A couple of food bank questions

[Champagneforeveryone]

Treading carefully having had my arse handed to me on a previous food bank thread, but here goes....

DH has bought home a reverse advent calendar from church. All well and good, we donate a package at Christmas anyway and I assumed this would be things that were specifically needed.

Now I'm aware these are suggestions and I can deviate away from it, but the list includes such random items as salad cream, fish paste, tinned tomatoes and tinned vegetables. I know literally nobody who eats tinned veg or fish paste, tinned tomatoes are a decent staple but need a lot of extra gubbins to cook with, and there's surely a limit to the amount of salad cream one food bank can stockpile. I have visions of the volunteers desperately slipping bottles of salad cream into the bags of every visitor every single time they attend.

So is this representative of what food banks actually give out, or a list compiled by a well meaning but clueless church person? There was no mention of toiletries (including sanitary protection) packet noodles, pasta sauce etc which just seemed odd.

Secondly, while I blatantly ignored the missive to buy fish paste was shopping, I started to wonder which is the best option. For example one of the items was biscuits.
There is a huge range of biscuits and I couldn't really decide whether I should buy 6 packs of the economy ones, or two packs of nicer ones. I didn't consider one pack of the premium range as I don't usually buy them myself.

On the one hand, I feel bad buying cheaper quality than I buy myself, almost as if I'm suggesting you don't deserve nice things if you use a food bank. OTOH, 6 families could have had a packet of biscuits rather than the 2 who will benefit from my choice. I just think that if I was so desperate that I was relying on a food bank, then a nice packet of biscuits is possibly the only treat I might get. If you donate, what do you do?

Once you start considering these things, the whole thing becomes a minefield 😆

That was re sanitary towels.

Tinned veg is good as they store well

Every year there is mention of a reverse Advent calendar. Brilliant but don’t leave it until 1st December. Consider when the food bank is open in the run up to Xmas. We always have Xmas goodies which can’t be given out until New Year. Which is ok, but not quite the idea. If I were a client, I would prefer to have stuff a week before Xmas so I was sure what I didn’t need to buy.

Fresh veg goes off and they won’t have storage for frozen food so that’s why it’s tinned. I helped set up a food bank a long time ago, almost 15 years ago. Many well meaning people think people should eat say for instance lentils and they are cheap but the cost in energy to cook has to be considered and not everyone has a slow cooker. Unfortunately being poor takes away something that ultimately can save money and that is choice.

If they have asked for specific things they must need just because you personally won't use it someone else might ie foreigners vegetarians etc

This! We do a shop specifically for 24 things for a reverse advent calendar at the start of Dec. Then there's plenty of time for them to be distributed before Christmas.

Another thing to consider is donating actual advent calendars now. So that people can have them for their children by 1st Dec.

Our foodbank is already saying no more mince pies/Christmas puds etc as they have more than they know they'll be able to distribute.

I'd check with your local bank what tgey need and how/when they'd like to receive it.

Fish paste is quite old fashioned but a very good store cupboard staple for sandwiches and easy to use so I can see why it is wanted, it also doesn't take up a lot of cupboard space

Sauces are really useful to add flavour and many people have one particular sauce they put on everything to help with difficult eating issues, so I expect things like salad cream are more in demand than you think. You could also donate hot sauce or ketchup, as again, some people use it to mask flavours and texture so they can tolerate a wider variety of foods.

We are running a Christmas collection in work. I am in charge of sorting out donations into boxes so people just leave their bags of stuff on the table in the designated room. Now I am not the foodbank police and am grateful for any donation but....a reasonably wealthy colleague obviously cleared his cupboards of any old shit. His donations were 4 out of date items( one 2019), one opened jar of coffee, one little bottle of truffle oil and one tiny jar of banana chutney. And yes. I do know which colleague it was.
I'm not sure what the correct course of action is. Confront or ignore?

Are you doing a secret Santa? I'd be tempted to gift it to that particular colleague.

This has all been such good advice and I'm left with a new found sense of respect for fish paste 😉

I also hasn't considered tinned potatoes as coming under the heading of tinned veg and I can see how people might find them useful.

If I'm honest we usually buy selection boxes or tubes of smarties etc and donate at the beginning of December. We started when DS was little as he could understand so much better the concept of donating when chocolate was involved! He's away at uni now so we've decided to follow the church appeal instead for the first time. Despite their odd take on donations they have asked for all Christmas items to be donated by a date in early December so at least they should make it out by Christmas.

Also thank you to the poster who works at a food bank who says they prefer cheaper biscuits to branded. I'm sure somebody else could shortly come along and say that it's nice to have a better quality option, but it's helpful to know the reality behind it.

