been there, and hearing someone else say it out loud is heart-breaking. I'm homeless right now and went to my first food bank yesterday. The people were very nice and kept trying to give me extra stuff that I couldn't/wouldn't use. I wish I had started going sooner befor my situation was this dire. If you have a home and a fridge, pay them a visit! They will help you and they're really casual too
Some banks will give you bus tokens or taxi vouchers btw.

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Matey
Mar 28, 2008

eat food


Sorry homeless people. I tried. Have fun starving I guess.

Szyznyk
Mar 4, 2008

I like to donate the Banquet Homestead Bakes and big-assed containers of oatmeal. For ten bucks it's 2 dinners and breakfast for half the week.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Rusty Rickshaw posted:

I've been there, and hearing someone else say it out loud is heart-breaking. I'm homeless right now and went to my first food bank yesterday. The people were very nice and kept trying to give me extra stuff that I couldn't/wouldn't use. I wish I had started going sooner befor my situation was this dire. If you have a home and a fridge, pay them a visit! They will help you and they're really casual too
Some banks will give you bus tokens or taxi vouchers btw.

You can also trade with folks if you have no need for some of the extras. I hadn't thought about it at the time, but I remember people asking me if I had gotten pet food because they'd be willing to trade for an extra bag of that. I could have trade some of those extra milks for instance that eventually spoiled for something else someone had had.

Szyznyk posted:

I like to donate the Banquet Homestead Bakes and big-assed containers of oatmeal. For ten bucks it's 2 dinners and breakfast for half the week.

A container of oatmeal and peanut butter goes a long way. Probably longer than a loaf of bread and peanut butter.

The Saurus
Dec 3, 2006

by Smythe

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I worked in the kitchen for some food for poor old people program in highschool and they had weird tax fraud deals with all the local farms of like 'give us 8 pallets of strawberries but 4 of them can just be all the moldy gross junk you want to throw out so you can write it off as donations for taxes"

That makes a lot more sense in why they'd send us literal garbage. What really pissed me off was that the other volunteers were just putting them on people's trays, as if because they were poor enough to need free food they should eat rotten produce. I made some fruit cocktail cups for them instead.

empty sea
Jul 17, 2011

gonna saddle my seahorse and float out to the sunset
I had to visit the food bank for a while while I was living with my Dad and going to school and the money from EBT wasn't near enough to stretch between food, gas, rent and his girlfriend's need for jewelry or wtf. I remember a ton of canned veggies and tuna being the staples. Plus random stuff like nectarine juice, veggie "ground beef", a lot of pre-packaged fresh meals on their last legs and weird pastries, like gigantic cinnamon rolls. I used the vegetarian ground "beef" to make spaghetti. It was ok? Just a weird sweetness to it, but perfectly filling and edible. You could tell it wasn't meat, so the whole dish was a little off-putting but hell, I ate that for 3 days.

The worst part was getting all these parts of meals but not being able to make a whole traditional meal. Like, I could throw canned veggies together but that wouldn't be a stew, it would just be vegetables in hot juice because I rarely got tomato paste/sauce, etc to even make a veggie stew. My experience with food banks was mainly eat anything remotely fresh as soon as possible, then stare at canned food until I could find an acceptable combination.

I made the worst dish I've ever eaten once out of desperation with all food bank ingredients on the last week before we could go back--- cheap mac n cheese and tuna but without any butter or dairy of any kind. The closest equivalent I had was water and chipotle mayo. That was the worst thing I've ever eaten. I don't even know how to describe the taste but it was soul-killing.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

empty sea posted:

I made the worst dish I've ever eaten once out of desperation with all food bank ingredients on the last week before we could go back--- cheap mac n cheese and tuna but without any butter or dairy of any kind. The closest equivalent I had was water and chipotle mayo. That was the worst thing I've ever eaten. I don't even know how to describe the taste but it was soul-killing.

I forgot, I received a bag of mint chocolate chips one of the times I went to the food bank. I thought I'd never actually use them, especially after EBT funds, but not only did I start snacking with them, but I started making these grilled mint chip sandwiches out of desperation.

I wasn't exactly proud of finding this combination but it tasted pretty well.

Hometown Slime Queen
Oct 26, 2004

the GOAT
I didn't volunteer at a food bank, but at a Humane Society. It really did kind of open my eyes to the weird supply and demand of charity-driven organizations. We'd get stacks upon stacks of pet food, but were constantly running out of weird things you don't think about, like paper towels and rubber gloves.

