Mexikid Stories by Pedro Martin for February 04, 2020

At the weekly food bank they tend to have items close to expiration, or fruits & veggies that didn’t make the cut for supermarket bins. I got one of those huge cheese blocks some time ago, but it was still good.

I once picked up an excellent cauliflower from a post-harvest field near Salinas, and carried it home on my bike. I was riding for exercise, not food, and not poor, just opportunistic.

I, too, have used thickly sliced cheddar as bread.

That yellow commodity cheese made the best enchiladas! I hated the peanut butter.

for my family it was usually corn, apples and grapes we liberated from neighbouring fields. never used a food bank or got supplies from the government, but lots of last day of sale, damaged/bruised fruit, discoloured meat etc., plus we had our own chickens and rabbits and huge garden.

Costco has separate padlocked dumpsters for the “expired” food. One even has a security detail at night to stop hungry people from cutting the locks.

When I was a kid in the early 70s, my family got the aid. 5 pound bricks of cheese and powdered milk. The cheese was good but the milk was so-so. It was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

I don’t know if we got surplus cheese often it was good. Does remind me Velveeta cheese was a standard as a kid. So was fried spam. I live out in the country in the central coast area and ride my bike by the fields and picked up a dropped celery of the like. My mom liked to stop at the produce stand when the family was in Vacaville. My Ewww was squash and eggplant. We had it all summer.

Don’t forget also the powdered eggs that we used to get.