Amber Summers-Graham, Lisa Simmons, and Emily Malik

[00:04] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: My name is Amber Summers-Graham Graham and I am 46 years old. Today's date is May 19, 2023 and we're in Logan, Utah and I'm with Emily and Lisa, my co volunteers. All right. My name is Emily Malik. I'm 43 years old. Today is May 19, 2023 and we are in Logan, Utah. I am here with Amber and Lisa and we are all Loves and Fishes meal coordinators.

[00:30] LISA SIMMONS: My name is Lisa Simmons. I am 41. Today's date is May 19, 2023. We are in Logan, Utah. I'm with Emily and Amber and we are all meal coordinators or former meal coordinators for the Cache Valley Loaves and Fishes community meal. Now this meal started in 2010 with Rachel von Niederhausern had the idea to do a Christmas meal for the community. She and her brother Adam Whitney had the idea. They had some donations for the food, they had volunteers, they just needed a location. So they went to the Cash Community Connections group, which is a group of faith groups in the valley that was formed after 911 and they pitched their idea. And it just so happened that the First Presbyterian Church here in Logan had recently renovated Bruner Hall, a location that they had, and their kitchen area. And it was just perfectly suited to this and the, they really wanted to open this space to the community and so that was perfect for the space. So that first meal, I was not there, but I heard There were about 50 participants and about 250 volunteers and they had a lot of food and it was great. And then after that, the conversations came about having a meal regularly, a similar meal throughout the year. And so in early 2011, the loaves and Fishes community meal was started with donations from the food pantry here, the Bishop store house from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. A lot of different grocery stores and community partners came together. It first started as a once a month meal and then I think a couple years into it, it became a twice a week meal and it's now held every first and third Saturday at the Presbyterian church.

[02:31] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: So what drew you towards getting involved with Loaves and Fishes as a meal planner?

[02:36] LISA SIMMONS: So at the time when this first started, I had seen the posters around and I had heard it advertised on the radio and I was just looking for volunteer opportunities in general. And this really spoke to me. I don't know how to cook very well, especially for lots of people. And so that was. I don't think I would have been involved if it, if I would have known that it would have involved A lot of cooking at the beginning, but it just seemed like a really great way to meet people. And at the time, they had a chef who would kind of come up with a menu and tell us what to buy. And I thought, well, I can do that. I can take a shopping list and go get all the things. And then gradually, the chef had other things come up, and there were a few other chefs that kind of came in wet. But at some point, I realized that we could just Google recipes and do math, like, times them by 30. And then it became less intimidating. But I think the initial was just a. It was a good opportunity, and it wasn't as intimidating as it might have been if I had known.

[03:42] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: How many years did you do that lead male coordinator position before Amber came in? Yeah.

[03:47] LISA SIMMONS: When did you come?

[03:48] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: I don't remember.

[03:49] LISA SIMMONS: Yeah, it was maybe like, four, five, I'm guessing.

[03:55] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: I want to say it blurs. It does blur, I think. So I got started because I work up at USU Utah State University here in Logan with. With Lisa. We were colleagues, and I was in the honors program at the time as their advisor, and we were looking for volunteer opportunities for these students. And Lisa had sent an email around just saying, you know, we're looking for some people to help with our turkey feast that we hold close to Thanksgiving. And I had a handful of honors students who wanted to do it. So we signed up and went and helped, and it was. It was so fun, and they loved it. And then after that, I'm like, oh, I want to do this again. And so I asked her if she was looking for help, and she was. She was looking to recruit a couple new meal planners. And so I went to a training and signed up, and that was kind of. That. So it kind of went from there.

[04:44] LISA SIMMONS: But that's great, Emily. How did you get involved?

