A great way to ensure that we help others in this country is to donate either your time and/or food to these establishments.

Our church takes up a weekly collection of non-perishable foods that church members then deliver to various soup kitchens in the area. Our church collects around $1000 to $1500 in food products each and every week and because they handle everything it makes it easy for the entire congregation to participate in.

If you do not belong to a church or an organization such as mine there is no need to worry, you can drop off the food you collect yourself. Here is what I recommend for you to do your part.

Each week when you go grocery shopping, buy a few cans of food that are going to be specifically donated to the soup kitchen. Keep a bag in your house where you will add these cans to. When the bag gets full you can then deliver the food to the soup kitchen yourself.

To find a local soup kitchen in your area you can look in the phone book, call your local government office or do a search online. You are bound to find a few. Once you determine which soup kitchen you are going to donate to give them a call and let them know you are about to go food shopping and would like to pick up a few things for them and find out what they are low on.

As a former volunteer I would love to get a call like that. It would make there life a lot easier.

Now go out and pick up some products. It doesn't have to be the top of the line items; the important thing here is to donate food so people can eat.

The United States is a great country and it is volunteer programs such as these, where we help out our fellow man that makes it the best country on earth.

1. Take a Cruise, to anywhere you like; and bring your whole family with you
2. Have a “Dinner-go-Round,” where each course is served at a different person's house, and gifts can be opened at each house
3. Have a “Scavenger Hunt” and select a really good prize for the winner
4. Decorate someone else's house for the holidays
5. Go do something wild; like white water rafting, or learning to sky dive
6. Have a family picture taken with each family getting a copy of the portrait
7. Spend the holidays in a different city than where you live
8. Re-enact the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving, with every one dress as Pilgrim or Native American
9. Share your holiday meals with someone less fortunate than yourself
10. Buy someone an airline ticket to come visit you this holiday
11. Celebrate all the holidays that fall in the month of November and December. Talk about the holiday and what it means to those who celebrate it.
12. Have a “no gifts” holiday where you help at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or hospital. Donate your money to a charity of your/their choice in someone else's name.
13. Make a small Christmas tree for someone you know who doesn't have one
14. Have a count down party for the New Year's arrival
15. Have a Pot Luck Dinner where everyone brings a different dish, including desert and anything else they can think of. (Including paper plates so no one is stuck doing the dishes)
16. Take a train ride across the USA with your whole family. (You don't have to share your cabin with them)
17. Rent an RV and travel around the country at your own pace
18. Visit sick children in the hospital and spend time with them reading stories or just having fun; gifts optional
19. Visit an old folk's home and orchestrate a holiday sing-a-long
20. Go to Disney World, or Land, whichever one you're closest to
21. Visit a different country for the holidays and share in their traditions
22. Prepare a coupon book for each family member to cash in whenever they choose
23. Give your employee's, if you have any, an extra day or two off
24. Go to a concert, play, opera, or an art museum and get a membership for the whole next year
25. Give an unsuspecting person a gift with no strings attached

I remember lazy September Sunday afternoons when an early dinner meant roast beef and potatoes, carrots and gravy, the smell wafting out the windows into the late summer breeze. We ate early on Sundays because Dad worked nights on the railroad and often left after we went to bed. It afforded him some time to digest, read the paper and eat a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. Sometimes Dad worked the afternoon shift and would arrive home around ten. We, of course, were in bed, but the smell of onions and green peppers frying with bacon tweaked our noses and brought us out of the bedroom to kneel on the dining room chairs, leaning with our forearms on the table while Dad ate a Denver omelet with toast and coffee.

I've always been intrigued by comfort food, which I truly believe is another word for food created from nothing when the pocketbook was empty. My father-in-law, a burly Italian from New York City, had a penchant for one such food. I remember his reminiscence. “Grandma used to save up the heels from Italian loaves, then drizzle them with olive oil, hot water and Italian spices.” He would press all of the fingertips of one hand to his lips and emit a loud kissing sound. “Mmmm-mmm. That was delicious!”

“That was “poor” food,” I said at one point. “You know, when you were poor.”

He looked quizzically at me. “No, that was a special treat.” But I thought I was on the right track. I remember chipped beef on toast or ground beef in white sauce over toast or biscuits. Sometimes we had breakfast for dinner. Bacon and eggs, French toast with maple syrup, always a seemingly creative delicacy to us, but likely a last resort for Mom, resulting from the bleak contents of the refrigerator. Hot dogs, bologna, egg salad sandwiches - all foods created from the last remains of something else. My mother used to make eggsalad/tuna salad sandwiches, which we thought we the best things since, dare I say it, sliced bread. I now realize it was probably a measure to stretch either the tuna or egg salad to accommodate an unexpected lunch guest.

