Pumpkin Nation: Student Needs Your Help To Feed The Area's Homeless

Since moving to St. Louis more than five years ago, I have found myself getting more and more active in the community. What an amazingly charitable area! The people in the metro area are so generous and giving and always willing to help.

While I spend most of my time working with various organizations such as HavenHouse St. Louis, the American Cancer Society and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, I sometimes find myself getting involved in smaller projects.

On that note, let me tell you a quick story about a Whitfield School junior named Nate Noss, who could really use some help.

For the last five years Nate has been volunteering his time at a local food pantry. In June, 2010, he also began collecting perishable food from local stores and restaurants and in August, 2010, started a non-profit called St. Louis Food Rescue.  He works with Whole Foods, Costco, Einstein Brothers, and Donut Palace, picking up the donated food each week in his car and delivering it to three homeless shelters every weekend.

What a great kid, right? Wait…it gets better.

He recently made it his mission to salvage the pumpkins left over from Halloween pumpkin patches and make pumpkin pies for the shelters.  He enlisted the aid of some friends and fellow students to pick the pumpkins up and bring them to his house.  He did this last year and made about 100 homemade pies. This year it got a little bit bigger…Nate has 1,200 pumpkins sitting in his parents’ garage!

Nate now needs to bake the pies.

We have already partnered with L'Ecole Culinaire  who has generously offered the use of their large kitchens as well as pie, muffin and bread pans. 

However, Nate still needs the following ingredients in very large quantities:

• 300 eggs,
• 100 cans evaporated milk,
• 25 lbs brown sugar,
• 16 lbs sugar,
• 1 quart of cinnamon,
• 1 pint of ground ginger,
• 2 cups of ground nutmeg, ground cloves, and ground cardamin. 

And these ingredients above will only make 100 pies! We figure that with 1,200 pumpkins, Nate can bake approximately 2,400 pies! Can you image how many people that will help feed?

He has estimated that each pie will cost him $3 to make, or he’ll spend approximately $2.50 if he uses some of the pumpkins to make muffins.

A team of us, including St. Louis native, Chef Eric Brenner, have joined together to help Nate raise money to help him fundraise for the needed ingredients.

Fox2 even joined in to help with publicity.

How can you help?

Please join Pumpkin Nation and make a donation to help this very generous teen complete his Thanksgiving mission. If you are a business or individual, we would happily accept any donations of ingredients or cash that will be used to buy the donations. Please visit http://www.stlfoodrescue.org/ to find out how you can help!

If you are on Twitter, you can follow the pumpkin adventure at the hashtag #PumpkinNation.