PB&J To The Rescue!

"Ms. Cathy--there's no hot water!" greeted assistant director Cathy Ann Vandegrift as she entered the TASK kitchen from her office on Tuesday, May 24th. She quickly verified that the 85-gallon water heater that supplies all the hot water for TASK including for the dishes and pots and pans that TASK cooks use to prepare and serve meals was broken.

Cathy called Temp-Trol, a Delanco company that services TASK's HVAC equipment, and they came out and examined the heater. It was was beyoind repair. Fortunately, Temp-Trol's supplier had one in stock so calls were made to the board of trustees to get an emergency authorization for the purchase and installation of the new heater.

There was enough hot water on Tuesday so that meals could be prepared and served on Wednesday but after that, food safety and sanitation issues would have shut down food service.

A potential disaster was, however, averted by Merrill Lynch's May delivery of "to-go" bags. Coordinated by Jason Mazyk, an estate specialist, Merrill Lynch runs "sandwich factories" six times a year where volunteer employees put together the "to-go" bags: a PB&J (peanut butter and jelly sandwich), a serving of pudding, a banana and a Kool-Aid juice box, along with plastic utensils. A meal in itself! And there were nearly 2000 of them, enough to ride out the crisis and keep the soup kitchen open.

The new water heater was installed on Thursday and things were back to normal on Friday.

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