This makes my heart happy

I thought I knew my US Thanksgiving dishes, but now I'm curious what the butternut squashes are for.

There's no one standard dish but if you Google for Thanksgiving squash recipes you'll get a wide variety. Plus they're just so abundant in fall they're insanely cheap.

My family either bakes them or mashes them like potatoes. They are great with butter and maple syrup.

that’s a lot of squish.

My family has always done squash on thanksgiving! We usually boil and then purée it with butter - similar to mashed potatoes but it tends to come out softer and wetter. Lately we’ve gotten more into roasted squash, but we’ll usually use something like delicata for that since butternut isn’t always great roasted.

That's one of our Thanksgiving staples - halve a butternut squash, roast the halves with butter and brown sugar, then scoop & mash.

Between the squash, sweet potatoes, and regular potatoes... there's a lot of mashed vegetable on our table lol.

Brown sugar is also good when your out of Maple syrup.

Each box contains a turkey. Canned corn, canned green beans, canned gravy, canned cranberry sauce, canned pumpkin pie filling. Carrots, potatoes, onions, apples, butternut squash. Sugar cookie mix, pie crust mix, and stuffing mix.

This is really, really lovely OP. That is a perfect meal.

YES!

That’s awesome! We gave four turkeys to our local food pantry. People are struggling and we aren’t right now.

My childhood thanksgiving consisted of, turkey, mashed potatoes, mashed squash, mashed turnip, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, grapes and assorted nuts. Pumpkin pie, apple pie and blueberry pie. Over the many years…things have gotten removed.

It's great to see. No charity, no matter how small, should go unnoticed or unappreciated. As someone who works in social services, what you don't see in this photo is the dozens of volunteer hours spent buying, stuffing, and transporting all of this food. This is a lot of work in one frame.

I love to use them in a breakfast hash. :)

Brilliantly done. When I was a kid, it was precisely things like this and "Blue Santa" that made holidays feel special for us.

Thanks to all the volunteers who put these together as well as all the folks who donated to make it possible.

This is so wonderful! Thanks for sharing!

That’s a lot of banana boxes with no bananas. I mean bananas aren’t exactly my go-to thanksgiving dish.

Can you please share the charity that's organizing this? Is that allowed?

It is through our local food pantry. I do not know if it has a more official name.

Those meals look good enough for Jehovah!

Wonderful gesture! Lincoln County people rock!

Damariscotta?

Newcastle

Jehovah Stovah????

Good on you. Keep it up, folks!

Bananas wrapped in ham and smothered in hollandaise. Thanksgiving classic.

It was likely organized by the group called Food Security Coalition of Mid Coast Maine. They are a network of food pantries and food banks in the mid coast area. The coalition is overseen/guided by MidCoast Hunger Prevention Program based in Brunswick.

Source: I helped Wiscasset pantries with their thanksgiving food drive in 2016 and they were a part of the coalition.

Man, this is awesome.

Thanksgicing dishes/sides are HIGHLY regional. I'm originally from Texas and growing up, you wouldn't catch butternut squash on our Thanksgiving table. I'm also guessing you wouldn't catch rice dressing (rice, onion, bell pepper, celery, pork & chicken livers) on a table in the Northeast or probably further west than Houston because it's kind of a Cajun thing, and most non-Cajun families down here are probably going to have cornbread dressing vs white bread.

In the Midwest corn was a big part of Thanksgiving dishes as well as the classic sweet potato and green bean casserole and the dressing was typically white bread and sage based. Oh and there were a lot more roasted root vegetables than I was used to growing up in Texas where the sides more resembled a barbecue: deviled eggs, potato salad, broccoli cheese rice, mac and cheese, collards or turnip greens.

I had a lovely Thanksgiving in Cape Neddick, Maine last year and their Thanksgiving spread had some things I was unfamiliar with but were probably more "traditional" than what I typically ate. Stuffing/dressing was definitely bready sage but had some nutty things, maybe chestnuts. Lots of winter squash based dishes, and some other stuff that I'm definitely forgetting.

All in all, Thanksgiving is about celebrating the harvest/bounty of the year so while there are some things that are mainstreamed/nationwide, it also makes a lot of sense to have some regional variations and specialties.

We have butternut squash every Thanksgiving and the year I was struggling we received a box similar to this with the familiar butternut squash inside. Thankfully this year I was able to give rather than receive 🙏🏻💗

This makes me happy

Good enough for Jehovah!

Good enough for Jehovah.

Blessed are those to receive sustenance through our Earthly beadles in Jesus Christ our eternal Lord and Savior through whom all blessings flow. May almighty God bless and keep them! Amen.

STONE HIM!!!

Amen

My family got one of these boxes when I was a kid. It came with a 22 lb turkey. 😳 We were eating turkey for weeks!

This is so nice. What church is this in?

This is a very nice story and the comments are reflective of that, but is no one else infuriated by the fact that so many people are struggling so that a few can line their pockets?

Inflation is one thing, but taking even a cursory glance at the economic situation atm would show that greed is driving much of the price increases seen at the grocery store.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflation-price-controls-robert-reich

The executive branch has taken steps to curb rising costs in the past via price controls, why isn't that being considered (or even discussed) currently ?

I was able to get a very similar box in Brunswick Saturday. So I thank all you volunteers. We lack in funds, but we are not lacking in food ❤️

Saint Patrick's church in Newcastle.

Thanks.