Food With Love

Preparing meals at Ronald McDonald House Minneapolis for families with ill children.

Food with Love, Inc’s current Mission: Fall 2025 Update 

As many of you know, we started this little non-profit back in August 2014. Wow! 11 years!

For many years our mission went as planned but after COVID our original mission never quite bounced all the way back for a multitude of reasons.

We, as a board, have decided to evolve our mission statement so that we can continue cooking delicious meals for families experiencing extreme medical hardship.

Ronald McDonald House is the best fit for us as their mission is similar to our own but on a much greater scale. Going forward, Food With Love will be using all donations received to cook quarterly at our favorite RMcH location, Chicago Ave in Minneapolis. Our average budget for each cooking session is @ $600-750 depending on the menu. When we cook, we go all out and have prepared fun menus like: Country Fried Steak & Chicken with all the fixins', Omelet Bar made to order, Loaded Baked Potato Bar, Breakfast Burritos made to order and many more!

Our next 3 cooking sessions will be:

Sunday December 28th, A Winter Wonderland Brunch

Sunday February 15th, A Valentines Brunch

Sunday May 10th, A Mothers Day Brunch (our annual tradition) with Gift Bags to spoil the Moms!

Food With Love provides all of the ingredients & volunteers to prepare these meals but in the week leading up to each cooking session we will be accepting donated items to deliver and fill the on-site Family Pantry. Think individually wrapped snacks, beverages, quick heat & eat microwavable meals, etc. Also items like napkins, paper plates, plastic cutlery, zip lock bags, plastic wrap, aluminum foil and more are always needed on location.

Drop off site for these types of donations will be at Ginny Bites Bakery in downtown Anoka. We will share this again on our Facebook page before each cooking session so please follow our pages to stay in the loop and to be involved.

Thank you so much.

Truly,

Virginia 'Ginny' Louden, founding President

OUR STORY:
This all started in 2014 when a good friend of ours found herself and her family in need of home-cooked meals while they dealt with a terminally ill child. We could only imagine how hard things would be for them. They were in and out of hospitals and appointments constantly, both parents were still working full time jobs while trying their best to keep a routine and a feeling of "as normal a family life as possible" for their family throughout it all. We did not have a lot of extra money around to feed them and our own families, but we were not going to let that stop us from doing whatever we could for them. We decided to use our cooking skills to make a difference in their lives. We hosted monthly cooking sessions where we, along with our volunteers, cooked a weeks worth of dinners, in addition to a breakfast option, side dishes and a treat. We also invited teen and adult volunteers to help whenever possible. By having these ready-made meals on hand, our 'adopted' families could just pop a tasty meal right into the oven on those crazy busy nights so that they could focus on what's most important...their family. No prep, no fuss and it's all home-made, from the heart. We were able to help many families over the years.