I visit my local food pantry regularly, so I think I have some perspective.

There’s a state run mobile food pantry that makes up boxes of shelf stable foods to give out. It’s wonderful, but it’s always pretty much the same things every time-- canned corn, peas, tuna, fruit, spaghetti sauce, beans. They are clearly buying staples in bulk to give out, which makes sense for their process.

When I go to my local pantry, which gets a lot of direct donations, I can find a much wider variety of products. Canned chicken, nice soups, ravioli, artichokes, diced tomatoes, etc. It makes for a more varied and interesting diet.

Donating money is great and versatile, but donating canned goods can be valuable too.

Glade. “A small area of grass without trees in a forest.”

Another great choice is The King Henry Tapes by Richard Raley. It’s a take on HP, but the magical kid from a dysfunctional family is a juvenile delinquent with a foul mouth. One of my favorite series.

The Sword in the Stone, perhaps.

Hi, I’ve been going to my local small town food bank for almost a year. I’ll try to give you some thoughtful responses.

Are you able to get enough food, toiletries, items from your local food bank? 

I’m not sure how to answer this. Do I get enough that I won’t need to purchase additional food, etc. that month? No, I still need to shop for more. However, I get a really good amount most months and am able to eat a lot better. My local pantry gets a lot of donations from the nearby supermarket chain, and they are pretty good about supplying meat especially. I normally buy very little meat to save money, so getting it from the pantry means I get a lot more protein in my diet. I guess technically there is enough that I could eat only food from the pantry each month, but I’d be eating a lot of canned peas, corn, tuna fish, peanut butter–you get the idea. It wouldn’t be a greatly varied diet by the end of the month.

Do you have any allergies or illness that makes it harder to use a food bank? ie. they never have any gluten free bread, or everything contains too much sugar

Surprisingly, this has been pretty good. I’m on a low fat diet, and my husband is allergic to wheat, with a few other things that he doesn’t tolerate well but are okay in small amounts. I regularly find things like gluten free boxed mixes, sometimes bread or wraps, etc. Not huge amounts, but more than I expected.

Do you care about branded foods versus non branded?

No–however, sometimes the quality of generic is pretty bad, and I’d rather skip it. Think things like the generic version of Lipton dry soup packets. The name brand is pretty terrible already, the generic is just awful.

Are there items you can never find or are in very short supply at your local food bank?

Milk, fresh or powdered. Nonfat powdered milk is great for me, stores well and takes up little space. Cheese, especially nicer stuff like cheddar that works well in a lot of meals and sandwiches. Butter and/or margarine. Fruit juice. Cooking oil. Basic cooking ingredients like sugar, salt, spices. Eggs are hit or miss, sometimes there’s plenty, sometimes none. Oh! I always get a jar or two of peanut butter, but rarely jelly to go with. I always get pasta, but only regular “thick” spaghetti. That’s fine, but it would be so nice to have some thinner types. I usually get maybe one can or jar of pasta sauce, but almost never Parmesan to go with it. ETA: I forgot–frozen vegetables! Sometimes they have fresh, I always get canned, but rarely frozen and it tastes so much better than canned.

It’s a good question, and it’s sort of hard to answer, because I really never know what I’m going to get each month. The past two months have been very light, and I got only a small amount of meat and almost no dairy. I did get a 5 pound block of mozzarella, which is great, but not super versatile!

How were you referred to the food bank?

I did a web search for food banks in my area.

If you’d like, please feel free to ask me any more questions!

Do you have a brand and model you’d recommend? I’m always open to a better set up.

It’s not for everyone, but the subscription model works well for me. I don’t print a lot each month, but what I do is mostly very ink-heavy images. I was spending a lot more when I bought my own cartridges, plus I had to go to the store and hope it was in stock. Now they mail me a new cartridge when I’m running low.