I really liked volunteering there, though. Aside from the poopy parts of it, the animals are always happy to see you and run around out of their cages for a while. Donate your time, folks. :shobon:

penus penus penus
Nov 9, 2014

by piss__donald
im about to get 80 hours of community service should i go to a food bank or will it piss me off

TapTheForwardAssist
Apr 9, 2007

Pretty Little Lyres

TwoFire posted:

its called mandated 'community service', not volunteering

Once the free bikeshare program in Austin put out a call for volunteers on the radio to come build/cannibalize donated bikes, so I thought it'd be a fun way to improve my tech skills and meet hipster girls. Literally everyone there who wasn't permanent staff was there on mandated community service. Everyone's first question on meeting me was "so what are you in for?"

Though I did meet a really cute hipster girl who'd been sentenced there because she refused to pay a $300 fine for parking her Tercel too close to a railroad track.

Infidel Castro
Jun 8, 2010

Again and again
Your face reminds me of a bleak future
Despite the absence of hope
I give you this sacrifice




For my 23rd birthday my alcoholic roommate guy me an expired can of Armour Vienna sausages he got from the food bank. That's my getting food from a food bank story thanks for reading and have a blessed day.

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Rusty Rickshaw posted:

I've been there, and hearing someone else say it out loud is heart-breaking. I'm homeless right now and went to my first food bank yesterday. The people were very nice and kept trying to give me extra stuff that I couldn't/wouldn't use. I wish I had started going sooner befor my situation was this dire. If you have a home and a fridge, pay them a visit! They will help you and they're really casual too
Some banks will give you bus tokens or taxi vouchers btw.

Yeah, especially since their stocks go up and down, it makes sense to get in their before hand, rather than waiting for the last moment, which might be a time when they are short on food.

Yvershek
Nov 15, 2000

and there are no
diamonds in the
mine
Is it possible to donate open bags of cat food? I have a fair amount of the dry kind laying around since my cat refuses to eat most things.

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Yvershek posted:

Is it possible to donate open bags of cat food? I have a fair amount of the dry kind laying around since my cat refuses to eat most things.

I think most places would be fine with it, perhaps repackaged into a zip-lock bag? I would call ahead and ask.

Thursday Next
Jan 11, 2004

FUCK THE ISLE OF APPLES. FUCK THEM IN THEIR STUPID ASSES.

Shithouse Dave posted:

What is the best/most overlooked thing to donate? I usually do soap and toilet paper, because I think people forget that folks need to poop and wash as well as eat.

Spot on.

Soap and shampoo / conditioner is best. Makeup is also excellent to donate. Typically, toilet paper and tampons are _generally_ taken care of by whatever shelter or public restroom they're using.

And you're right about the why - most people don't think to donate these things. Or, in some cases, people think that these are luxury items and therefore shouldn't be given out. But interestingly enough, they're the most critical. It's not possible to get a job (or even an interview) if you aren't clean. If you really want to help, donating these items really is the best way to help someone get out of poverty / homelessness.

I used to volunteer at a women's soup kitchen and these items were more valuable than gold.

Soap
Shampoo / conditioner
Makeup
Hairspray
Hair elastics / clips
Perfume
Toothpaste / toothbrush
Nail polish
Deoderant

...all the things you'd normally use on self before going to a job interview.

Thursday Next fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Sep 27, 2015

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Thursday Next posted:

Spot on.

Soap and shampoo / conditioner is best. Makeup is also excellent to donate. Typically, toilet paper and tampons are _generally_ taken care of by whatever shelter or public restroom they're using.

And you're right about the why - most people don't think to donate these things. Or, in some cases, people think that these are luxury items and therefore shouldn't be given out. But interestingly enough, they're the most critical. It's not possible to get a job (or even an interview) if you aren't clean. If you really want to help, donating these items really is the best way to help someone get out of poverty / homelessness.

I used to volunteer at a women's soup kitchen and these items were more valuable than gold.

Soap
Shampoo / conditioner
Makeup
Hairspray
Hair elastics / clips
Perfume
Toothpaste / toothbrush
Nail polish
Deoderant

...all the things you'd normally use on self before going to a job interview.

These things also have the good quality of being small and easy to store, and also more or less imperishable.

I don't know if every food bank needs these, though. At least not in high demand: most of the clients at the food bank I volunteer at seem to be driving good cars and looking pretty put-together. I am guessing most of them have jobs and just have troubles making ends meet, and they probably have an ample supply of things like soap. This might be different in food banks that serve the very poor.

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fuck the ROW
Aug 29, 2008

by zen death robot
my fav part of handing out thanksgiving foods to the homeless is watching them refuse vegetables ... lmbo well, there's a reason youre homeless & malnourished jabrone

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