Once a month, 79-year-old Ann Gaskill pulls her Dodge Caravan into the parking lot of the Ark Church in Conroe, where Combined Arms, a Houston-based veterans organization, operates one of its mobile food pantries throughout the region. Gaskill started using the program after her husband, an Air Force veteran, died, limiting her income.
Whenever the third Thursday of the month rolls around, Gaskill returns to her senior living community from the Ark with her haul of fresh vegetables and meat and starts looking for recipes to test. Whatever she doesn’t use, she passes along to friends and neighbors.
“My [mom] and my paternal grandmother helped raise my brother and me, so we always had food on the table, and that’s important,” Gaskill told the Texas Observer at her Shenandoah apartment. “If I can share with somebody, I’ll ask, ‘Can you use this?’ I’m not real big on throwing food away.”
