Cortes Island’s Community Meal Pogram

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - There is a community meal somewhere on Cortes Island every week.  “A warm bowl of soup, or a stew, that’s at the heart of it. Then there's always some sort of fresh veggies or a fresh veggie platter cut up.  Folks are getting that kind of food in them.  Then bread and butter, because that's just the  basics for everybody and usually a dessert, some sort of cookies or brownies and the whole meal includes gluten free and vegetarian options,” explained Yasmina Cartland.   “There's nothing you have to do to come to lunch. Everyone can come. You don't have to prove that you need it. It's completely inclusive. It's meant to be a warm social time and it's meant to actually nourish people with some warm nourishing food.”   Cortes Currents: How many people show up on a typical day?  Yasmina Cartland: “The average is around 60. That can be folks with families and little kids. The students have been coming from the Cortes Island Academy, so we've had that youth energy there. Also seniors and then just different individuals from all sorts of walks of life and ages. It really is quite a melange of folks who come out.”   “At one point around this time last year, maybe a little further into the spring, it was sunny and people said, ‘Oh, I'm going to go to this community lunch.’ Folks just came out of the woodwork. I hadn't been quite ready and we didn't have quite a big enough pot. There were about 80 people.  Luckily somehow, loaves and fishes,  we were able to feed everybody who came right down to the very last scraping of the pot. Which is great, but I said, ‘okay, we need a bigger pot and I need to be ready every time.’ Not that there's been 85 people every time, but  we need to be ready every time.”  “There's people in their neighborhoods that might need a meal for whatever reason. People who don't get out much, or  don't like to be in social settings or who've just been home from hospital or people are just ask, 'Is there enough to take home?' There are takeouts that go out into various neighborhoods, with the neighbors thinking of their neighbors that way.”