Doing good in the city of Angels

I spent part of my Father's Day volunteering at Project Angel Food with my graduate school alumni group. Project Angel Food initially began as a service that delivered food to patients that were fighting HIV and AIDS. Now they've expanded to provide food for anyone suffering with serious illnesses like cancer.

I actually donated the proceeds of my 1993 Honda Civic to Project Angel Food. That car was auctioned off in 2007 and had one missing headlight and the other held by extra-strength packaging tape, a non-functioning hood latch, rust from severe Michigan winters, a major dent that happened during the first two weeks that I owned it, and would severely overheat when you turned on the engine after two minutes. All that being said, it auctioned of for $1000 and it all went to Project Angel Food.

Volunteers make up 80% of the work staff. You can do everything from driving meals to needy people, working in the office, or preparing meals. For our volunteer stint, we were in the kitchen.

Being an A establishment required lots of procedures. We were to wear gloves at all times. If we touched something we shouldn't, we were to wash our hands for 45 seconds and switch gloves. We also had these gnarly plastic aprons.

I started off on Team Corn Flake with three other people. With my partner, I boxed up scoops of corn flakes into plastic containers for breakfasts - the other pair did the same thing but with Cheerios. It was repetitive mindless work, which was different from my typical repetitive mindless everyday work because I was wearing gloves and a plastic apron. After we had did the cornflakes, we moved on to making breakfast bundles of one packet of plain oatmeal, a box of raisins, and string cheese. Why someone would want mozzarella cheese and oatmeal is beyond my feeble brain, but I did as instructed.

Then we got promoted to hot food prep where we reconnected with the larger group. I joined an assembly line where I was in charge of scooping Italian style green beans onto a plastic tray to join some chicken with gravy and yellow rice.

I loaded the meals onto trays and stuck them onto those large metal tray towers that they use in Top Chef. lol

Then they were sent underneath a plastic sealer contraption. The last step was to stick on identifying labels and place them into the freezer.

Good times.

If you're interested in volunteering, you can get more information here!