25. The Sunday Pantry: How Food Nourishes Community with Shelli Spotts
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[00:00:00] So what do a cup of flour and an extra cabbage have to do with building stronger relationships in a community? In this episode, Shelley Spotts and I discuss how food, and more importantly, how we share in preparing and enjoying our food strengthens both body and soul and builds collective relationships Welcome back to Grow in the Light.
I'm so delighted to have Shelley Spotts with me today. Shelley and I work together with Big Ocean Women in doing their communications monthly newsletter. And I love Shelley's writing style. She's a gifted writer and a teacher of writing at BYU. And, and I am just delighted to have you come and talk about this latest piece that you wrote, I Call It Community: Ponderings on the Sunday Pantry.
Mm. It's a delightful topic. So Shelley, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. Um, my name is Shelley. I, yeah, I'm a writer. I am a writing teacher. I teach at Brigham Young University, where I've actually taught since about 2013. I did my MFA in creative writing there. So I have four kids and a husband and three dogs and six chickens.
Wow. And we live in a little house sort of close to the foot of the mountain, and it's chaotically fun and peaceful at times. No. That's a- But- ... positive. Yeah. Yeah One thing I love about you, and we may be at some future point are gonna do a podcast just about this, but tell listeners about your front door.
Oh my gosh. I have a Dutch door, and you don't see them a lot. You especially don't see them a lot in places where it's cold during the winter, um, because it's sometimes hard to seal them against the, the weather. But it flip- it splits into two, so you can open just the top part of the door and leave the bottom part closed.
And I saw a bunch of them when we were on vacation one time, and we had been living in our house about 10, 10 or 15 years, and it was time to replace the door. And I said to my husband, "I really would like to replace it with a Dutch door." And so we did, and it's really fun to sit in my front room where I write.
I write in my living room. Um, every time I talk about having an office my husband is like, "Great, but I know you're not gonna write there." And I'm like, "Okay." But I would like ... Because I like to be in the middle of the, of, of whatever's happening. And so I sit and I write, and we'll have the top half of the door open, and you can hear people as they walk by, and you can hear the sound of the community and the neighborhood and the kids and the dogs.
The dogs love it because they can peek up over the top edge and see what's happening in the world. So but it's, to me, I think a really great- metaphor. The, I have too many things in my house that I just buy because they're metaphors for something which is- I love that ... the bane of being an English professor, right?
It just symbolizes, like, opening, throwing open your door to the life that's passed it, and, and I love that about it. I've always loved that symbolism. And I love that about you. That this concept of being part of something bigger than ourselves- Mm-hmm ... part of the collective, part of the community. It just oozes out of you, and I love that.
Yeah. And this piece that we're gonna talk about today is, it stems from that- Yes ... this sense of community, and how food, that very physical, [00:04:00] bodily senses, excitement, like feeding that hunger, smelling, tasting, touching, is just in our humanness and connects- Yeah ... us into that community. It's very basic to who we are as people, right?
The food we eat, the people we feed, the, the communities we gather around our kitchen tables or, you know, on picnics. Like, even f- I think most people's very first memories revolve around occasions where food was present, right? And you have family mem- memories wrapped up in food, where you have specific dishes that your grandma or your, or your mom, or your great-grandmother used to make, and they get passed down.
Um, my sister made a family cookbook this year for all of, uh, all of the grand- the grandkids, my kids and her kids and, and, um, included, like, everyone's family recipe. The, the thing is, like, this, this tall. It is like a tome. Um, but we had to include all the recipes. So, um, yeah, food is really integral to who we are, and it's, I think, also really integral to how we experience life.
Um, the lack of food is really integral to what we can accomplish. You know, the, the first thing we have to think about with, with people who do not have sufficient is how do we feed them physically before you can talk about feeding anyone spiritually or emotionally or intellectually, because you cannot do any of the other things until you're fed physically first.
I love that. And, and at Girl in the Light here, I emphasize that soulful approach of body- Yeah ... spirit, heart, and mind. Yeah. Like, we're whole creatures, and all of those needs are so important. Yeah. But what you're just emphasizing is if those bodily needs aren't being seen and addressed and honored, then it's hard for the others to find their place of balance.
Yeah. You can't address lack of community or lack of, of anything really unless the person is in a place of safety. And I think taking care of people's basic needs, food, shelter, clothing to wear, uh, those types of things are essential to being able to address anything else. Yeah. So, and, and food is the most emergent one, and so I think it's the one that we tend to look at maybe more carefully.
