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Love Notes

The Dinners With Love Blog

Denny's with Love

2/25/2016

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Each week in Rutland County, nearly 50 hospice patients and their families receive meals donated by local restaurants through the Dinners with Love program. Though a whopping 45 restaurants in the Rutland area participate, that is not enough to meet the growing need.

We were all the more excited, then, when we learned this week that Denny's in Rutland has partnered with our program. Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner?
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We are stepping up our efforts this month to recruit more restaurants to join us. Our goal is to serve at least five more patients every month.

Part of this effort includes releasing a new feature on our website: an online restaurant enrollment form to make it even easier for restaurants to sign up. Every new restaurant that joins our program allows to us to serve meals to one more patient.

Do you own or work at a Rutland area restaurant that does not currently participate in the Dinners with Love program? Learn more about how our program works and the positive impact it has on the lives of hospice patients and their families. You can contact us with questions, or go ahead and sign up today. Or if you're a restaurant employee, you can share what you've learned with your supervisor.

Here's to spreading more food and love in Rutland County!

Photo Credit: Breakfast by George Redgrave/CC BY-ND 2.0
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Smile! You're on Amazon.

2/22/2016

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Dinners with Love loves to shop and dine local. But us rural folk know that we cannot always find what we need in town. Many of us turn to Amazon, and hope we we can support local outfits in the future.

Now, there's a way to shop on Amazon and keep some of your dollars in the community.

Try AmazonSmile. Amazon donates .5% of your eligible purchases to a nonprofit organization of your choice, which we hope is Dinners with Love. It has all of the same products as the regular Amazon site, and you use the same login credentials. You can even take advantage of Prime, if you're a member. Visit smile.amazon.com today to check it out.

Happy shopping!

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A New Website for a New Year

2/8/2016

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We are thrilled to launch our new website today. We hope it captures the spirit and essence of Dinners with Love: a simple kindness to lighten the load, powered by outstanding hospice agencies, restaurants, volunteers, and donors.

What's different about this website from our old one?
  • This very blog, Love Notes.
  • More opportunities to celebrate the great work of our partner hospice agencies, restaurants, and volunteers. Statistics, testimonials, and stories paint a beautiful picture of what's happening in our communities.
  • More details about how to get involved with the program, from becoming a partner hospice agency, to donating meals, to volunteering. We look forward to serving more hospice patients in the months and years to come, and we would love to have your help.

We hope you enjoy!
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Service is Joy

2/4/2016

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Dinners with Love volunteer Regina Styles signs off every email with some wise words from Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet:

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."

It is no surprise, then, that Regina cheerfully stepped in in Spring 2015 to coordinate meal ordering and delivery in Addison County, even while nursing a broken bone.

Here is Regina’s story, in her own words:
I live in Whiting, Vermont with my husband Ron, our dog, two cats, two goats, and a bunch of chickens and roosters. When I'm not the “Keeper of the Flock,” I'm working for Addison County Home Health and Hospice.

One of my patients would get Dinners with Love delivered every week, so for two years I've appreciated the program and all it does for our people. Another volunteer was preparing to head off on an extended vacation, so I filled in as coordinator. As fate would have it, I fell and broke my tibial plateau that week: let's just say it involved a ladder and chickens on their roof, and the chickens won! So my learning curve came alongside my recovery. And both are coming along!

There are several things I love about my journey here: our volunteers, their kind and giving hearts. It's how they reach out, all they give every week, no thanks required.


And of course our patients are indeed special to me, from our 93-year-old who has family ties to a large chicken farm: no chicken for her, thank you very much, and nothing too spicy because it keeps her up at night!
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"I am so grateful for the extraordinary restaurants that donate their time, money, and love to our effort. We're all part of this incredible team, each of us in different roles, while sharing the same vision. I am truly so thankful that I can help carry that through."
And then there's the young single mom whose 12-year-old daughter ordered an Ahi Tuna Burger with blue cheese. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but we knew she'd end up scraping the cheese off. It's been an ongoing joke ever since.

I'm at the point now where I know everybody's individual tastes and limitations, so I can choose dinners for them when I need to. Without exception, all meals are received with huge appreciation.

And I'd certainly be remiss if I didn't mention the most important piece in what we do. The restaurants! The chefs that cook a meal early for us; give me their cell number to be sure they get the order; or add something extra to the dinner. And then they thank me!

I am so grateful for the extraordinary restaurants that donate their time, money, and love to our effort. We're all part of this incredible team, each of us in different roles, while sharing the same vision. I am truly so thankful that I can help carry that through.
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The Taste of Love

2/4/2016

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Sheri Sullivan has a big heart. Volunteering and giving back have always been a part of her life. From a soup kitchen to a theater to an art studio and a thrift shop, many people have been the beneficiary of her generosity.

Sheri has also seen a lot of people in her life die. More curious about death than afraid of it, over time Sheri grew to see death as part of a cycle we all participate in—as something to be mourned but not feared or denied.

A few years after moving to Brandon, Vermont, in 1999, she was inspired to become a hospice volunteer—the perfect way to give back and show compassion for those going through a difficult time. The organization she applied to was in transition and not sure when they would do their next training. By the time they got in touch with Sheri some months later, she had just started a catering business and couldn’t do the training at the time.

Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to help, she suggested that, until she could take the training, she cook for people. The agency agreed to give it a try, and it was a wild success. “I don’t think any of us were prepared for how well this would be received,” said Sheri.
Her first meals were donated to families who were sitting with a parent who was dying. Their gratitude was immense. In November 2003, she took the hospice training and began sitting with those who were dying.

Eventually she started providing food for patients as well as their families. To Sheri it was a way to show love and support for those going through what is inevitably a difficult time. People continued to respond with gratitude.

Sheri saw the potential for this to grow—for other restaurants to participate and more patients to be fed—but she was focused on launching her own business. She spent the next few years volunteering, cooking, and dreaming up a 5-year plan to grow this idea.

Sheri’s last hospice patient was Jean. Jean had been a chef and they loved to talk food together.

Sheri catered Jean’s memorial service, and at that event spoke with two of Jean’s friends about her idea to get more meals to more patients and families. “Why wait 5 years?” they said. And the two offered to help Sheri get it off the ground immediately. One of these women, Sherry Crawford, became a founding board member, along with Jean’s husband, Frank.

Dinners with Love was founded in 2009, and in 2010 it became a nonprofit. Sheri says there was some debate about the name at the beginning, but she was firm that “love” should be part of it. “I want to offer food that’s made with love and given with love, otherwise it’s just a meal,” said Sheri. “I’m glad we stuck with the name, because really, life is all about love.”
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  • About
    • Our Story
    • How It Works
    • Mission
    • Impact
    • Board of Directors
    • Awards
    • Press & Other Media
    • Contact
  • Hospice Agencies
    • Participating Agencies
    • Partner with Us
  • Restaurants
    • Participating Restaurants
    • Donate Meals
  • Get Involved
    • Hospice Agencies
    • Donate Meals
    • Volunteer
    • Join the Board
  • Blog
  • Events
    • Comfort Food for a Cause 2020
    • Comfort Food for a Cause 2019
    • Dinners with EXTRA Love 2019
    • Comfort Food for a Cause 2018
    • Comfort Food for a Cause 2017
    • Comfort Food for a Cause 2016
  • Donate