[04:48] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: So I had a group that I wanted to bring to a volunteer experience, and I ended up working with Amy Anderson, and she was on the board at the time, and to bring that group to a meal. And I think I only ended up recruiting, like, five people. But then I went to the meal myself, and it was such a good experience that I think I talked to Ann, Amber, maybe, and Lisa and said, how do I get involved? And you're like, great. This is wonderful. And so I did. I was just helping with meals for a while, but I kind of just really love cooking, and I really love. Kind of, kind of. In contrast to Lisa, I love cooking, and I loved the challenge of scaling up the recipes and making it all happen. And so I became a meal coordinator after not too many meals, I don't think. And then when Amber had a lot of obligations, I kind of took over and as the lead meal coordinator. And I've been doing it since, but I think all of our experiences have been super different over the years.

[05:44] LISA SIMMONS: Yeah, it's so true. I'm interested in how it changed when. What both of you experienced. When I was first doing it, it was very. It was in its formative stages. And so there was one meal coordinator usually there per meal, sometimes two. And we were cooking for about 70 people the beginning, like 50 to 70 people, which is totally different than cooking for three. Sounds like a dream. 500 people. And we were. It was. It was just a lot smaller scale. And I think there was a lot more. There were a lot more regulars, I think, who came to those early meals. There still are, but it was more of a core group that would come to every meal. One of my favorites were sometimes there were people that I knew would be very honest about the food. And if they liked it, you knew they were genuine. And if they didn't like it, they would totally let you know and why. Which was helpful. It was helpful to know because you knew a compliment was so genuine.

[06:47] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: It's true. I think we still have some of those. Except for that. They don't tell me. So you just hear it like, yeah.

[06:55] LISA SIMMONS: Amber, how is it different when you were in charge?

[06:58] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: So we were. When I. When I was working, it was the few years before COVID And so we were. We had a lot of people that would come in person, and we had a lot of people that would come and get what we call to go's. So they will come through the food line and fill these styrofoam packages, and then they would take them home. And so I would say, you know, half of the meals we were serving were in person, and the other half were people just coming to get them either to eat throughout the week, or they would come and get them for their neighbors that would take them to neighbors. And so maybe that comes to the point of the purpose of loaves and fishes, I think morphs with what our community faces from time to time. So when you started, it was definitely about building community. I think it's always been that way. And then, you know, I think when I was doing it, there's a lot of food insecurity and food need. And so there's a lot of people that are just taking food so that they had food to eat during the week. And then there's the people that come and eat so that they're not alone. You know, this might be the only meal that they don't eat alone for the week. So there's this wide variety. And then Emily, you experienced something. So Emily took over just right before COVID really. And then you had to navigate keeping this organization afloat during COVID and then post Covid. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. We knew one thing. I mean, I really hardly did loaves and fishes before the pandemic and all the shutdowns and everything took over. And I just knew one thing, that we wouldn't maybe be able to come back if we shut down for the entire time. I mean, everything was so uncertain. We had no idea if it was going to be two months, two years. Like, everything was so uncertain. And so we. We did take a long break, and then we came back and had no idea what to expect, but we ended up doing takeout only, and we ended up doing that for, I want to say, almost a whole year. And then when we could come back to in person dining, when the, you know, First Presbyterian Church and our board felt comfortable with that, we were still, you know, having so many people that wanted us to just put it in the trunk of their car and so they could drive off. So we were sometimes doing 375 meals. And that is a lot, especially when you're packaging them all to go. It became very expensive. It became very challenging. And then you're managing volunteers, but there's very little interaction with the community at that point in time. And so it was a challenging time. And then also now we're back to in person. Our meal numbers are, you know, around 250, 275 people or meals that we're serving every week. But we did have to really evaluate, like, what is our mission and why are we here and what do we want to accomplish by having these meals. And we've had to kind of crack down on saying, you have to dine in to get to go meals. You have to. I mean, not really, because our mission is to create community above and all or above everything else. So it was kind of challenging. It really was. But I'm so glad that we're back on track. And, you know, we still. We've gotten back a lot of our regulars. You know, we have our table of seniors that are there and they're all friends, and we have so many regulars that come and, you know, I didn't even get to know all of our regulars before we had. Before the Pandemic really hit, so. So it was kind of. It's just good to see the familiar faces back and that our numbers are a little more manageable and that with our volunteers interacting with the community has been fantastic. How do you think our mission has solidified, like from the beginning to now? Its inception, and in its inception it was to bring the community together over a meal, break bread together. People of all faith or no faith or in between. Right. Every walk of life. Yeah. Like the food insecure, the non food insecure. The people just want to meet people or need people in their lives. Like, gosh, that's such a good question.

