The Tooele Food Bank prepared and delivered about 100 Thanksgiving food boxes to families in need on Thursday and Friday last week, according to Lori Sandoval, the program’s coordinator.

The boxes contained a frozen turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, canned vegetables, salad dressing and cranberry sauce. The quantity of food is adjusted to meet the size of the family. All the boxes went to families that had already visited the Food Bank and filled out a form to be pre-qualified to receive the meal.

“That is probably a little bit fewer dinner boxes than we prepared last year,” said Sandoval. “However we also have a number of names we gave to people and companies that wanted to sponsor families. For instance, Tracks and Thompson’s Smokehouse are working together to cook and deliver dinner to 12 families, along with some other anonymous helpers. We also gave turkeys to Tooele County for a Thanksgiving dinner at the Senior Center.”

The food bank will also be giving out turkeys while their supply lasts for people that did not come in and request dinner earlier.

“All together, we will end up helping more this year than last year,” Sandoval said.

Food bank shelves that were bare only a few weeks ago have started to fill up.

“The community response has been tremendous. Schools have had food drives and companies have had food drives or cash contributions from EG&G, Wells Fargo, Jiffy Lube, Wal-Mart Distribution Center — and many people just drop off food or cash,” said Sandoval. “We also have had a lot of volunteers come in and donate time putting together boxes, stocking shelves — the help has been wonderful.”

Tooele and Grantsville high schools’ Future Farmers of America programs donated 35 turkeys, and the Wildlife Turkey Federation donated 30 turkeys to the food bank. The schools have also let the FFA students help as volunteers at the food bank.

“Thanksgiving will be good,” Sandoval said, “Now we have to get to work on Christmas.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com