{"id":6979,"date":"2022-02-28T09:48:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T14:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=6979"},"modified":"2025-08-24T10:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T14:35:10","slug":"helping-hands-and-takeout-boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2022\/02\/28\/helping-hands-and-takeout-boxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping Hands and Takeout Boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After opening Martha and Mary\u2019s Kitchen\u2019s doors, the volunteers saw folding tables piled high with various foods. There were baked goods on one table, vegetables on another and fruits on a third. Additionally, there were multiple fridges stuffed with various cold goods. These would be the paints used to color the takeout boxes of patrons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Food insecurity is a long-running issue in Maine. According to Feeding America\u2019s 2019 data, Aroostook County had a food insecurity rate of 16 percent. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have increased these rates. Feeding America\u2019s 2021 projections show a 0.6 percent increase of food insecurity in Aroostook County. The State of Maine as a whole ranked sixth overall in highest rates of low food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity by the quality and variety of food eaten. Very low food security is the frequency of skipped meals. Local food banks and soup kitchens are integral to serving these community needs. They\u2019re also reliant on volunteers for daily operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tables of donated foods for soup kitchen patrons.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Brightly colored wall posters detailed all procedures a volunteer would need to know. Everything from set up to clean up was in bold marker. The most important details circled and underlined. One requirement that often appeared was the meal serving time, marked as 3 p.m. The time was 12:30 p.m. Two and a half hours to make a well-rounded hot meal for roughly 70 people. Part of daily procedures was to tally every person served. This information is then used to determine how much food to make on future days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two of the volunteers are Anne and Jeff Hemphill, long-term helpers. \u201cI met Cindy Patton in the hospital when I was visiting a relative. She talked about her work there. I said a friend of mine also volunteered. Cindy said that my friend\u2019s group could use extra help if I was interested. I\u2019ve been volunteering once a month since this conversation six years ago,\u201d Anne said. Jeff, Anne\u2019s husband, said he started volunteering because his wife went. But his motivations quickly changed. \u201cI was friends with the other people helping there, so it didn\u2019t feel like work. It\u2019s also a way to give back to the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While Jeff took the lead in the kitchen to cook the hot meal, Anne picked through boxes of fruit in the front room. Volunteers running the kitchen rotate in groups and each group has one food item they usually include on their menu. The staple of Anne\u2019s group? Fruit salad. \u201cI always try to make a fruit salad because it rounds out the meal. We also always run out of it, so it must be popular,\u201d she said after pulling a bundle of bananas from a box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the time reached 3 p.m., the front door opened and patrons began picking produce to take home and line up for hot meal takeout. Usually, patrons would pick from boxes of donated produce and get a sit-down hot meal. Changes had to be made to continue to safely serve the community during a pandemic. This changed all hot meals to takeout and a rearrangement to donated food to put more space between patrons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re out of chicken and potatoes,\u201d Jeff said in response to another volunteer bringing new takeout trays to fill. More people than expected showed up and backup frozen meals filled in the gap.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Come 5 p.m., the end of serving time, the book total was 104. That means 104 more people got a hot meal and fresh food where they might not have otherwise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After opening Martha and Mary\u2019s Kitchen\u2019s doors, the volunteers saw folding tables piled high with various foods. There were baked goods on one table, vegetables on another and fruits on a third. Additionally, there were multiple fridges stuffed with various cold goods. These would be the paints used to color the takeout boxes of patrons.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8202,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions\/8202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}