YABU. Fish paste on toast is THE BOMB.

Salad cream/Mayo can be used in pasta salad or tuna Mayo. It also tastes a bit like sandwich spread from years ago.

Fish paste- I would get the tuna one.

Tinned veg- loads of people eat tinned peas and carrots. Potatoes too.

What is the alcohol policy? I have a good quantity of Prosecco (not random home-made potato-skin gin!) which we don’t drink and I’m sure it would appreciate a good home, but obviously I’m aware that it might be a problematic donation.

We wouldn’t accept it, thigh. Even alcoholic chocs are problematic.

I eat fish paste and tinned veg! Tinned is quick and easy, doesn't spoil, doesn't need much storage space.

@dementedma I would try and shame the colleague anonymously
are you sending round an email to remind people to donate?
eg
many thanks for those who have donated really thoughtful and generous donations
in case any one was wondering, out of date and opened items are not acceptable

I got so fed up of second guessing myself re biscuits (I think I would be glad for some nice ones if everything was a bit shit, but also I would prefer biscuits to no biscuits - the dilemma) that I stopped pissing about with it altogether and set up a monthly standing order so they can just buy whatever they're short of. My local one uses some of their cash to top up with fresh fruit and veg too which is nice.

I have the reverse advent calendar from our food bank, no salad cream, but they do asked for tinned veg (it stores) tinned fish, tinned ham, tinned pies, and tinned tomatoes of course which I personally use 2-3 times a week.

Other useful things are mixed herbs, stock cubes. Ours is asking for basic toiletries including San pro

Often they are over run with pasta and pasta sauce so that might be the reason.

Ive been without income quite a few times in recent years and had to use a foodbank. Since then i always keep a pantry that includes:

Tinned tomato soup
Beans
Pasta
Lemon juice
Garlic powder
Curry powder
Tinned: peas, carrots, chickpeas, kidney beans, mushrooms, sweetcorn.
Olives,
Sachets of cheese sauce
Oats
Rice, lots of rice
Coconut milk
Loads of stock cubes
Chilli flakes, lots
Tomatoe puree
Oil
Tins of mandarin pinapple and peaches
Jam
Marmite
Tuna/sardines

I'm in a fortunate position where i can afford our weekly shop of £50-60 now but every shop i buy a couple of extra packets and tins to keep pantry stocked up.
With all of that in there i can make sure the kids get some protein, carbs and 5 a day. I wont ever not do this as long as i can afford to. And always drop something, even if its just a tin in the collection point.

When i was reliant on food banks i remember being utterly desparate for washing powder/bleach and washing up liquid. Its never there. I ended up doing a wash with grated bar soap. I hated it.

Oh and running out of bin bags and toilet paper was really awful.

I didnt mind that they were the cheapest brands most of it. I do think the cleaning stuff would have really brightened my day. I got a high quality blackcurrant jam one time and surprised myself with how happy it made me ha. Hope this helps.

Thats brilliant, im going to donate a couple of advent calanders.

I volunteer at a food bank, tinned meat, fish, veg etc is always popular. Many people have limited access to facilities to cook or store food, so a loaf of bread and tins of beans, tuna etc are always well received.
The fish paste & salad cream is a tad more 'niche' but it's worth considering that many food bank users are the elderly so while these sort of foods are a little old fashioned to most people, they are very popular with older food bank users.

On a separate note, if anyone is able to, please donate chocolate advent calendars to your local food bank asap. Most will be hoping to distribute these to families by the end of the month.

Oh pesto is a fabulous cheap donation too. Can be used to add flavour to loads of stuff and keeps for ages/takes hardly any cooking x

Practically, how does a reverse advent calendar work?
I'm not going to go to the shops every day to buy one item, nor am I going to make a trip to the food bank every day. So do I buy 24 items on 1st December and then just move one item between bags/boxes in my house every day then take them to the foodbank on Christmas Eve?

In terms of tinned veg, I often donate tinned ratatouille and red pesto. Makes a great chunky sauce for pasta, or even on toast.

Tinned new potatoes are great, I often slice and saute them to use in am omelette. Again, very cheap and easy and quick to cook if you have the facilities to do so

Not that it is in any way my business what people donate, but every year the food bank here ends up with more advent calendars than they could possibly know what to do with, and they're clearly not the best thing to have too many of. They often seem to get large donations of them direct from manufacturers too.

I do think there is a danger in jumping on the fun/seasonal things, or things like sanitary protection where there is some sort of movement to increase donations of them.

I know - particularly when you're trying to teach more fortunate children about the fact that people need to use food banks - it doesn't seem such a close connection. However, it really is safest to ask your local food bank exactly what would be most useful to them at the exact time you are going to donate, or to just donate money.