Sevan arrived at St Mary's Church and met the regular volunteers who were having a chat in the sun, waiting for the second delivery van to arrive.

"Looks like one of your lot is working in the garden. Red t-shirt with white writing on the front" - Graham

Sevan went to take a look at who the gardener was, which is a story for later...

Soon the familiar DHL van rolled up and everyone sprang into action, ferrying crates and boxes of food to the church building. There were a few cardboard casualties en-route, but all of the food made it to be sorted through and put on display. Sevan was joined by Iram at her first task, with them both helping the regulars in identifying and stacking salad leaves and herbs. Iram tried hard to make the biggest stable pile of cos lettuce packs and to separate flat leaf parsley from coriander. Well, new GoodGymers need to earn their stripes. Welcome Iram 🎉👏🥳! Great work and we look forward to seeing you at another task soon.

Today's delivery had few ready meals and was relatively meat free, with cocktail sausages and 2 giant pizzas being the main items for carnivores in the fridges. The pizzas were so big that they and their packaging ended up being cut into smaller pieces with a bread knife to be shared between the clients 🔪. Other than the pizza, the most unusual item today was a box of tiny, super concentrated limes that most of the volunteers had decided to test out in the line of duty to their clients 🤢.

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.

Today, I participated in a community activity that takes place every Monday at the South Ealing Community Food Cupboard. This project aims to reduce food waste and carbon emissions by redistributing surplus food to members of the community.

During this activity, we received surplus food from supermarkets (such as the Felix Project) and local market traders. We then sorted and organized the food in a way that was suitable for distribution to those in need.

A large number of people visited today, and it was heartwarming to see the gratitude and joy on their faces as they received the food.

This type of volunteer work brings me happiness and satisfaction, helping me build good relationships within the local community. It also gives me the opportunity to contribute to reducing waste and making a positive impact.

I always believe that: To be happier, you must make others happy by helping them.

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 😋.

Today's first delivery to the Community Food Cupboard at St Mary's Church arrived just after 8 am, so the GoodGymers missed it. Kash and Martin showed up at 10:30 despite the feeling that the Christmas break did to people's biological clocks more damage than the Daylight Saving change to the Winter Time. Was it really 10:30? Was it even Monday? Luckily, the second van arrived just in time for the volunteers waiting for the unloading session.

Among the ready meals and pastries, there was an abundance of chicken teriyaki dishes, pies and sausage rolls to unpack from the van. There were prawns that used to be frozen but now thawed. There were seven boxes of commercial-size packs of chicken breasts - sadly, those had to go back to the van as the church didn't have facilities to safely and hygienically portion the meat into smaller parcels. There was a cardboard box labelled Houses of Parliament, which collapsed when more cartons were stacked on top of it - such an ominous sign! Finally, there were vegetables, including copious amounts of tomatoes.

It was the five crates of cherry tomatoes and baby plum tomatoes that kept Martin and Kash at the church until noon. After unpacking the van fairly quickly, the GoodGymers were recruited to split the tomato crates into smaller portions and bag them. Whether there were ten thousand tomatoes, they couldn't tell, but there were loads! Enough to have longer chats about running, swimming, cycling and plans for after Christmas Eve. Wait... New Year's Eve! Ah, those festive time lapses again!

With not many people queuing for the food distribution outside the church today, Martin and Kash were spared sorting the last two crates - two or three thousand tomatoes? The surplus was destined to be shipped further - to Salvation Army at Leeland Road - exactly where Kash was heading later today to volunteer at the Soup Kitchen!

After completing the task, the volunteers were welcome to help themselves to tomatoes and other particularly abundant foods to reduce waste. Martin headed off with other volunteers for a coffee, and Kash said she was off for dinner. Wait, dinner? Wasn't that lunchtime? Ah, those festive time lapses!

With several of the regular volunteers having already headed off for Christmas, the team at South Ealing Community Food Cupboard were extra grateful to have four GoodGymers helping out today.

The delivery van turned up on time which meant that Lena, Martin, Mohamed and Alan quickly got to work unloading and unpacking.

Lots of fresh vegetables this week and although Brussels sprouts were notably absent, there were plenty of carrots - including some of the thickest ones we'd ever seen and some of the strangest shapes. Perfect for the finishing touches to a snowman, if Santa can get the weather sorted.