Aroma - the lasting spark for the memory of such things McDonald's hamburgers on a summer night, succulent turkey roasting on a Thanksgiving morn, apple pies baking on a fall day. Sound doesn't play much of a role in food memories except for the sound of the music tinkling from the ice cream carts and trucks that rode up and down the rows of blocks in suburban neighborhoods in the fifties, and sometimes still today. We could hear the music a block away, plenty of time to run inside and yell, “Mom, Mom, here comes the ice cream man, can we get some?” Sure enough, she'd dig around in her purse for change and out we'd go to wait on the curb. The choices were wonderful. Ice cream in a waffle cone, dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. Tri-flavored popsicles with raspberry, orange and vanilla from the Good Humor Man.

We had a favorite hamburger stand where I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago - Prince Castle. There they featured the usual fare, but the main attractions were ice cream cones with square-shaped scoops. On summer nights, after dark when Dad was working, Mom would pile us in the car with all the windows down, the warm summer wind in our faces and head for Prince Castle. The flavors were much like the Baskin Robbins flavors of today - Mint Chocolate Chips, Butter Pecan, Very Cherry, and so creamy and delicious I would add an inch to my hips if I ate it today, but I'd do it in a heartbeat.

And Pizza! Oh, the pizza in the Chicago area is renowned. We had two favorites: John's Pizzeria on 173rd and Burnham Avenue and Colucci's at 176th and Burnham. John's pizza was covered in a blanket of finely crumble sweet Italian sausage, with a cheesy, peppery taste. Colucci's was smothered in a succulent tomato sauce with chunks of sausage. But the unique thing was the way the sliced the pizza - one slice across the center, the sliced in two-inch strips the other way resulting in rectangular shapes. Their Italian roast beef sandwiches were out of this world, and I've never found another since that compared to those.

On our birthdays, Mom would always make our favorite meal and bake a cake. Our favorites varied, but my favorite cake was chocolate with her vanilla frosting recipe, which required cooking. It was sticky and delicious. I loved her meatloaf and baked potatoes so much so, that when I traveled for six weeks in Europe, I dreamed of that meal throughout the trip. Upon my return, my Mom and stepdad picked me up at the airport and my mother said, “I hope you're hungry because I've got meatloaf and baked potatoes in the oven.” I could have kissed her! (and probably did.)

On Easter, after our bi-annual church attendance, Mom would prepare a baked ham with new red potatoes with fresh green peas in white sauce, which is still one of my all-time favorites treats. The white sauce mashed up with the potatoes and sweet peas made a creamy, salty taste treat. Spaghetti was another favorite at our house. It wasn't a particularly Italian version like my husband's family loves, but served with garlic bread, couldn't be beat. One time I was helping her place the plates of spaghetti on the table and one serving started to slide off the plate. I whipped the plate back the other way and the spaghetti went the other way, then back and forth until the entire plateful landed on the new, gold brocade seat of our dining chair. It was never the same again.

Then there was A&W. We also had a drive-in restaurant called Dog "n Suds. Both had great food, but there was nothing like a frosty mug of bubbly root beer. We often ordered a basket of French fries or onion rings when we pulled in with our dates on summer nights. They had a fine shrimp basket, too, always served in a red plastic basket lined with white paper, and I"m still a sucker for the shrimp plate in almost any restaurant.

It's hard to get a warm, fuzzy feeling about vegetables, but my dad was a great vegetable soup chef. He always made it with oxtails and the broth took on the combined flavors of everything he could find in the vegetable drawer. Probably another “poor” food. Sometimes Dad whipped up a batch of macaroni and cheese for Friday nights back in the days when good Catholics didn't eat meat on Fridays. I guess some still don't but it's a practice that has fallen a bit to the wayside. The macaroni was always best with Velveeta cheese, but occasionally he would discover an old, hard chunk of Colby cheese in the fridge and cut it into squares and try to blend it with the sauce. Sadly, those chunks rarely melted and we shuffled off to the side of the plate by us kids. “Eat that,” he would urge. “It's fine, it's just a little dry,” he'd say, popping a piece in his mouth. Our grimaces said it all.

I know the world over that favorite foods evoke and make for great memories. No matter what woes beset us, it seems a nice plate of comfort food can go a long way to making things better. Speaking of which, I think I'll have French toast for breakfast! Bon appetit!