The Gifts That Keep on Giving

Several weeks out of the year I spend time working through my local church doing mission work at Stewpot Food Pantry.  Our job is to restock the pantry, prepare plastic shopping bags for distribution, repackage dry items that comes in bulk, and distribute food bags to the needy that come through the door.  The bags are filled with your typical food items such as can goods, flour, sugar, corn meal, rice, beans, cereal, and peanut butter when it is available. 

Other items are also given out when they are received.  We've handled huge sacks of onions, potatoes, and tomatoes.  Bread and crackers are always in limited supply.  The area Pizza Huts are very good about sending their leftovers from the previous day.  This past holiday season frozen turkeys were distributed that had been collected in an annual turkey drive.

There is a chest type freezer that I refer to as the mystery of the day freezer, because you never know what you will find in it.  There has been frozen chicken from a local processing plant, even deer meat from local hunters.

On this particular day, the Pantry supervisor, Mr. Charles opens up the freezer, pauses, and says "oh my".  I say "what's up"?  Mr. Charles says: "there's a frozen hog head in here!  Folks around here don't eat stuff like that.  You want it?"

I scratch my head, make a phone call, and then say "yep! Got the perfect taker for it, my Dad!"

My Dad took that frozen hog head, and along with some other items he gets and makes the best Brunswick Stew you have ever tasted.  He then jars it up and distributes it to folks in his community that are on social security.