August 20, 2013 — There’s something fishy going on at The Family Pantry.
The Harwich-based social services facility, which provides food and household goods to needy families across the Cape, is launching a pilot program that will expand its roster of edible necessities to include local fish, courtesy of the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.
The Palmer & Jane D. Davenport Foundation of South Yarmouth is funding the program.
Alliance fishermen caught 670 pounds of scallops and delivered them to Raw Seafoods in Fairhaven, where they were flash frozen and packaged for distribution at the pantry. The first shipment will be distributed Thursday, Aug. 22, to the pantry’s clients.
“I approached the alliance about helping with this idea,” said Mary Anderson, executive director of the pantry. “One of the challenges for us is having protein available because it’s expensive.”
Anderson said that alliance chief executive officer John Pappalardo and his staff did the lion’s share of “figuring out how to do it.”
“The distribution will be one pound per client, so if the client is an individual, that person would have a couple nights of fresh fish. If it’s a family it would be one meal,” said Anderson. The fish will kept frozen and be distributed every day the facility is open until it runs out. This first delivery, Anderson said, should last three to four weeks.
Read the full story at the Harwich Oracle