Food banks providing turkeys, ham for holiday meals

Timmins food banks are once again providing a little extra in hopes financially struggling families can still celebrate the holidays, serving turkey or ham at Christmas.

“South Porcupine Food Bank is trying to focus on Christmas turkeys that will also come with stuffing, cranberry sauce and turkey gravy,” said Peter Davis, treasurer for the South Porcupine Food Bank.

“For families, we have very large turkeys. We have up to 20-pound turkeys. For singles and small families, if they don’t want a large turkey, we also have the boneless turkey breast in a box which then is fairly simple for people that might just have a small oven or a microwave that they can still do something without having to worry about a whole turkey to roast.”

Along with turkeys and hams, clients will be also offered other items like milk, margarine, bread, other frozen meats, hygiene products, can goods, apples, onions and potatoes.

If it’s a family, Davis said they will receive a whole bag of potatoes.

The South Porcupine Food Bank started to give out these items to families in need on Nov. 24.

“The reason we started giving them out early is because clients can visit our food banks once every 28 days.

“So, Nov. 24 was basically 28 days before the week of Christmas. We will be giving out these same kinds of items until Dec. 22.”

Meanwhile, Rick Young, chairman of the Timmins Food Bank, said they are similarly following the same practice, providing turkey and ham to their clients in Timmins for the lead-up to Christmas.

Davis said he is thankful to charitable initiatives and various food drives that have been held recently to help the food bank in making sure no one goes hungry this Christmas.

“This year has been one of those years, of course, where there have been challenges for everything including food drives so, probably we have received around 16,000 to 20,000 less pounds (of donated food) this year compared to last year. However, monetary donations have been up significantly so, we have been buying a lot more food than we ever have to make up the difference.”