There is Food in the House!

I had never been to the cannery before. I felt a little weird working with my R.S. President to fill out a food order. I've filled those out for other people before, but never for myself.

I couldn't remember what they had, so I just had blank menus and meal lists as well as most of the kids there to help when we did the food order. The kids had a lot of fun looking over the lists and making suggestions for meals. They also had fun listing what they needed and what missing siblings needed. Megan ordered pants, shirts, underwear, and socks for Jeffrey (to be picked up next time). We felt like we should do this, and we felt like we should involve the kids.

So because of their strange hours and because the kids wanted to be there when we picked up the food, we asked Kimberly to pick up her kids after school on Monday so we could pick up ours and go straight to the cannery after school. Well, I thought Kimberly forgot because she hadn't shown up, so we ended up taking all of our kids and four of hers. After lectures and promises to behave, we took them all in. Mostly they were good. They were a little overwhelming for that small space, but they loved helping to put things in the cart and make choices where we could.

It turned out to be good for all of the kids (Kimberly did show up about 15 minutes later to pick up her kids) to see how the church welfare program works. I had seen parts of it, but never that part.

The white van we own is horrible for picking up groceries. There is almost no back, so only the delicate and perishable items ended up back there. We ended up putting the kids in the car and then Peter and I packed the groceries around them, and in the case of the pillows, on them.

The kids actually helped unload the food, then got hungry and started eating the food. It was amazing though. I haven't had that much food in my fridge or freezer for over a year. We received beef roasts, turkey roasts, pork roasts, stew beef, hamburgers, and hot dogs. We could have had ham, but I already had some from Easter. There were fresh fruits (about 60 pounds, which seems like a lot, but they eat it all). The kids were most excited about the fruit because they're tired of canned fruit cocktail. There were also vegetables, diapers, formula, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, pillows, bread, tortillas, cans of beef stew for Megan, cheese, butter, sour cream, ice cream (which our Bishop insisted that we get), eggs, and milk. We even got lightbulbs! Several of the kids' rooms are dark because their light bulbs burned out. They're excited to be able to see agian.

It's been a different experience having a two week menu on my fridge and the food is in the house for all of the meals. It's also been strange having so much meat. We've been using canned meat, and just a little per meal.

The most amazing thing to me though has been the quality. I was expecting generic quality or worse. But it's better! Peter says it's the best sour cream. The butter and cheese are excellent. In the case of the things they don't produce, they use national brands like Huggies, Colgage, Similac, Raisin Bran,  and name brand toothbrushes and deodorant. Everything has been high quality, and very good. We've all enjoyed having "real" food in the house again.