[10:54] LISA SIMMONS: Yeah. And I think I remember the pastor at the time, Pastor Hines, he talked about the impact of breaking bread together and how that breaks down barriers. And I think the whole time there have been a group of people who come just to be supportive. We don't really know, and I love this, we don't really know who's there because they need food or because they need community or because they just know that like having people there to bring the space to life and have conversations with others and to jump up and clean up tables or clean up a mess or help clear tables if. If need be. There are a lot of people who come because they support the mission in a lot of different ways. And I think I'm having a hard time figuring out like articulating how the mission has solidified. But I think the reason it has solidified is we have so many supporters that I can think of that are just there a lot to be there and do what needs being done. And sometimes that's sitting down and talking to people who are there for community and don't want to eat a meal alone.

[12:04] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah. And I think that there's something really magical about the volunteer experience. So having been in a space where it was just us feeding people, like literally we were just throwing them food in containers to go and never really interacting with anyone. To watching us come back to this more like community oriented organization. Like, I think there's something magical about that volunteer experience and being a part of that kind of organization. And that's how I know like one we're really meeting. Our mission is just because you get the chills when you're at a meal, you're like, oh my gosh, we're making like an impact in people's lives. And you know, we're making an impact on the people that are coming and volunteering with us, that are dining with us. And you know, you watch all this come Together and, oh my gosh, it takes a huge village, a huge village of people to make this happen. And like. And you just. It's like something you feel when you experience it, not necessarily that you can describe maybe. I don't know. Yeah, it's true. And the volunteer opportunity, speaking more on that. It's like one of the things I love about it is how depending on the groups that are volunteering, so the operation is run completely by volunteers, and we have a different volunteer group or groups that come to each and every meal that quote, unquote, own the meal, so to speak. So they're providing all of the labor. And. And when you have several small groups together that might be very diverse, it's really fun to see them sitting at a table chopping celery together and talking about their backgrounds and asking questions of each other. And then by the time it's over, you know, they're exchanging phone numbers or they're saying, oh, I hope we see each other again in another meal. And that is, to me, that's total evidence of what this meal is doing for our community.

[13:50] LISA SIMMONS: One of my favorite ones was we had a neighborhood who did it together, and they like put signs on doors, like they knocked on doors. They got a lot of people out. And then listening to the conversations were so cool. Like, there was a lot of like, oh, you live in the white house on the corner. Oh, like, I think you're like, your flower beds are really awesome. And just chit chatting and people who would have. Who live right by each other but haven't interacted. This provided a way for them to interact.

[14:21] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah. And I mean, honestly, more recently, we've. We've kind of grown our volunteer group that are like on our side of things. And so it's just exposing more people to those kind of conversations and with different backgrounds. And it's been really neat. We had a group the other day that was paired with a group that I was like, oh, this is gonna be an interesting five hours of my life. But it ended up going exactly like Amber just said, like it was. I mean, they were all just chit chatting and getting to know each other. And I mean, these people probably would have never interacted outside of this meal. And I think that's kind of my favorite part. Yeah.

[15:00] LISA SIMMONS: Any memorable experiences that you can recall over your years, like either challenges or funny stories? Yes.

