November 23, 2013

My sister on Staten Island hosts our annual family Thanksgiving feast. Both she and her husband are great cooks. They love to try out new recipes that satisfy every dietary need of their guests: gluten-free, vegetarian and, yes, even dairy-free.

Even if you're a garlic-free, carb-free, oil-free eater, they will make sure there is a dish with your name on it. And not only do they work to satisfy all the picky eaters, but they cook everything in volume.

My sister is definitely my mother's daughter. My mother used to say it's just as easy to cook for 20 as it is to cook for 10. She always used to cook huge amounts of food no matter how many were coming to dinner, and she taught us that everything is best cooked in a vat.

This is great for the Rochester Shermans, because we are equal-opportunity gluttons with no food restraints. The only regret we have every year after her feast is that we have no leftovers. It's not that she doesn't have any; she has tons. But because we're from out of town, she doesn't give us any.

Last year we missed having leftovers so much that we came home and made a turkey dinner just so we could have them. We shopped in a relatively empty Wegmans since everyone was at home eating their own actual leftovers or were out fighting the crowds at the mall. And we ended up with turkey soup in our freezer until New Year's.

But we also make sure that Thanksgiving isn't all about glutony for us. As we prepared our second feast, I couldn't help but think that, just a few miles away, there were people who can't think beyond the one meal they're having.

Last year we spent our Staten Island Thanksgiving volunteering to serve a feast for families devastated by Hurricane Sandy. We all stood there, ladles at the ready, to serve food donated by a caterer to feed 500. But hardly anyone showed up because most of the families had moved away. When the lone person appeared, everyone jockeyed to fill his plate. I was worried about the leftovers, but was told they would be donated to another homeless shelter.

But you don't have to serve food to those in need to make a difference. You can make a difference by how you manage food waste in your own home, just as commercial kitchens and grocery stores do.

Jo Natale, Wegmans' director of media relations, says that Wegmans donates millions of pounds of fresh and packaged food every year. And Wegmans even has advice to help people better manage leftovers at home, offering tips on how to plan for and use food in ways that are healthy, save money, and waste less (so the food is good for the planet, too). You can find ideas on its website, www.wegmans.com.

Most important, Linda Lovejoy, Wegmans' manager of community relations, reminded me that local food cupboards need donations year-round but especially around holiday school breaks, when children who normally eat breakfast and lunch in school are home and might need donated food.

This year, as my family digs into our feast, I'll give thanks for the abundance and variety of our food and also the community we live in that cares about making a difference for those in need. And I'll also give thanks for the leftovers.

As first published in the Democrat + Chronicle and on the USA Today Network