Rising food prices slam area’s poor

LYNN – Cheryl DelRossi is working harder than ever to put food on the table, and in her case, it means making nearly 300 meals a day.As chef and food manager of My Brother’s Table, the downtown soup kitchen at 98 Willow St., it’s her responsibility to feed the needy and the hungry. It’s also her job to keep the food expenses within budget, something not always possible even with the donations received by the soup kitchen each year.”Cheryl is using leftovers to make entire new dinners. If we have ham, she makes pea soup from the ham bones. If we have turkey, she makes soup from the carcasses. Nothing goes to waste,” said Ilia Stacy, executive director of My Brother’s Table. “If it can be turned into soup or a casserole, Cheryl will find a way.”Soaring food prices, including the cost of flour, is impacting how the soup kitchen operates. “We’re baking more from scratch, which is cheaper, unless we get the desserts donated, and we aren’t getting as many as we once did,” said Stacy. “I think the grocery stores and bakeries are managing their production and their inventories more carefully.”Over the past year, food prices throughout the U.S. have risen exponentially and show no sign of slowing down. The price of milk has approached $5 a gallon in some areas, with economists typically blaming the expanding global marketplace.Eggs are up in price by 25 percent over a year ago, and any crops linked to the energy crisis because of their potential as a bio-fuel are also skyrocketing in demand and, hence, price.Farmers who once produced tomatoes are opting to replant with crops that are more likely to have a bigger payoff – those that can be used as fuel for the transportation industry.Stacy and others gather monthly as the Lynn Hunger Network, which isn’t affiliated directly with My Brother’s Table, but nonetheless is focused on public hunger issues.”We have spent a lot of time at the past two meetings discussing food costs and food shortages,” she said. “With fuel crops so profitable, there are shortages of other edibles. We only eat tomatoes in season because they’re too expensive at other times.”The soup kitchen also relies on The Food Project, a summer jobs program in which local youth tend gardens and spread the results of their harvest to needy organizations like My Brother’s Table.”They provide us all summer and into the fall with fresh vegetables, and we’re grateful for that,” Stacy said. “Meanwhile, we’re doing everything possible to manage our food costs, but the price of stables has done up dramatically.”The local soup kitchen also receives help annually from the food drive organized by U.S. Postal Service letter carriers, which starts May 10. People can leave bags of canned or boxed goods for the postal workers, who will deliver it to a drop center at Lynn Ladder and ultimately to the soup kitchen.”We have been talking about the recession and how it will impact the amount of food people are going to put out for the letter carriers during the food drive,” Stacy said. “The high prices are affecting how strapped people are, individually. These are people who might otherwise give but can’t.””We can use canned tuna and other canned goods. Ernie’s Market on Boston Street donated asparagus because they apparently had ordered too much. Cheryl froze it to use later as a side vegetable or to make soup. We’re doing lots of food management here that we hadn’t done before.”My Brother’s Table daily serves about 80 lunches and 200 dinners. Lynn is also home to several food pantries, including St. Mary’s Church, Sacred Heart Church, East Coast International Church, St. Joseph’s Church, TDC Church, St. Stephen’s Church, and the Lynn City Mission.Analysts expect new data due today to show it’s getting worse.U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent