Each Monday morning, GoodGym helps the South Ealing Food Cupboard volunteers prepare to give away food to the community. Supermarkets and other organisations donate surplus items to prevent waste. A lot of heavy lifting and speedy organisation is needed to get a van-load of food ready to share!

This morning’s haul was a slightly odd selection: white chocolate Easter bunnies, jelly play kits, and a mountain of Cornish pasties. Rebecca and Iram channelled their inner Tetris masters to squeeze the pasties into every available fridge space. Honestly, there were probably more pasties in the room than in the whole of Cornwall! Meanwhile, Jamie did a fabulous job flattening the humongous pile of cardboard, and Martin took on the sun-soaked task of unloading crates from the van and hauling them over to the church.

It was Rebecca’s first GoodGym session and Jamie’s second — lovely to welcome them both! They took to it like ducks to water!

There were 3 reasons for celebration at South Ealing Food Cupboard this morning:

1. Josh came to his first GoodGym task. Welcome! 🥳👋
2. Martin achieved his 50th good deed, earning his black t-shirt
3. A Tesco driver brought an extra delivery to Food Cupboard

Wait... what?! In addition to the usual DHL food drop, the Tesco driver came to the church garden rather than Church Gardens, a nearby street. The volunteers started to unload birthday cake and fruit before realising that this was not the delivery they were expecting.

Thankfully, there was plenty of food in the actual Food Cupboard's deliveries too, which Martin, Josh and Sevan helped to move into the church. These included some fancy meats like steak, duck and venison as well as exotic mangoes and papayas. The usuals were there too, with plenty of ready meals stacked into the fridges by Josh and Sevan and the ever present banana crates, which were very green this week.

After a quick costume change into his GoodGym t-shirt, Martin was ready for his big moment and put on the shiny 50 good deeds sash to be the star of today's photos 🌟. Well done Martin! You've shown great dedication to South Ealing Food Cupboard, helping new GoodGymers to feel welcome at this task and be able to jump right in and have a big impact. 👏

Monday mornings in Ealing mean South Ealing Food Cupboard, where food that supermarkets have overstocked on is given away to the public, avoiding it being wasted. For some people, it's the most fun that they have with GoodGym, turning carrot chaos into tomato tranquility.

Today was no different, with crates full of oranges and tangerines, fresh turkey and the now common sight of Hello Fresh meal kits that'd been torn open, mixing all of the ingredients together randomly. Alan and Sevan helped some of the regulars haul the second delivery inside, where Iram and Martin were helping to unpack and organise everything in the 2 small rooms that are the Food Cupboard. Eventually everyone moved onto sorting donations and stacking shelves and fridges.

Bananas are ever present too and some of today's delivery had seen better days. Iram took on the task of sorting through the crates, finding the ones that were almost or already turned to mush and disposing of them. There were still a lot of bananas, so everyone grabbed a bunch to take home and there was a tempting stack of biscuit boxes near the door too 😋.