Yeah. Um. And there's such a flair of creativity and delight. Yes. Yeah. Food is so fun, right? The food that- It is really fun and really individual. So I'll never forget a party I organized once for church group, and we were doing a, um... We were doing sort of a Christmas around the world theme. Uh-huh. And we deci- we decided we would have dishes, um, from all around the world.
And so we had everyone sign up for different things to make. Um, and one of them was paella. We're gonna have everyone make rice. It's chicken and rice, people. And we handed out recipes. The differences in how these dishes came back looking were mind-blowing. Because, like, here... I'm... It was maybe 15 or 20 years ago.
I'm younger. I'm very, like, enthusiastic about this. I'm like, "Look, take this recipe and make this exactly like this, and everything will come back, and it'll all look identical." And no, every dish was different. And it was so fun to see how everyone, like, individualized the thing that you asked them to do and brought their own contribution in.
So it was- That's beautiful ... it was a really fun experience. Such, such neat symbolism in that, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's delightful. So I want to read this quote by James Beard that said, "Food is our common ground, our [00:08:00] universal experience." Yeah. I think that's such a community-building concept, that it's like a Venn diagram, that we all are so different, right, in so many ways, but we overlap in our need for food- Yes
and in our willingness to, like, put down our barriers a little bit and come and gather around the food, around the table, and in so doing, share more of this universal common experience that food kind of is the doorway into. Yeah. So what's that quote mean to you? I think, to me, I really love that quote, and I really like a lot of what he writes about food.
Um, for me, food is something that binds us together, and a lot of people will look at food from different locations in the world, and, uh, different communities and different cultures, and what they see is the differences. At the same time, I love the fact that food is universal, and there is so much of similarity to it.
My kids have gotten so that they love to point out the similarities. So they were making calzones the other day, and so they were pointing out all of the other foods that are like a calzone. There's dumplings- That have, like, a bread component- ... pierogies ... and a meat component- Yes ... and a cheese component.
It's, it's a meat wrapped in a pastry and cooked in some way. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so they were going through all of the cultural foods they know that are like that, um, from all the different places. Like your empanadas is the same thing. Yes. Right? An empan- empanada is the same thing. A dumpling is the same thing.
Yeah. A potsticker is the same thing. And so it's really interesting to me to see not only how food has sort of through lines. You know, you've got flatbreads in every culture. You've got a tortilla or a pita or a, you know, whatever type of flatbread is, is in that culture. But also how we experience food is similar, and there's a through line in that as well.
Uh, we experience food in communion with other people. We experience food at times of, um, celebration and times of grief. We experience food wrapped up in, um, everyone's firsts and everyone's lasts. And, and to me, it's more than just the item of food, but the experience of it as well. Oh, that's such a beautiful thought.
Yeah. Tell, tell me how this universal experience of the need for food tied into this concept of the Sunday Pantry. So the Sunday Pantry is something sort of funny, and it was not something we had officially titled for a really long time. Um, but I've now lived in the same neighborhood for 25 years. So there's a certain, like, I relish that community building of just having been someplace for a really long time, because you get to know people in a different way.
Um, but the, the Sunday Pantry started out because I did not plan. Did not plan for a meal, and then it was Sunday, and we're all getting ready for church, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I am out of flour." And I ran to my neighbor's house and borrowed a cup of flour from them. And then the next Sunday they were out of butter, and they came and borrowed some butter from me.
And then the next Sunday, the neighbor across the street was like, "I saw you guys running across the street to borrow. What were you doing?" 'Cause, 'cause we're nosy like that, right? What was happening? And I was like, "Oh, we ran out of something and I just had to borrow, I just had to borrow some flour, and they had to borrow some butter."
And she's like, "Oh, that's brilliant. I hate going to the store on Sundays," which we try to avoid as much as possible. And [00:12:00] Somehow it just became like this neighborhood, especially like really tight neighborhood thing where if someone was out of something, we just called around. "Who has this? Who has that?"
And it, it was uniquely something that happened because we didn't wanna shop on Sundays, um, because we were trying to put the focus on family and spiritual matters. At the same time, it's so emblematic of, I think, what we should be doing all the time, right? Where we should be pooling resources, where we should be sharing what we have.
Leaning into each other. Yes, yes. Yeah. And the interaction is part of it. There- The saying of, "I need you," and this, and someone else- Yes ... saying, "I want to share and to meet the need." Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That reciprocity. And, and so it has crept out of Sunday. It's, it's crept to the place where now like pretty much if anyone needs something, and we don't wanna run to the store for the one thing, th- we, there's just sort of a little bit of a calling that happens.
And sometimes two people will need things, and I have this, and they have this, and we swap around. Yeah. So I mentioned this in the article. The weirdest thing I think I've ever been asked for is if I had a cabbage, just because it's not... Like, you think of borrowing flour and sugar and butter and stuff like that, but you don't often think of borrowing cabbage.
Much less having cabbage. Right? But I happen to have it. Well, and that's also not true, because my neighbors call me if they need weird ingredients. Like, I cook enough that they're always like- Like tamarind sauce. "Do you have oyster sauce?" Yep. I do, in fact, have oyster sauce. Or, "Do you have molasses?" I do, in fact, have molasses.
Um, so if they need something that's a little bit out of the ordinary, they know I probably have it. Um, but yeah, there's like this power that comes in, in o- And, and it's something that's never... Like, it's reciprocated in- In going forward. It's not ever something that's reciprocated in, "I borrowed a stick of butter, I'm going to bring you another stick of butter."
Right? So it's not transactional. It's not transactional. Just a collective- And that is the thing- Yeah ... that to me has been the most beautiful thing about it, is that it is sort of this we all put our resources in together, and we know we can borrow from any of us. And it becomes more of that gift economy- Yeah
where I have this and you have this, and we need to put this together and, and somehow we come out with a cake at the end of it. Right? Yeah. No one had all the ingredients to make a cake, but at the end of the day, we end up with a cake. Which I think is a really beautiful metaphor for how community should function.
Because when we reduce everything to a transaction, we are putting a price on it that I think makes community, it cheapens community. As we enact that in that very physical way- Yes ... with the cup of sugar and the egg and the, the cabbage- Right ... we learn mentally and emotionally that we're doing this as well.
This- Yeah ... I'm leaning into you, and I can be authentic with my need with you. And, and it's just received, but it's, it's a gift economy like you said, not a transactional. Another, a- another time where... Because I feel like that almost prepares, like this idea of the pantry and food almost prepares people for what this is like.
But I'm thinking of a time that my neighbor, um, unexpectedly brought a baby home. Which sounds weird. No, they were trying to adopt for a really long time, and, um, they hadn't had any inkling that, that anything was gonna go through. And they got a call one night, um, really late, and they were like, "We have a baby for you if you would like to pick them up."
And it was like Saturday night. Whoa. At, like, midnight. And, [00:16:00] and so they obviously were very excited, and they went. And can I tell you, by like 8:00 AM the next morning, the whole neighborhood had like brought diapers and wipes and something different from everyone. A couple of outfits, a, a diaper bag until so- You know, just everything- Yeah
that everyone had left and, or, or that they weren't using, or that they thought maybe they could use in the moment. And I watch things like that happen, and it's such a testament to me that, that what we want to do as humans is interact with each other free of the restrictions of transaction. Yeah. That we want to be giving.
To give freely. Um, and that that is, that our human nature is to come together and to share in those ways. So why do we sometimes not do that? Oh, I, absolutely the commodification of our community by, um, by big business and by this- idea that even our m- time has to have money associated with it. And I think it's been a deliberate effort on the part of large corporations and larger influences.
Because if you convince a community that everything has to g- be commodified, then you have to go somewhere to purchase it all. Then that organic sharing doesn't happen, so you have to turn to outside stores and outside forces to say, "Oh, I, I must purchase all of the needs that I have," instead of organically finding some of them.
Relying on other people. And to purchase some of our needs, yes, we need to purchase some of our needs, but there's a lot that could be happening organically. Yeah. Um- And then not only is it meeting the need, but it is connecting the people- Yes ... through that- Yeah, well, when y- ... through that process ... 'cause when you look at it, even, you know, and, and I'll pull this back to food 'cause we're talking about food, but even the way we consume food is being changed by, by big business.
They're even pushing people out of the communal experience of, like, going to a restaurant together and sharing an experience together with, like, Uber and DoorDash and- DoorDash ... like, just- To deliver it right to your door ... just have it delivered to my door, where I can eat it- Mm-hmm ... in isolation in my house with no one.
Instead of having to go out, and even if purchasing the food is something you do, you would interact with people. Or you would say, "Hey, I'm gonna go get something to eat. Do you wanna come with me?" And it would be a, a communal happening, where you were sharing part of your life with someone. Yeah. And the more isolated we become, the less community-minded we become, the more we have to put money into, um, into our system to receive the things that we need, even emotionally.
Because we're not meeting our emotional needs in an organic way. Yeah. So. That's very true. And this is where the body, spirit, heart, and mind, those needs are so very interconnected. Yeah. But there's something magical about the food, 'cause we need to eat every day. We need to eat, and we need to eat meals every day.
And how much better is a meal that you share with someone else? I love it. There's a part of your article I wanna read. It says, "I have to wonder as we cook and bake and saute and fry, as we consume together the things which we have made, I have to consider what if we take in more than calories and nutrients and nutrition?
What if we are consuming collaboration and culture and care with every ingredient and every bite, making it an essential part of our bodies and our lives?" Yeah. I just love that. It's magical. I love that idea. Like, I think when we think [00:20:00] about food, food is about so much more than the ingredients it's made of, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, it's about the experience of making. It's about the experience of sharing. It's about the experience of consuming. And if we're- mindful about it, we enrich ourselves with these experiences. Yeah. And if we're not, we feel isolated in these experiences, so. I totally wanna share an experience. When my family moved to Ohio, where we live now, we moved from Utah, so quite far, knew no one, right?
And we're in this new home and unpacking, and at my door just a couple of days into this, knock, knock, knock. It was these two women from my church community that said, "Welcome to the area, and we want to bring you this Dorothy Lane killer brownie," which is, like, so iconic of this area in Ohio, and I'd never heard of it.
That they wanted- Of course ... to share, like, "This is where you're moving," right? Is this- Yes ... place that's known for these great brownies. And so they shared this killer brownie with me. But it wasn't just about the brownie. Like, as fabulous as that brownie and the caramel and the all of the deliciousness was, it was two women I didn't know showed up on the doorstep of my house to welcome me to a community, to a home, to a place where people shared food with each other- Yeah
and welcomed each other with their hearts. So the killer brownie became that symbol of I'm opening my heart to you, and I'm welcoming the sweetness of connection together- Yes ... of the food. And I love what... I love that because not only were they there, so you have this, like, community interaction going, where- where you're meeting new people and you're interacting for the first time, and they're bringing you something.
But they brought something that was special to them, right? Yeah. They brought something that was unique to the area. They brought something that said, "Hey, I know you're coming from somewhere m- maybe far away. We don't know yet. We don't know you. But we wanna show you that this is a really cool place to be, and this is something we love," right?
And I think that that's something that's so powerful about food, especially food made with care. Um, my, my mother-in-law has been gone since 2018 now, so seven years, and still there are very specific foods that are her recipes, and my kids ask for those recipes. And they ask for us to make those food.
Today I made rice pudding because we had some rice left over and- and it is what she always used to do with leftover rice. Aw. We make rice pudding. Um, and it's grandma's recipe. And so it i- it becomes so much more than just the recipe. It becomes memories, and it becomes experiences, and it becomes this way of saying, "Hey, this is something special to me."
And so if you share that with someone who is not, that you don't know well or that you're just meeting for the first time, you're saying, "Hey, this is a little piece of me." And it represents something that I love. And it's really a moment, actually, of vulnerability. Yeah. Often we don't recognize that. So there's my neighbor, um, years and years ago, and she's passed away since then.
She was older. Uh, she shared a sourdough start with my husband and I, and I've almost killed it once or twice, but it has pulled through every time. There, there are times that I am really good about keeping the sourdough alive, and every once in a while it gets put somewhere and forgotten for a little bit, and then I'm like, "Oh no, the start."
But, um, it ... She got it, she got this sourdough start from a bakery in San Francisco in [00:24:00] 1959. Wow. And had kept it alive, and my kids sometimes are like, "We're eating 1959 bread." I'm like, "No, just it's, it's just the start. It's fine." Um, but it was something that meant something to her. She had moved here to Utah from San Francisco, and it was something she loved to do, to make bread, and, and she knew I liked to cook, and so she shared that with us.
And it's now something that I share with other people. I did a sourdough class, um, for a group of women. We had about 30 pe- I, I made 30 little, little starts to give away when we did that. And I, I just had that moment when I did that- Sh- and she had been gone for a couple of years at that point. Um, and I thought, "I wonder if Bevelyn knows that her little sourdough start has been sent out into the world in all of these different places."
