"It seems like everyone loves mashed potatoes"

The Riverside, California Food Not Bombs was on the small side with five or six teenagers who at the time were all working and going to school. In our spare time we managed to have a meeting most Saturday mornings, and serve twice a week. The two days a week we served were difficult to carry off, but we did it, whether in summer temperatures over a hundred or in the winter rainy season. One person offered her kitchen and another person offered a car to do the "pick-ups." All of our food was donated to us. Our main source was a local natural foods market-they always had a lot to give. The owner was in his early twenties and he was excited about the idea of a group of youth getting together and doing this all on volunteer basis. We also received food from a local bagel shop and sporadic donations from local mom-and-pop shops that gave us fruits and veggies. The entire process was chaotic at times, but there was this definite bond of all us attempting to be a collective and wanting to reuse food to people going hungry in the community.

Sometime we needed money to buy utensils and to pay for materials like flyers. For the most part we were borrowing our parents' stuff and scraping together our own cash. Once a man randomly made a donation of a hundred dollars-impressed with us and our home cooked-meals. He was awesome. Not many older people seemed to be supporting us at the time. I know a few of our parents thought we were wasting our time. We also put on a benefit show which went well. The bands were either people involved with Food Not Bombs or friends. The place was a local record store that supported our efforts and we raised a lot of money that way. Money was never really why we did benefits; we put the shows on to try and encourage our peers to create change in a positive way.

The most rewarding part of Food Not Bombs is the new perception it gave all of us. The closer we grew to the folks that we served, the harder it was to turn away and ignore a problem that our city was trying to hide. We had our moments of frustrations when the cops came to bother us and the city shut down the park we served in. But we managed to survive all that and realize that all the people on the streets had stories of families, youth, and better times. Being a bunch of teenagers it was easy for our minds to be a bit warped about who lives on the streets and why, but after we met and talked week after week we understood much more.

Most of the people we served were grateful and excited, especially when they realized we were serving home-cooked meals. The cooking aspect has also been rewarding because I didn't know how to cook anything; but Food Not Bombs helped me to experiment and learn. There were a couple people in our group who knew how to cook, and the rest of us wanted to. We hardly ever used recipe books, we just guessed and estimated. My favorite was making a huge pot of mashed potatoes when we got bags of them donated; it seems like everyone loves mashed potatoes.

A variety of people would show up at our servings. There were the regulars and then there were the neighbors of the park who would wander by. (When the park got closed down, we served next to the fence.) An occasional group of business people would stop by, as we were located downtown. Sometimes people with kids would come and teenagers would show up. The servings were diverse.

Food Not Bombs was definitely not always filled with good times. We were a small group who struggled with inner politics, and at times that affected the entire dynamic. Because we were so small we relied heavily on each other. If one of us was sick or had to study, this interrupted the process. We took plastic dishes, utensils, and cups that we reused, which always took a huge effort to clean at the end of a serving. Preparing, cooking, serving, and cleaning up would usually take an entire afternoon and not be complete until the evening. The commitment and time was a lot. I went to both servings and was one of the few who had a car, so I did pickups a lot. Like anything there are good and bad times. Overall I would recommend anyone to become involved and put in as much time as they have. Each chapter is different in the way they serve and how they interact; definitely check it out and get hooked up.

-Camisha Ann Reidt, San Francisco and Riverside, CA Food Not Bombs