A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The shutdown is over. SNAP food benefits from the federal government are being reinstated. Still, though, food needs remain. A nonprofit called Lasagna Love organizes volunteers to make and deliver free lasagnas for anyone who asks. These people sound like pasta angels. As Macy Lipkin reports from member station KUER, they’re working their way through a backlog of requests that mounted during the shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING ON DOOR)
MACY LIPKIN, BYLINE: In the suburbs of Salt Lake County, Lori McDougal knocks on a stranger’s door. After a minute, a teenage boy swings it open. McDougal hands him a heavy bag with fresh-baked lasagna, garlic bread, salad and cookies.
LORI MCDOUGAL: Yay. We’re so happy you answered. Lasagna dinner from Lasagna Love.
UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: Thank you.
MCDOUGAL: We’re so happy that you get to have some warmth tonight.
UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: All right. Thank you.
MCDOUGAL: OK. Thanks so much.
LIPKIN: Scenes like this play out across the U.S. Lasagna Love is in all 50 states and three other countries. The roughly 2,500 requests they get a week shot up to about 10,000 in late October when people found out their SNAP benefits would be interrupted. Deea Hobbs is a regional coordinator for Lasagna Love. She reads a note from a family that says they’re on a very tight budget.
DEEA HOBBS: Another family says, we were cut on food stamps and we are really struggling. Another one, furloughed employee. Need help with food. Having financial troubles.
LIPKIN: Hobbs knows a homemade lasagna won’t fix everything, but it brings some kindness into people’s lives.
HOBBS: The world is hard and can be tough, but we’re all in it together. And that’s a message that we all need.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Is there more boxes of noodles that’s open?
LIPKIN: Earlier today, Lori McDougal had about 20 friends over for her 63rd birthday party. Together, they made 30 lasagnas.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I’ve got...
LIPKIN: She found out about Lasagna Love through her church and decided to go big for her first time volunteering.
MCDOUGAL: I just feel like I’ve received gifts all these years. And I just, the last few years, have just kind of looked for a way to serve and to give back.
LIPKIN: Her friends spooned ricotta onto layers of oven-ready noodles, then smothered the trays with tomato sauce and shredded cheese. Some lasagnas went in to bake. The rest would be picked up by other volunteers and dropped off with heating instructions.
MCDOUGAL: Excitement, excitement. They’re coming out of the oven.
LIPKIN: You could hear the cheese sizzling, and the kitchen smelled like a pizza shop.
MCDOUGAL: All right. I think they should be hot and ready.
LIPKIN: Today, one lasagna goes to a working mom with two teenagers, another to a woman with breast cancer.
For NPR News, I’m Macy Lipkin in Sandy, Utah.
(SOUNDBITE OF LETTUCE’S “PHYLLIS”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
