I woke up this morning and looked out all the windows as I always do to see how things changed over night (two neighbours gone, one added). I then noticed two bulging bags on my picnic table with a piece of paper flapping in the breeze.
The note said: “We go back to Holland today. Maybe you can use these.”
The bags contained:
- a 3lb sac of onions
- a garlic clove
- a bottle of olive oil
- two bottles of salad dressing (unopened)
- a bottle of ketchup
- salt and pepper shakers (filled)
- a bag of sugar
- starter briquettes for a grill (which I was going to go pick up today!)
- two large bottles of dish washing detergent
- a small box of laundry detergent
The bags rested on two badminton rackets and a birdie.
I can definitely use all of the bag contents and I’ll be able to pass on the rackets to a family with children at some point down the road (or even keep them; I like badminton!).
Hmm… all that garlic and onions and olive oil makes me think that I’m due to cook up a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, LOL!
I wouldn’t have taken in just any sort of food from strangers, but none of this stuff has an ‘ick’ factor and it sure would be a shame to throw out perfectly good food!
What a nice thing to do for a stranger! Too bad they did not leave an email address so you could thank them and ask how they enjoyed Canada.
What I find sad is that some people I know would have turned their nose up at these things, especially the food, and just thrown them out.
When we left Mexico in April we divided up all the produce and meat that we knew we could not take into the USA and gave it, along with a couple of bottles of cervesa, to the two security guys at the Pemex station we were boondocking in. It made up two very large bags and you could see by the look in their eyes that it would go to good use. Simple acts of kindness like this do as much for the giver than for the receiver.
Anyone who would turn up their nose at such a gift has never been hungry.
One of the best food gifts I ever got was from one of my father’s neighbours. I was perhaps 16 or 17 at the time. I did most of the cooking for my dad and this neighbour must have known it. One day in the late summer or early fall he showed up at our house with a dozen bags of produce–zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, and more. He said I could have it all if I would please make him a small batch of my spaghetti sauce! Turns out his wife had died a few weeks before and she was the cook in the family, while he was the food grower.
I can still remember dad tripping over a bag of zucchini when he came home, sniffing the air, and trying to figure out why I was up to my elbows in tomatoes when I had promised him a pork roast for dinner!
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