Oh. And some of those people from the class that I taught have moved since then, and I hope that it's still going, and that they're sharing it with other people, right? Which, to me, is really emblematic of, of what food can do. Mm-hmm. Right? That you share a little bit of yourself with someone else, and they take that and they share it with someone else, and, and it rolls forward in that way.
I love that, and that's how the light grows, right? Yes. Is by our sharing. And a sourdough starter is such a perfect symbol of that. My kids laugh because I never make one or two loaves of bread. It's always three or four. But it's, that's very deliberate because I know they're gonna eat one loaf right out of the oven.
It's, there's, it's gonna be gone, right? So if you wanna have a loaf of bread for sandwiches, you have to make at least two. And then there's always someone who needs a loaf of bread, so you have to make at least three. There's always someone who could use a loaf of bread. And, and maybe it's just that they needed something to make sandwiches on, and maybe it's that they needed to know that someone was thinking about them.
Wow. And, you know, you never know unless you're looking, and I think it's that mindfulness. I, and I love what a mindset that is. That I'm living a life that I create an extra loaf- Yeah ... or that I create an extra plate of cookies- Yeah ... so that not only are we gonna enjoy them, we're gonna take them to someone, right?
That's the most, that's the most fun thing about food. You can make the most amazing dish ever, and if you're sitting in your kitchen eating it alone, you've missed the point. Yeah. Food is to be shared. And, uh, to me, like, all of food is a symbol. It's, it's such a metaphor for our lives. Our lives are to be shared.
Christmas has just passed, and people talk a lot about gathering with family, and sometimes how much work it is, and it is. It's a lot of work to have a bunch of people over and to feed them all. But it's also the thing people remember, and it's what brings people together, and it's what binds those community and family ties and friendship ties.
And, and it's such a symbol of how we should be building our world because we're the ones who decide what it looks like. And if we decide that we're going to be isolated and we're gonna be lonely and we're going to just, um, take care of our own needs, then we live a very limited life. And metaphorically, if we throw the front door open and welcome people in, we live a very abundant life.
Well, Shelley, I'm wondering if you could end with this quote about darkness and light Yeah. This is actually the very end of the essay I wrote, um, and it's the first thing that came to me, um, for- Is this darkness is not overcome by despair, but through our efforts to turn on the light. It seems fitting somehow as I sit here writing this essay in the cold, dark days of a snowless winter [00:28:00] to remember that we are not victims of the dark.
We defy it. We strike the match and light the candle and turn on the stove and set something fragrant to bubble on the back burner. We change the world through sharing the power of collective good and eggs and flour and love, a love that chooses to create communion by serving the individual, a love that chooses to walk up close to someone new and say, "Hey, I haven't seen you around here before.
Can we be friends? And do you happen to have a cup of flour to spare?" Mm. I love that. It's so yummy to my soul. You're, you're putting a... How you piece the words together and also the message that you're sharing, that community matters. Interacting in each other's lives, nourishing the souls of one another through this avenue of food and sharing- Right
really, really matters. We are, I think, bound together just because we live at the same time and sometimes in the same areas and our paths intersect, and that is inescapable. It's part of being human. I think it's one of the most beautiful parts of being human, so it might as well be delicious as well. Oh, I love that, Shelley.
I was just gonna ask you what your closing message is, and I think you just stated it. Like, we're interacting and we need to share, and it may as well be delicious. Yeah, like, we live this life. It may as well be a delicious one. It may as well be a beautiful one. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. Shelley, I really appreciate it, and we're gonna link to this essay in the show notes.
I'm really gonna encourage the listeners to go and read it because it's beautiful, and you have some beautiful questions in it, some beautiful thought-provoking passages that I think are good for all of us to just contemplate. As good words are, they're just as delicious as good food. They are. Do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners?
I would say just look for who needs to be fed, and it might be you, and it might be your neighbor, and it might be your kids. And if we feed the world, we're doing our job at creating a community. Yeah. And as we feed others, we find we ourselves are filled. Yes. Right? That's the magic of it. Yeah. It's amazing.
Well, thank you for joining us today, Shelley. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. This episode makes me hungry, not just for some yummy food, but also for the yummy, cozy, enriching experience of sharing it with those I love. And when it comes to our soulful approach to understanding ourselves and others, I hope you felt a nudge of how you can apply Chellie's perspective for not only nourishing bodies, but also nourishing souls.
Check out the link to Chellie's essay in the show notes. I also invite you to consider how you can share food and this episode with someone you love. That's a beautiful way that you can help make the world a little bit brighter, one ray of light at a time