[15:13] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: I'll start. So we do a huge holiday meal in the third Saturday in December, and it's a feast, like, and. And they go all out. It's like, roast and turkey and all the fixings you can think of. And this day probably takes, like, three days of cooking and planning and organization to come to fruition. And I can remember we do a special punch, and one of our volunteers was making punch in one of those big.

[15:41] LISA SIMMONS: Cool.

[15:42] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: The coolers, the orange coolers, and we use dry ice. And they screwed the lid on the cooler. And I was out in the dining room, and I hear this explosion. Like, a bomb went off. And the lid shot off. The cooler hit the ceiling of the church. And then, like, punch was splattered all across the ceiling of the church. And anyways, there were some people that I think hit the deck. And it took us, I don't know, weeks to probably get the punch off the ceiling. But it was just one of those funny situations where we're just. We just all laugh together. It's silly, but. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think a meal goes by where there's. I mean, I guess there's some that go off without anything, you know, weird happening. But there's always something like, you'll. You'll come and you'll get out your tortillas, and they'll, like, have gone bad, and you're like, oh, like, what do we do? And it just honestly just always works out. I know that's not funny, but it is kind of like, when you think about it after, you're like, okay, we had 20 minutes to feed 250 people, and somehow we managed to get enough tortillas to figure this out. Like, I don't even know how that happened, you know, but moment. You're kind of like, why do I do this?

[16:47] LISA SIMMONS: Definitely one time we were making a meal with a lot of spices, and I did all the math. You know, we were. It was a big amount of spices, but little. Lots of little spices. And so someone said, go to the grocery store where they sell the spices in bulk and measure them out. And then that's the best way to. Rather than buying, like, a jar of each spice. So, so I go to the grocery store and get there and realize there are no measuring spoons or a little. And so I just guess and try to guess a little over. So we have enough. And I put these all in little baggies and label them as spices, and then get to the meal, and things get busy. And then at one point, someone was like, okay, I mixed all the spices together, and I was like, where are the leftovers? And they were like, they were not measured in little baggies. And at this point, the Damage was done. Like, this meal was put together with all the spices that I had eyeballed and not even eyeballed very accurately. I could try to have too much. So we would. And we didn't really know what to do. But then people kept tasting it and they were like, well, I don't know. I think. I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, but I think it's fine. We served the meal. Multiple people said it was delicious. A couple people were like, there's way too much. I think it was cumin or something. They were like, there's way too much. This is not good. But we served a meal and genuinely, several people said it was good.

[18:10] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: It works out. It always works out. Always. Like, I think Amber's always the one that called it the miracle of loaves and fishes. It is because there's so many examples of just like, it just works out. You're just like, okay, count to 10, take a deep breath. It's going to be okay. And then it is. It's fine. I don't know. Or like those times where you have this huge ration, you're almost running out of food and you're like, are we going to have to turn away 100 people today? Because I don't really know. And then it'll just like, no one will come for last forever. Yeah. No one will come for the last half an hour. And you're like, we dodged a bullet there. Yes. Yeah.

[18:45] LISA SIMMONS: Any really memorable food items you've made? My favorite is when we make guacamole and it's a huge serving bowl, like punch bowl size guacamole, bacon. Oh, bacon.

[18:56] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah. How many pounds of bacon did we cook? Once? Like, we had a pile of bacon that. Yeah.

[19:03] LISA SIMMONS: And like milk, jugs of grease that we. Gross. We made CREME Brulee for 301 time because we went to the food pantry and they had a pallet of creme cream, heavy cream. And in hindsight, that took a lot of work, but it was fun.

[19:19] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: What about the time where Ben helped us make the. Oh, my goodness. Now I can't remember what it's called.

[19:27] LISA SIMMONS: Was it chili verde or curry?

[19:29] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Oh, the chili verde.

[19:30] LISA SIMMONS: Oh, yeah.

