Pushing Food

Last night I worked in the feeding line. I haven't done that for a long time, and we were short volunteers.

It was fabulous, hey.

The menu wasn't bad -- we added a bunch of meatballs to the canned chili (I know, I know). We made an impossibly huge bucket o' rice. Then we were told we were going to have Dick's Cheeseburgers (www.ddir.com) -- an iconic Seattle burger chain which helps many homeless agencies, including ours. Plus we had oodles of Northwest Harvest pastries, Starbucks salvage, and Food Lifeline cakes.

At 9:00 p.m. the line quickly formed, out the door and down the sidewalk. Everyone was beaming, being offered choices, encouraged to have some more, come back for seconds was a novelty. Plus the amusement of having a "priest" in the serving line (I keep telling them I'm a Free Methodist minister, but they still call me Father).

You can still tell people are stressed about being homeless. Little things become big when you are under pressure.
Anyway, at the very end of the night I got to roam around the dispatch center passing out knit hats and giving ideas about stuff to go check out.