Caring Kitchen serves meals to all who show up, no questions asked
By Ron Hayes
You don’t have to be homeless. You just have to be hungry.
You don’t need to prove you’re needy. You don’t need to present an ID.
You don’t even have to give your real name. The names just count the number of meals served.
Just be hungry, and five days a week CROS Ministries’ Caring Kitchen will serve you a tasty lunch.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays those lunches are available from noon to 1 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church on Southwest Third Street in Delray Beach. Tuesdays and Thursdays they’re available at the same time at the Elks Lodge #1770 on Northeast Fourth Avenue in the city.
Lunch is served
Shortly before noon on a breezy Wednesday morning, about 50 hungry men and women are waiting outside St. Matthew’s parish hall when the CROS van pulls in. The back doors open, and several people carry the insulated delivery bags inside. Volunteers are waiting there to serve the food from a long table, and other long tables wait to be filled with hungry men and women.
“We have grandparents who come here to help with their kids’ budget, day laborers getting out of the heat,” says Shona Castillo, the Caring Kitchen director.
Castillo, assistant director Jason Lorey, and one part-timer are the only staff.
“And we have about 75 volunteers who do the driving, food prep, cooking, cleaning and washing,” she adds. The ministry hopes to attract more volunteers because they are needed. Today’s lunch is Sloppy Joes and corn on the cob, water, Gatorade, and Cheetos for dessert. Some days it’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chicken cacciatore or pastas, baked or fried chicken.
“Chick-fil-A and Whole Foods donate a lot,” says Lorey, “and Bedner Farms. Bedner donates a lot of vegetables.”
At the beginning of the month, the number of meals served is lowest because people have money from their Social Security checks. By mid-month, these volunteers will feed about 55 people each day.
“I try to keep it comfort food,” Lorey said. “I know what they like and don’t like.”
He smiled.
“They don’t like hot dogs.”
Here, they are not “the hungry,” “the needy,” or “clients.” They are called “participants.” About 90% are men, and less than half are homeless.
A growing need
Among the participants this Wednesday is Charles Keys, 59. He had helped unload the Sloppy Joes, and now he’s enjoying one.
“I help unload the truck,” he explains, “because they help me.”
Keys rents a room nearby, but has no cooking facilities. He’s been coming here, he guesses, about 10 years.
“A friend told me about it,” he says, “and it helps. It’s a big help.”
All the food is awesome, but his favorite is the meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
“It’s the best. I go to both places, here and the Elks Lodge,” he says. “I ride my bike.”
Charles Keys’ lunch was only one of about 50,000 the Caring Kitchen serves each year, which includes five meals a week that are delivered to 120 homebound individuals in Delray Beach.
And the need is growing.
CROS Ministries was founded in 1978 as Christians Reaching Out to Society, created by a group of United Methodist churches. Today, the name remains, but in 47 years it has grown into an interfaith and ecumenical organization with a cash budget this year of $2.1 million.
In 2020, CROS Ministries distributed food to 71,986 individuals from its 10 food pantries in Palm Beach and Martin counties.
Last year, that number was 121,664 — a 69% increase in four years.
“The cost of living has gone up tremendously,” says Ruth Mageria, CROS’s chief executive officer. “Housing is a big driver, mortgages, insurance, having to pay rent or cut their food. Do they buy food or put the money into their car?”
On Oct. 4, a Hustle to End Hunger Run/Walk in John Prince Park raised more than $45,000, but expenses are rising and federal dollars have been cut.
“Federal funding cuts limit the food and financial support CROS receives, which directly impacts how much food we can provide,” Mageria said.
Samson Scarola and other volunteers from Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach glean green peppers at Bedner’s Farm, which donates most of the vegetables the Caring Kitchen serves. Photos provided; insets by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Farm to table
That ear of corn Charles Keys enjoyed with his Sloppy Joe lunch probably began life at Bedner’s Farm Fresh Market, which donates about 90% of the vegetables served at the Caring Kitchen.
