Volunteering at God’s Love We Deliver

One of the things I enjoy about living in New York is that there are plenty of opportunities to volunteer with some amazing organizations.  Somehow, though, I’d never really put that energy into food-related projects.  When I joined a new company, I found out that one of my new colleagues manages a monthly volunteer activity for a meal prep non-profit.  Finally, I thought, I could put my culinary interest to some good use.  

 

I signed up to help out at one of these that serves food to those who cannot feed themselves due to severe and debilitating illness. Many corporations put together one-off or regular sessions with God’s Love We Deliver, based in Soho.  Our regular shift for few hours one Sunday afternoon a month help to make sure that the raw ingredients of what goes into many meals are ready for the cooks that the organization employs.  The volunteers don’t usually do any of the actual cooking, but here are some of the fruits of our labors on our recent visit:

Chopping away at the Carrots

 

A Large Tub of Celery

Most of what we do is chop, peel, chop, and chop some more. If you ever wondered what industrial-sized, 50-pound bags of carrots looked like when they are cut up, here it is:

A Big Pile of Carrots

More Chopped Carrots

 

There is a certain rhythm to the chopping and a nice rapport that develops with our fellow prep cooks. We chop, we chat, we tell stories, we get to listen to 80’s tunes I haven’t heard in years via the radio that always seems to be blaring, no other volume allowed. Having viewed others’ techniques, I’ve decided that, while my knife skills could use some work, I am definitely not at the bottom of the ladder in that department.

 

On this occasion, after carrots, as you can see, we had celery.  Another group was doing onions, lots of onions.  My guess was that we were creating the vegetable base for making soup, as we were dicing everything.  After that came peppers (see below). 

   

 

The peppers were by far the easiest of the food items we got to cut up that day.  I think that there was a general group consensus that we need to do more peppers and fewer root vegetables (last time we’d had turnips).  Not that we get our pick of what to prep mind you; the ingredients are pre-allocated to use depending upon what they need on any given day to make the meals that they will be distributing.

 

We all left the kitchen feeling as though maybe we’d helped out just a little bit with working to keep others fed.  It might not have seemed like much at the time, but the on-site supervisor assured us that our efforts really do have a big impact on the ability of the organization to continue to do their mission.  It’s definitely fulfilling to see how many tubs of prepared produce we managed to fill up with our handiwork!

 

Buon appetito!