[19:30] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: And we were blending peppers and tomatillos and tomatillos like until 9:00 at Jerseys

[19:37] LISA SIMMONS: And then I think we were waiting till like 1am for it to cool down, put it in the fridge. And in hindsight, we should have just cooked, like, got up early and cooked it all that morning and just let it go. Because it took forever to cool down appropriately to get it in the fridge. And then we did have one time.

[19:52] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Where the volunteers cook baked potatoes and they put them all in the fridge hot. And I get an alert on the. On the. Yeah. I was like, we need to go back there and take all those baked potatoes out for a hot second. But we went right away and got them out, so it was fine. But we got pretty good at doing cornbread in bulk. We did Remember the low country boil? There was. We did that a couple times.

[20:19] LISA SIMMONS: Yes. Like cooking a lot of food in milk cans. They steamed it in the milk cans.

[20:22] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah.

[20:23] LISA SIMMONS: And then dumped it out, and people took what they wanted.

[20:26] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: That was pretty. Pretty fun. There was the time we went to farmer Dale's and picked all of his leftover tomatoes. Remember that?

[20:34] LISA SIMMONS: Yes.

[20:35] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: And we made chili.

[20:36] LISA SIMMONS: The next we had fresh tomatoes.

[20:37] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: We had, like, four wagon fulls of tomatoes that we washed and peeled. Oh, my goodness. I think you all were more adventurous than. Maybe it was the COVID years of everything being to go. I don't know. But we're like chili, good pudding fritters. I'm not a baker, so, like, I'm glad we have some bakers on our team now because they can come up with desserts where I'm like, cookies, let's just get some cookies. But now we're having, like, sheet cakes and all sorts of fun stuff.

[21:04] LISA SIMMONS: That is one thing I am impressed with this community's ability to. To put down desserts and sugar. Like, they can like the favorites, I think favorites over the year. Pecan pie.

[21:16] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: We had a fight about pecan pie.

[21:18] LISA SIMMONS: It's a big deal if you can get a pecan pie. I think ham and au gratin potatoes was always like, I think we could have served that, like, every other meal.

[21:27] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: And we just made that again. And we ran. We made an extra pan, and we still ran out. Yeah. That is a fan favorite.

[21:33] LISA SIMMONS: Yes. Cheesy potatoes of all kind, but, man, desserts. That is. That is awesome. And I. And I love that, like, you watch people come in and they go straight to the dessert table to check it out, and there's a special feeling knowing that. That. Oh, and carrot cake.

[21:48] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Oh, yeah.

[21:49] LISA SIMMONS: When you're like, there's a carrot cake today, and you just watch the delight. I'm gonna go for that.

[21:54] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Or eggy ice cream. The kids love it when you have eggy ice cream.

[21:57] LISA SIMMONS: Yes.

[21:57] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: For. Yeah. For a while. We were posting our menu on our Facebook page, and we learned very quickly that attendance waned. And like, if you had a casserole, they're like, yeah, maybe we won't come. If you had prime rib, you'd have 400 people. So we kind of had to stop putting the menu on Facebook. But we do have prime ribs sometimes. And we actually got a chef in town to cook the prime ribs for us, and he brought them back, and they were so delicious. And people were like, bringing it back, like, can you cook this more? Because they didn't like it to be. Like, they wanted, like, a more well done. He wasn't. But I was like, this is perfection that we are doing something so amazing today. And they're like, can you cook this a little more? I was like, oh, remember when you squirt all that shrimp from the food pantry?

[22:42] LISA SIMMONS: Oh, yeah, I do remember that now.

[22:45] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: So much shrimp. And that was a treat.

[22:47] LISA SIMMONS: We got a wheel of. I don't remember the name of a cheese, but it was a huge wheel of cheese, and it was really expensive. Like, I just picked it up because I was like, great cheese. And I remember the volunteers coming, and we were shredding it up in the food processor, and we made Mac and cheese out of it. And they were like, this is really expensive Mac and cheese. Like, this is really good cheese. We had no idea. We were just like, whip it up.

