Eat with your heart out: Charity, wellness on October menus
Photo from this year’s MLK Service Project. Source: http://www.mlkserviceproject.com/
There’s good eating in Decatur this month.
October offers foodies a chance to support a service project helping low-income seniors and take some bites toward getting healthy.
First course
Restaurants for Repairs will be Oct. 1. Participating restaurants donate a portion of their sales to the MLK Service Project. The annual event is a partnership between the city of Decatur and the Decatur Preservation Alliance.
Restaurants Participating in Restaurants for Repairs:
20 percent donors:
20 percent donors:
Swirlin’ Twirlin’ Frozen Yogurt
Lee Ann Harvey, the city’s Lifelong Community Coordinator, said the annual MLK Service project helps elderly residents living in Oakhurst. Each year, on a cold January weekend around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, hundreds of people show up in local neighborhoods and get to work.
“These seniors are on fixed and low incomes, so they haven’t been able to do routine maintenance and their homes have deteriorated,” Harvey said. “We’ve done some fairly substantial repairs.”
Volunteers, including some of Decatur’s local contractors, spend the weekend tackling all sorts of home improvement projects. The to-do list includes: fixing wiring, unclogging plumbing and building handicap ramps.
The organizers did the math and concluded the volunteer hours of the men and women doing the work were worth approximately $152,530.
Harvey said the volunteers are a dedicated group.
“We had the terrible ice storm a few years ago and we had a huge turnout that weekend,” she said.
Second course
The month-long Eat Well Indie-Catur (Editor’s note: See what they did there?) begins Oct 1. Every Tuesday in October, local restaurants will partner with the Decatur Active Living Division and the Decatur Visitor’s Center to offer healthier options to their customers.
“Participate three times during October and you will earn a recipe collection featuring the healthy entrees you enjoyed plus many more,” the event announcement says.
Participating restaurants in the Eat Well Indie-Catur event are:
Cakes & Ale
The Corner Pub
Leon’s
Steinbecks
Parker’s on Ponce
Universal Joint
Dessert
Now if you compare the two lists, you can see there’s a little overlap between Restaurants for Repairs and Eat Well Indie-Catur.
So if you go out to eat in Decatur on Oct. 1, statistically speaking you’re bound to do something good even if you weren’t trying.