OLEAN — One volunteer has already baked 104 dozen Christmas cookies for the Bethany Lutheran Church cookie collection to help the needy at the Olean Food Pantry — but dozens upon dozens of homemade cookies are still needed.
That was the message from Gail Cross, an organizer of Bethany Lutheran’s annual collection of homemade cookies for the food pantry’s needy, who have increased by 70 percent since the start of the pandemic.
“We’ve been bagging (cookies) the last couple of weeks and we’ll be doing it every Sunday after church” throughout December, Cross said of the parking lot church services currently conducted at Bethany Lutheran at 6 Leo Moss Drive.
At present, the small group of volunteers have bagged 225 dozen of the 252 dozen donated. The bagged cookies have already been sent to the food pantry at 8 Leo Moss Drive to include with the food distribution this week.
“The lines (at the food pantry) are long, and they gave out 85 dozen cookies (Monday),” Cross said, noting the rest of the 225 delivered cookies will probably be given out during Friday’s distribution. “The need is great. They’ve always given out a dozen cookies to a family, unless there are a whole bunch of kids and then we leave that to the discretion of the pantry people.”
Cross said the cookie program, which is 14 years old, encourages donors to provide homemade cookies, if possible.
“We’d like to see them home-baked if they can,” she remarked. “They don’t have to necessarily be Christmas cookies, although those are wonderful.”
She said the woman who baked and delivered the 104 dozen cookies had frosted and decorated some of the cookies.
“She said, ‘This is one of my skill sets and I love doing it,’” Cross said of the volunteer baker.
“She’s retired, she doesn’t have children and she loves to do that. And she’ll be bringing more, I know that.”
Cross said the program will likely need to collect more than the 458 dozen cookies donated last year because of the additional recipients at the food pantry.
She is also hopeful more community members will pull out the flour, sugar and cookie sheets this year due to the fact that school groups will not be available to contribute, as in the past.
“The need is greater for individuals to bake this year because we’ve lost all of our school sources,” she said of area students. “Either they’re remote, or if they are in session but they don’t know how many kids they’re going to have that day in school. And they can’t work in groups like they usually do.”
Cross said the cookies will be accepted through the end of December as the church volunteers will continue to bag them and deliver to the food pantry until then. She asked that the cookies are baked using Covid-19 guidelines, to ensure safety. The cookies are also bagged by volunteers who wear gloves and masks.
“We are so grateful to the people who do bake for us — and the people who receive it are just so delighted when they get something like that,” she commented.
Individuals who want to set up a time to drop off cookies at the church, or have them picked up, are asked to call 372-3115 or 560-5235.
December 02, 2020 at 08:00PM
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Need is greater than ever for homemade holiday cookies for the needy - Olean Times Herald
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