[23:11] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Into a Mac and cheese. And it's so good that we have such a variety of talents and tastes on our team to coordinate. Just because there are things like Mac and cheese like that. We have one person that won't boil noodles, like, that is a thing that they won't do at a meal, and we have another person that will totally do anything. And somebody that's specialty is like, soups. So, oh, my gosh. They get a variety. Only because we have a variety. I swear it's true.

[23:36] LISA SIMMONS: So true. And it really does take a village. There are people who are good at organizing, and there are people that hate that. And so if someone can come in and organize all the spices and the storage closet, and that is, like, just perfect for them. And then there are other people that just don't like doing that. And it does take a village to make it all go.

[23:55] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah. I mean, there's people that love to go the food pantry and just sort of dig through and see what's in all of the areas for them to get. And there's, like, me that I'm like, I'll do a grocery pickup at Sam's club. So, you know, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, but I'm So grateful for those that want to shop and like to shop and then. But I'll organize, and I'll take the risk on scaling up a recipe by 30 any day. So I don't know.

[24:25] LISA SIMMONS: I think that's great. How has your involvement impacted your life?

[24:33] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah, you can go, Amber. Well, I have two little girls, and they've kind of been with me through the whole process, and I. So I was always, you know, this is what we're doing. Come with mom. We're gonna go shopping for loaves and fishes. And a couple times, they would come and wear their gloves that are, like, 10 times too big for their hands and real silverware or something like that. And when my daughter was in kindergarten, they had the kids come up to the microphone and say, what do you want to do when you grow up? And, you know, there was, you know, the ninjas and the cowboys and all of that. And my daughter gets up, and she's like, I want to work in the provost office. Like, my mom, and I want to feed hungry people. And I just bawled, like, just tears. I'm like, oh, my gosh. So it's impacted my life because I'm hoping that my kids will see the importance of service and building community and caring for others beyond yourself. And it's also. I've made some really awesome friends. So that's what I love about it. I like feeding people, and I like making friends. Yeah. I mean, I kind of do it just because I like cooking. I like project management. Like, I kind of did it for, like, selfish reasons. Right. Like, I'm like, well, I can volunteer and do this. This is great. But I did not expect to see, like, the amount of community that we create and to watch people's experience do it. I mean, we have a lot of people that have never cooked before. We have a lot of people that, you know, like, this is just, like, a crazy new experience for them. And you're just like, whoa. Like. Like, wow. I just made a difference in somebody else's life doing something that I like to do. So I think, for me, I think that was kind of the biggest impact, is that you're, like, not only doing something that I like, so it's not totally altruistic, but watching other people's experiences is just unreal. Like, it's connects us all together. Yeah, it does. And I just appreciate that opportunity to see that in action. I don't think we get to see that so much in our daily lives, honestly, unless it's, like, built into a church or community structure that's already there. And so it's kind of neat to be a part of that.

[26:38] LISA SIMMONS: Oh, absolutely. There are so many people that you would never meet otherwise who are so selfless and so amazing and that I think just the connections that you make with community members and with other volunteers, like, I think that's really, really rewarding. And there are challenges to being involved. Like, I know we could probably all spend a lot of time talking about moments when we got discouraged or that it was challenging, but I think on the whole, it is way more beneficial than challenging.

[27:12] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: Yeah, I agree. You definitely. I don't think a meal goes by where you're not like, why do I do this again? You know, it. Moments. Right. There's moments, but then you'll see something overreaching that's just like, oh, yeah, that's why I do this. This is why every time there's not. Yeah. Kind of over overrules it.

[27:32] LISA SIMMONS: Love it. Well, thank you all for chatting today. It was great to catch up with the three of us, and I hope there are many more years.

[27:40] AMBER SUMMERS-GRAHAM GRAHAM: I do, too. Yeah, me too. There will be. I do, too. Yeah. Thank you.