West Islip Food Drive a Success

Written by Jennifer Gallozzi.

The Helping Hands Thanksgiving Drive enabled us to share donated baked goods, food, baskets, homemade centerpieces, certificates and mostly your holiday spirit and caring to many local families and folks.

I was particularly moved by the effort and love that went into preparing the baked goods we were to deliver. They were so elegantly prepared. This was no Slice and Bake effort, but gourmet cookies, frosted decorated cupcakes and many cakes donated were worthy of being sold at a bakery . Some cakes were designed to look like giant roses.

I mostly “grew” from the giving side of the equation for this drive. How wonderful, that folks would gather their children together to make such desserts for those they never met, but, still treated them with the dignity that they were a distinguished guest or loved one “coming” to sit at their holiday table.

I feel we all came together in a special way this Thanksgiving and once again showed that we can enrich each other’s lives by just “slowing down” and recreating what holidays once were all about before the third millennium struck.
Funny, you would think modern technology would give us more free time for the old fashioned joys of holiday baking with our kids, slowing down to make  homemade centerpieces and putting together food baskets for the needy.

Yet, all of us are more long on chores and short on spare time for such things. When did holiday baking become a luxury for moms in America? I am not exactly sure, but I know for a money in time, at a Helping Hands Drive at the firehouse in West Islip, we all enjoyed the simple pleasures of spending time and talents with our families and we were all the better for it!

Please come to our toy drive on Dec 4 at 3p.m at the West Islip Firehouse at 309 Union Blvd. More information is available at this website. 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Jennifer Gallozzi 
President/Founder and Especially Proud Volunteer of the Helping Hands in West Islip, Inc.