New Haven Independent

Aricelly, who didn’t want to give her last name, was shopping on Tuesday at the Christian Community Action food pantry. There she could pick and choose her food items at the pantry, just like in the supermarket. The food comes from the Connecticut Food Bank and various churches, but each family can take only one bag per visit.

She’s not alone. As hard economic times have hit, CCA has become a busier shopping place. The number of families coming for groceries jumping more than 50 percent from a year ago.

Aricelly was asked if she worries that her children (pictured are her son and daughter and a niece) might go hungry because the cost of food has risen so sharply. She said she can’t conceive of such a thing. Not only does she stop by CCA regularly. She also makes the rounds of the Amistad Catholic Worker in the Hill and a nearby church (she didn’t remember the name), and she receives food stamps.

As Aricelly filled her bag with pinto beans, rice, and low-sugar apple juice, Juan Marquez, who runs CCA’s pantry, was restocking the shelves from a morning rush with staples like beef stew and peanut butter, but also relatively healthful snacks (pictured).

Marquez (pictured) said, “We’ve been having a lot of new people coming in because they’ve been laid off; a lot of single people coming in for the first time; a lot of moms because they don’t have jobs and can’t collect anything from the state.”

CCA’s development director, Albert May, said the number of families the agency is serving has gone up from 500 to 800 since last year. As the need has risen, the amount of food coming from the Connecticut Food Bank has remained the same. So the agency has had to look to other sources. He said a number of churches bring in food regularly, and CCA requests healthy options like low-salt soup and low- or no-sugar-added cereals.

Direct From The Tree

May told a story of another local source. He stopped by to visit a big supporter in North Haven, “and I saw a big apple tree in front of her house just laden down with apples, and I said, ‘What are you going to do with those apples?’ And she said, ‘We just let them fall and throw them away.’ I asked if we could take them, so they picked them and put them in bags and we brought them in.”

Nancy Carrington, longtime executive director of the Connecticut Food Bank, said the amount of food donated from major supermarket chains has remained steady at 15million pounds a year. But that the need has gone up 10 to 15 percent this year. “These are challenging times for many, many people,” she said. “We all see the higher prices when we go to the store, and I’m very mindful of people who are living on the edge, working one or two jobs, and with these costs going up, they may not be able to make ends meet.”

Carrington said efforts are underway to get retail stores to donate perishable food that is approaching its best sell-by date, to be frozen and made available to food pantries like CCA. Juan Marquez said that after Aricelly filled her bag with items from the shelves, he gave her a package of meat from the refrigerator.