South Ealing Community Food Cupboard were flooded with mysterious brown bags this morning and the big challenge was where to put them all. They had big numbers printed on them, which weren't helpful, then smaller text showing how many people they'd feed. They were undelivered Hello Fresh meal kits, perfect for those who could turn them into something tasty at home.

Mehmet was already hard at work stacking crates onto trolleys when Martin and Sevan arrived. The delivery van was smaller than normal and that meant less food on the Food Cupboard shelves too. Still, everything needed to be moved and the brown bags were loaded, along with a lot of broccoli, sausages and Wasabi ready meals and shuttled to the church building.

There was plenty of chilled food to organise in the limited fridge space, which Martin did his best to solve by playing Wasabi tetris.

"There's no room at the inn" - Martin

Mehmet and Sevan were kept busy with the meal kits. They separated the 2, 3 and 4 person bags to be placed on different shelves, making them easy for the clients to collect.

There were rumours of a second coming of the delivery van, so Martin and Sevan hung around on the off chance that it would. When there was no sign of it by midday, it was time to wrap up.

There was already a big queue of people outside South Ealing Community Food Cupboard at 10:30am, 2 and a half hours before the doors opened to the public. Going inside, Sevan found that one of the regular clients had made banana bread, which was being shared around the volunteers, including Martin, Eliz and Sevan. The banana bread was a vision of what was to come.

When the delivery van arrived, Sevan was in the sun, carting crates of food to the church building and handing them over to Martin, who'd find the right spot to place them to be unpacked later. Eliz was busy organising the food donations, especially trying to stack the fridges in a sensible way to make everything fit and still have the food be easily accessible.

The shelves and fridges were stacked speedily and ready for service by 11:30. There were big deliveries of bananas, bread and mushrooms for the clients to help themselves to and banana bread is probably on the menu again for the volunteers next week 😋.