In addition to distributing, preparing and serving fruits and vegetables, CROS volunteers pick them.
A lot of them.
Gleaning is the process in which remaining vegetables, for example, are picked at the end of the growing season, before the fields are plowed and prepared for replanting. Sometimes farmers donate their vegetables directly to food pantries; sometimes volunteers pick the produce from the fields, to be transported to area food banks, then distributed to organizations like CROS.
During this year’s gleaning season, ending in August, 3,707 CROS volunteers at 244 gleaning events in Palm Beach and Martin counties collected 460,245 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables, which is equal to 383,537 meals, CROS estimates.
The volunteers come from church groups and service organizations, high school students earning their community service credits. The Rosarian Academy Catholic school in West Palm Beach and Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County have sent volunteers.
One of the volunteers is Joe Black.
Black is the farm manager at Agri-Gators in Palm City and a CROS board member.
“We grow red, white, and yellow potatoes, and sweet corn,” he explains, “and I facilitate about eight gleaning events a year.”
On a Saturday morning, volunteers might fill five-gallon buckets with ears of corn, for example, and carry those buckets to a bin that holds about 1,000 pounds. A forklift deposits the bin on a food bank truck, the truck takes it to the Palm Beach County Food Bank, which passes some along to CROS Ministries.
Early in October, Black planted potatoes, which volunteers will help glean beginning in February.
“I don’t want this to sound political,” he says. “You can blame anybody you want, but everyone is aware that a lot of people are having trouble making ends meet. The government can’t satisfy all of this, so good, red-blooded Americans have to roll up their sleeves and help one another.”
And when they do, Charles Keys enjoys an ear of corn.
CROS is there when the food is picked, and CROS is there when the food is eaten.
When money’s a problem
“This place has changed my life,” Oscar Konway says. “I was eating PB&Js seven days a week.”
He is a friendly man, smiling and chatty, happy to tell you anything except his age. He is not young; he is not old.
“I was a part-owner in Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West at one time,” he adds, chewing his Sloppy Joe.
He will also tell you that he came to Florida to make a movie called “Wise Guys in the White House,” which is currently being edited, and that his family was once very prominent in California politics.
He says he lives in a halfway house, and just made a year clean and sober with a group called Cocaine Anonymous.
He has been coming to the Caring Kitchen almost a year.
“I try to make it two days a week,” he says, “but my car’s in the shop. It needs wheel bearings and they want $360, and I don’t have the money.”
Money’s a problem, he says. Delray Beach is expensive.
His favorite meal is, of course, the Sloppy Joes.
“All the meals are great, but some are hard to chew because I’ve only got one tooth on top and two on the bottom.”
Whether or not he once owned part of Sloppy Joe’s Bar, or made a movie, or came from a big political family is irrelevant here at the Caring Kitchen. He is hungry, so he is welcome.
“The food here is an 8.4 on a scale of 1 to 10,” Konway says with a smile. “And the fact that’s it’s free makes it a 9.6.”
CROS board member Joe Black, who manages the farm at Agri-Gators in Palm City, got help from a young volunteer in loading red potatoes.
‘A fabulous program’
By one o’clock, lunch is over. The participants don’t linger. They eat their lunches, chat with friends, and depart, leaving Shona Castillo, Jason Lorey and their volunteers to clean up and think about tomorrow, when lunch will be at the Elks Lodge.
“Tomorrow it’ll be shepherd’s pie and mixed vegetables,” Lorey says, “and I’ll probably make a salad.”
Among the volunteers still here is Linda Carney, who has been a CROS volunteer for 10 years, one day here at the Caring Kitchen and one at the Lake Worth Beach food pantry.
“I see basically the same people every week, and everyone’s very appreciative,” she says. “I just think it’s a fabulous program, and I get to feed these people and make them happy.
“This is what we’re supposed to do.”
Drop-ins are welcome at CROS Ministries’ Caring Kitchen. However, registration is required to receive food from its food pantries.
For more information, call 561-233-9009 or visit crosministries.org.
