What do you give to the food shelf?

[Tracir]

The artichoke donation makes me laugh because I have this incredible artichoke hot dip recipe that everyone begs me to make. It's good but canned artichokes are expensive!

[dianemarie]

This year for the school food drive I sent 2 bags of food with my daughter. Mac & cheese, soup, veggies, cup of noodles, cake mixes, a 5 lb bag of flour, a box of tea bags, about 40 packets of Kool aid. I only gave things I knew my own kids would eat if we had been the ones to receive them.

[jewel33]

I regularly volunteer at a local community center; one of the many things they do is put food bags together.

I generally purchase extra items when I'm doing my own shopping, so I end up giving the kinds of things I would like myself

Peanut butter
jelly
Hamburger/Tuna helper
mayo
catsup
mustard
tuna
corned beef hash (I love it)
someone mentioned canned pasta; you can get it at Aldi's or Save-a-Lot for about 59 cents a can and it makes a great quick kid's lunch
canned corn
canned green beans
boxed mashed potatoes
evaporated milk (sometimes when dollars are tight, people don't have the money to buy that gallon of milk; you can mix equal parts of evaporated milk and water to make your own milk in a pinch - I actually had to do this for my Thanksgiving cooking when I ran out of milk and didn't feel like going to the store)
Pancake mix (the kind you only have to mix with water)
vegetable oil
syrup
Jiffy corn bread mix
flour
sugar
canned/jarred pasta sauce
pasta

Sometimes I'll see a really good deal on something and get that, but the above list is a pretty good mix of staples and quick eats that a resourceful person can make stretch into a few meals for the week.

[texas_sweetie]

This year we donated cans of powdered baby formula and cereal. I usually donate lots of can stuff but since we have the little one and she has quit eating the formula and cereal I hated for $13 cans of baby formula to go to waste and we had several boxes of baby cereal too. They were happy to get the baby foods.