Exactly How Fresh Are Those Eggs?

You never, ever know what the next phone call will bring to Loaves & Fishes.  Yesterday morning Bill, one of our long-term volunteer pantry coordinators, called the office with a unique problem.  He said a woman had come into the pantry wanting to donate fresh eggs.  Not a daily occurrence, but not that unusual.  But she had arrived in a pick-up truck full of live chickens!  Bill wanted me to tell him what to do!  Well, after a few moments of fumbling around, I said, “Bill, I think you must tell her that we just can’t accept donations of live poultry.”  I suspected that I was the target of an April Fool’s prank, a few days late.  And sure enough, staff members had put Bill up to the fictitious phone call.  I have a (well-deserved) reputation as a prank caller myself.  I occasionally call the office with donations of interesting and unusual food – 40,000 pounds of ripe apricots, fresh road-kill, etc. – just to see how the staff will react.  So it was payback time.

However, last week we received a donation of 29,000 pounds of chicken that was anything but a prank.  Tyson Foods brought 16 pallets of chicken to our warehouse on Wednesday morning.  We knew the donation was coming, but didn’t know the specifics.  When we unloaded it and open the first box we were overjoyed to find skinless, boneless chicken breasts, packaged three to a tray!  It is a perfect donation – solid protein, packaged exactly right for an average family, and looking like it had just been purchased at the neighborhood grocery store.  I couldn’t have been more excited if the cases were full of gold – and in a way they were.  Golden chicken to make wholesome and healthy meals for more than 45,000 hungry folks!

You just never know what the next phone call will bring to Loaves & Fishes.