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Feast from the Heart 'Tis the season to be benevolent, and many of us traditionally take time out from our busy holiday schedules to donate time, money, food and gifts to those less fortunate. A number of area restaurants, caterers and food companies also join the good cheer by hosting a holiday meal for groups of folks not usually seen on their customer lists. This year, however, the North Texas Food Bank has initiated a novel way for these food preparers to nourish the hungry not only during the holiday season, but all year long. A new program called the Dallas Hunger Link will connect food providers who have surplus prepared food with charitable programs serving hot meals, such as emergency shelters, the First Presbyterian Church Stew Pot and Meals on Wheels. Operations like hotels, restaurants, caterers, corporate dining rooms, produce markets, bakeries and hospitals that find they have extra food can contact the North Texas Food Bank, which will provide containers for the food, pick it up and deliver it to organizations in need. "The only cost to donors is the time it takes to put the food in our pans," says program coordinator Reggie Regrut. The program already has taken hold, with meals from early restaurant donors like Grandy's, Lawry's The Prime Rib, Old San Francisco Steak House and Spaghetti Warehouse appearing on shelter tables around town. The Hunger Link officially was kicked off recently with two hearty elegant dinners prepared by the Actuelle restaurant staff and served by waiters to residents of the Downtown Dallas Family Shelter and the Family Place, a shelter for battered women and children. Actuelle chef Victor Gielisse developed the menu for the dinners keeping in mind that the food needed to appeal to a wide range of ages, including young children, and needed to be filling and nutritious. His choices, while simple enough to be made at home, nevertheless looked elegant and made his guests feel special. As Downtown Dallas Family Shelter resident Annette Smith put it, "On a scale of one to five, this was a seven." The food was especially appreciated at the Family Shelter, where the weekend cook had suddenly quit and residents had been eating nothing but bologna sandwiches for two days until the Actuelle crew arrived with dinner. Residents were first served a hearty, high-protein lima bean and black-eyed pea soup that included diced smoked ham and sliced sausage. That was followed by crispy pecan-crusted chicken breasts with a honey-sesame sauce, salad with basil vinaigrette dressing, a tomato chutney as a side relish and golden brown potato pancakes. Dessert was a sumptuous praline chocolate bread pudding. Gielisse hopes to convince fellow chefs to follow his lead in donating dinners to emergency programs around town. "I see those kids in the shelters, and I think of my own 4-year-old daughter and I have to help," Gielisse explains. Hunger Link coordinators also are hoping publicity about Hunger Link will encourage restaurants to participate. "Maybe 10 percent of the restaurants in town know the program exists. Like every other program, we've started small [but] we'll get bigger," says Regrut. The Hunger Link program was devised because, as the Food Bank's executive director Lorianne Palmer explained, "We know that establishments throw out plenty of good, prepared food every day, but they don't like to admit it because they think leflovers sounds like inefficient management." Those leftovers could be a boon to programs that serve hot meals to the poor. It's often a struggle to both maintain food supplies and to provide residents with balanced, nutritious, meals. For instance, at the Dallas Life Foundation, residents do all the cooking for the 1,000 meals a day that are served. Breakfast is usually coffee and a roll or pastry; occasionally residents get oatmeal or scrambled eggs. Lunch is hot soup and a cheese or bologna sandwich, and dinner, the one hot meal of the day, is commonly chicken, corn and bread. Encouraged by the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless, the Food Bank began planning the Hunger Link more than a year ago. "I researched similar programs around the country," says Food Bank assistant director Marcie Feinglas. "We began raising money, starting with [philanthropist] Bill Barrett, who gave us $20,000 to apply toward a delivery vehicle as soon as he·heard about the program. In October, we received a check from the Hillcrest Foundation that put us over the top." The Hunger Link program is sorely needed because food donations are down drastically. "There were years when we'd get 30 percent more food than the year before, and now it's about 4 percent," noted Feinglas as she pointed out half-empty warehouse shelves during a pre-Thanksgiving tour of the Food Bank. Apparently, last summer's drought, tighter budgets resulting from corporate takeovers, and general economic woes have taken a toll on benevolence. Concurrently, hunger is growing more rapidly among a larger number of families than at any time since the Depression, according to national statistics. Nationally, the median age of those without homes was 51 in 1969; 20 years later, that age has dropped to 31, reflecting the growth of the number of children in poverty. It's estimated that one-third of Texas' poor are children. "Fifty percent of our clients are single parents with children," notes Lee Herron of Metrocrest Service Center. "Half of the people needing help are underemployed or in some kind of financial crisis. People who live where I do in North Carrollton have come in for services, and they're in shock -- a lot of them had [believed] that poverty doesn't exist in our community, and now they've had to face it themselves. It's a double whammy for them." Indeed, when the Greater Dallas Community of Churches surveyed six area emergency aid centers this summer, they found a 76 percent jump in the number of families served since 1986. "Many of these folks are employed," says GDCC's John Stoesz. "They have a place to stay; they're not street people. Many seek food assistance because of emergency medical need. [When you're on a] tight budget, even a small medical bill is insurmountable." Many of those in need rely on emergency aid and shelters to sustain them. In turn, food assistance programs, shelters and pantries like the North Texas Food Bank depend on year-end donations to help fill their storerooms and coffers. Unfortunately, hunger doesn't vanish after Christmas. Holiday stockpiles are depleted within months at many area shelters. The good news, reports the Food Bank's manager of volunteer resources Steve McPherson, is that "while overall donations are down, canned food drive donations are up this year. November drives by the Boy Scouts and Tom Thumb collected more than 300,000 cans." Dallas-area fire stations began after Thanksgiving, and Minyard stores will collect through Christmas Eve.
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What you can do to help the hungry: |
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the Hunger Link in times of extra quantity. |