So I hear the free-food-box pickup might be ending—again—and soon you won’t have free food anymore, unless you count the stuff in the freezer that you’re never going to eat. That stuff will be around forever. Not to mention all the frozen milks.

So I figure we should talk about it, because it was nice while it lasted. I’ve written a bunch of articles on Corona-related topics, but apparently everything about Corona has become political these days, except the free food box. Even the people who claim that Corona’s over or that it was a hoax all along still line up for the food box.

“Oh, we have to wear masks to accept it? Sure! How many masks?”

If anything, it gave everyone something upbeat to talk about that was not lashon hara. That is no small feat. It was THE thing to talk about. Everyone felt included. People would come late to the conversation and say, “What are we talking about? Oh, the pizzarogies. Okay, I’m caught up. So do we put sauce on it, or what? I mean there’s sauce already in it.”

In conversation, my neighbors have been comparing it to the mann that we got in the Midbar. You don’t have to pay, you just have to go out every morning and something is dropped on you that is based on the size of your family, and you never know what it’s going to taste like, and on Friday you get a double portion.

Every community did it differently, so I don’t know how they did it in any other city besides mine. I do have relatives in other cities, but somehow when we were all told to social distance, I basically stopped calling relatives.

In our town (Passaic), we have a single weekly pickup in which everything is in one big box, except for the milk, which comes separately in a milk crate.

Every week, our box consisted of the following items, plus a few extras:

– Some kind of pizza, or an item inspired by, but not as good as, pizza.

– A second (and sometimes a third) pizza-inspired item.

– A lot of pita, which we mostly used for pizza.

– Some kind of kid-friendly meat substance that does not look anything like the animal it came from.

– One thing that we were like, “Why?” that did not go with anything else in the box. For example, one week we got Italian herb croutons. There was no salad that week and no soup. Just croutons. Does someone eat those plain? And does he wash?

– One unripe fruit for the next Shabbat. Like sometimes we just get a crazy number of pineapples—one for each kid—that we’d have to use before they go bad. (No one told the pineapples that there was a food shortage either.) Eventually, it just became about “What do I have to put on the chicken this week?” One week we had pineapple chicken, the next week it was mango chicken, then I had to figure out cantaloupe chicken…

– One mystery item that none of us had ever seen before. We always get one thing that we have to consult the neighbors about: “What do we do with this food? How does one eat this?”

Like one week we got malawach. I’d seen malawach in the store, but never bought it, because it’s not like a new flavor of herring, where I can put it on a cracker and see if it’s as good as the other herrings. I have no idea what to even do with this. What on earth even is a malawach? It sounds like a noise you make when you’re trying to talk with your mouth full.

And of course every box has:

– One item that kids would never, ever eat. Like there was the week that we got a big box of bran flakes, which we still have. Why bran flakes? Where are all the raisins?

Wait, is bran-flake chicken a thing? Because it’s about to be.

Other than that, the best thing for me was the milk crates. I have like 16 milk crates. When the workers ask, “Do you want all your milks?” I say, “Yes!” Because if there’s a lot of milk to schlep, they’re giving me crates.

Our neighbors started a whole food-trade program. Not that that helps so much. There’s no family walking in and saying, “My kids hate the pizza stuff. Here, give me everyone’s peas and carrots.”

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining about the mann. I’m not going to complain that when we get our free food that we don’t even have to get out of our cars for, that some of the foods are not things we otherwise would have bought, for money. This is just the stuff that keeps it fun to talk about.

And I do think it’s funny that everyone in town has the same groceries—including weird impulse purchases—and we’re all trying to figure out what to make out of it at the same time. It brings a weird sense of community to hear that the people around you are eating the same foods for supper on the same nights. This is never as cute under normal circumstances.

“Wow, we’re all having pasta tonight? On a Tuesday?!”

It’s like everyone has access to the same fridge:

“What should I make my family for supper tonight?”

“What about the oddly-sized chicken nuggets in your freezer?”

“Good idea! How do you know what’s in my freezer?”

So at the same time, it gave us a sense of community and kept us all talking, while also not giving anyone a real desire to go to each other’s houses for Shabbat meals, because we all have the same food. It also keeps kids from trading snacks in school. It was perfect for when we needed it.

I should really call my relatives, though. I bet their towns got different foods.

By Mordechai Schmutter