I was hanging out with some incredibly cool people last night and heard a wonderful story…
A couple of weeks ago, Mike and Steph went out to dinner to celebrate Mike’s new job. They had an entire evening planned, dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and plans in the city afterwards. As in most restaurants, the food portions are much larger than the average person can (or should) eat in one sitting, thus the invention of the “doggie bag”. I’m not sure dogs ever get this leftover food, at least at my house they don’t. Well, I don’t have a dog. Anyway, they had a lot of leftover food. What should they do with it? They discussed their options and the conversation went something like this.
Mike: “Let’s ask for a to go box.”
Steph: “We can’t. We have nowhere to put it.”
Mike: “Pack it up anyway.”
They packed up the food and took it with them. I’m not sure what Steph was thinking at this point, but they took the bag of leftovers and headed out to their next evening adventure. On the way there, they ran into a homeless man looking for food. Mike gave him the bag of leftovers, reciting the contents of the bag as if he were a waiter in the restaurant, educating people on the specials for that evening. What as awesome way to keep from being wasteful, and in the process, helping feed the hungry.
What do you do with your leftovers? At a restaurant? At home?
Moral of the story? Be like Mike.
On a trip to Chicago a couple of years ago we wanted to get an authentic style Chicago pizza, so went found a restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel and walked over there. On the way we saw a number of homeless people. We found out quickly that one slice of Chicago style pizza is similar to an entire normal pizza, so we had plenty left over. Not wanting it to go to waste we boxed it up and gave it to the homeless that we saw on our way to the restaurant. We even made it a point to get plastic silverware and paper plates for them. We figured we accomplished a couple things that way. One, the food wouldn’t go to waste. Two, we weren’t giving money to the homeless that could be spent on things other than food. Three, a couple of people got to eat that night (and possibly the next day) that might not’ve otherwise been able to.
That’s awesome!! I lived in Chicago for a year, in the downtown area. There’s a HUGE homeless population there. Just think if everyone did this… way less waste and many more people that get to eat. Thanks for sharing… your story AND your food. :)
I did this ages ago on a December trip to NYC. We go annually to see the tree, but this was one of my first trips. I wanted to give money to the homeless but my boyfriend at the time wouldn’t give me any and I didn’t have any one me. I did have my leftovers though, and about half a block away I realized I could give him that, so I made our whole group wait while I ran back with them. The boyfriend wasn’t pleased – but maybe that’s why he’s an ex now :) I think this year I will make a point of doing this again.