Reading the Ingredients

           

            When I arrived at the food bank on Wednesday, June 15^th, there was a garbage truck in front of the driveway, emptying the food bank’s bins that had been rolled out to the curb. At one point the driver was holding a golf club, and at first I thought that it was something he’d just found, but when I saw him climb up the back of the truck to dislodge something, I realized that he must carry it around in the truck just for that purpose. Someone passing by said to him, “Good day for golfing!”

            The woman who stood two people ahead of me in the bright white and red Canada baseball cap was doing some knitting as she stood chatting with the woman with the mid-sized poodle.

            The man with the sore back who can’t speak English stepped in behind me and asked me a one-word question that sounded like “Lost?” I assume he meant, “Is this the line-up?” When I repeated “Lost”? he told me, “No speak English!” I asked what language he spoke and he told me it was Polish. When I looked it up later, none of the Polish words for line-up sound anything like the word that he’d used.

            Surprisingly and pleasantly, there weren’t as many people smoking in the line-up as usual. But when I came back at 12:30, the smokers were so evenly distributed that I couldn’t find a smoke-free part of the driveway.

            For some reason this week they let in more than five people at a time and so it was crowded and hectic in the waiting area. I had to sit sideways to keep my feet from getting run over by some people’s two-wheeled shopping carts.

            I got the nervous shopping helper for the first time in a while.
            On the top shelf there was a choice between a jar of pickled tomatoes, a package of lemonade mix and a can of olive oil spray. I was interested in the lemonade but I made sure I read the ingredients this time. The lemonade mix contained stevia extract, which is a sugar substitute, all of which give me a headache, so I took more of the olive oil.

            On the next shelf down were three items: Triscuits, Bugles and a box of gum candy. I didn’t know it was gum candy at first and was looking at the box when she nervously directed me to choose only between the other two. I’ve had enough Triscuits for a while, so I went for the Bugles.

            Below that was a choice between granola bars, some kind of candy and the above gum candy. I took the granola bars.

            On the next set of shelves there was still lots of pasta, rice and tomato sauce, but I still don’t need any of that.

            The next set of shelves just had a few cans of vegetables, but I find that canned vegetables taste very little like the fresh versions. There was a lone can of peas though and, in terms of flavour, canning doesn’t have as much of a negative effect on peas and beans, so I took the peas.

            The set of shelves that usually has the protein didn’t have any beans at all, but there were a few cans of tuna, and I got two of them.

            There was finally something other than breakfast candy in the cereal section where I got a box of Shreddies.

            Sue wasn’t handling the refrigerated food this time, but was now one of the shopping helpers for the main shelves. The woman replacing her had two single serve containers of Oikos raspberry and chocolate yogourt. The flavoured yogourt at the food bank is often artificially sweetened, so once again, I checked, and yay, it was okay! In that section there was also a plastic bag containing five small eggs and a package of frozen sliced Black Forest ham.

            From the bread section I just took a bag of six whole-wheat English muffins.

            From the vegetable lady I got a little bit of everything she had, including a head of leaf lettuce, three stewing tomatoes, three apples, three potatoes, one big onion and two English cucumbers, which she thought were zucchini.