West Somerset Food Cupboard Newsletter, November 2022

Dear friends and supporters of the West Somerset Food Cupboard

Wow! Harvest has been a really abundant time this year and we are so grateful to all the churches and schools who have shared their harvest collections with us. You have stocked up our cupboards and assured us that we can continue to meet rising demand for food parcels. Thank you!

And thank you to the Rotary Club of Minehead who collect food for us every month and who recently invited us to come and tell them more about what we do and how we do it. They are committed to helping us make sure that no-one in this community goes hungry, by continuing to donate and sharing information about what we do.

Throughout October, 111 Emergency Food parcels were distributed across the local community, mostly by local support agencies and sometimes by the Food Cupboard team, depending on the circumstances; the total so far this year is 976. As always, we want to make sure that those who find themselves struggling to make ends meet at this difficult time feel no shame about asking for help and know exactly how to find us. Like our Rotary friends, we’d love you to help us join the dots by passing on our contact details. 

We are preparing for Christmas now and would love everyone to be able to enjoy some Christmas treats. Throughout November only, we will be collecting Christmas food items, so we’d be very grateful if you can help with this. They will be distributed in early December, so we’ll be back to normal food requests by then. 

The Local Pantry is as busy as ever and, as well as supplies delivered by surplus food charity Fareshare, has received wonderfully generous donations of locally grown produce. Of course, apples have been the order of the day recently and we’ve been sharing recipes to make best use of them. And Linda’s been inspiring us with her cooking ideas once again – this time with root vegetable pies. There’s no room for the recipe here but you can find it on our Facebook page 😊. If you have surplus home grown produce that you could spare for the Local Pantry please note that we can only receive it early on Tuesday mornings, ready for distribution on Tuesday afternoons. We are unable to store it for the rest of the week. We hope you understand.

Any non-perishable food items are gratefully received. This month we would really appreciate:

Christmas Food

• Christmas puddings
• Christmas cakes
• Christmas biscuits
• Mince pies
• Sweet & savoury biscuits
• Christmas chocolates/sweets
• Small jars of pickles
• Stuffing/gravy/sauces

And

• Small jars coffee
• Small bottles squash

From Ali, Mike and the West Somerset Food Cupboard team