MOLI VIEW™

My stomach is full. My refrigerator is bursting. Yesterday, for an early Christmas, my son and mother and I hosted my sister, her husband, three kids, and their various boyfriends and girlfriends. My mother did the shopping and, as usual, there was way more food than any of us could eat: an enormous standing rib roast, a rack of ribs, 10 pounds of potatoes, a dozen sweet potatoes, a pound each of asparagus and green beans, two pumpkin pies, and an apple walnut pie. Oh, yes, and three half-gallons of ice cream, plus a few pieces of pizza from the night before.

It's all wrapped up in my fridge now. My mom is off to my brother's for the official holiday and my son is off to his dad's. My sister and her kids and their entourage are off to visit other relatives as well. At every home, I can pretty much guarantee, there will be an equal excess of food. Left by myself for the rest of the holidays (oh, blissful solitude — I love this time of year), I will nibble away at my own leftovers. But what gnaws at me is the knowledge that so many people will spend the holidays hungry.

I have been trying to think of friends or friends of friends I might give at least a pie and the untouched half of the roast. Such gifts have to be made tactfully and among friends. A food bank can't touch all this leftover stuff; who knows how long it's all sat out on sideboards while lucky families gorge on the rest. With the bacteria clock ticking, how could such perishables be transported through complicated distribution channels to the families in need? The answer is simple: They can't.

Which is a shame, because America's Second Harvest has announced that our nation's families will be short 11.7 million meals — 15 million pounds — of food by the end of this year.

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