Delivered with Kindness

OUR COMMUNITY

Sheri Aahron-Miller, Debra Walter and Shaindel Fink cooking at Platform 18 for the Sweet & Savory program.

Delivered with Kindness

With homemade soup and a cake, Sweet & Savory delivers care packages to doorsteps.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

PHOTOS FROM PARTNERS DETROIT

With Sweet & Savory, Metro Detroit’s Jewish community can send food packages to loved ones. Whether to celebrate a joyous occasion or to simply show some love in a time of need, one of the newest programs from Partners Detroit aims to provide home-cooked meals on delivery.

Launched in May of this year, Sweet & Savory is a volunteer-based kindness program where local Jewish community members can donate their time to cooking soups and baking cakes, which are later packaged with cards and delivered to homes. People can apply on Partners Detroit’s website to either receive a food package or request one to be sent out.

“It’s an opportunity for people to give back,” says Shaindel Fink of Partners Detroit, “and a way to reinforce a sense of community.”

As the brainchild of Chef Debra Walter, who has been involved with Partners Detroit for six years, Sweet & Savory was created in honor of her father Seymour Kleiman, who passed away in September 2020. “She wanted to do something in his memory,” Fink explains. “She is very passionate about cooking, so she came up with Sweet & Savory.”

FROM OUR KITCHEN TO YOURS

In collaboration with Partners Detroit and Partners in Care, the organization’s community kindness division, the program was built out and launched to the Metro Detroit Jewish community. Sweet & Savory’s slogan of “from our kitchen to yours” relates back to the idea of the program, which involves volunteers getting together to cook at an event space at Platform 18, Partners Detroit’s new event space and community center in Royal Oak.

There, volunteers create the sweet and savory food packages (soup and a cake), which are then delivered by other volunteers. “People can apply online for a free package,” Fink says. “Every package is delivered in a beautiful insulated bag with the logo on it.”

Additionally, recipients of a Sweet & Savory food package also receive a list of ingredients for the meals they receive, so they can recreate them at home. A card is also added to the package that can send messages for speedy recoveries, thinking of you or to simply say mazel tov. Each card is signed: “Made with love, from our kitchen to yours — Your Partners Detroit Family.”

While Partners Detroit, a Jewish-faith community organization that curates educational programs and service projects, sponsors program operations, Fink says volunteers are the ones who keep the wheels turning. “Women give up their time to cook and bake and deliver,” she says. “It’s really been such a fantastic program that everyone feels so amazing about.”

SENDING KIND GESTURES

Fink says both volunteers and recipients of Sweet & Savory packages are moved by the gesture, which has already lifted spirits of Jewish Metro Detroiters going through challenging times. One woman who participated in Partners Detroit programming, for example, was severely ill in the hospital, so she and her husband were sent a Sweet & Savory package.

Though the woman passed away that evening before the package was

A Sweet & Savory delivery package.

A delivery of homemade soup is welcomed for any occasion.

delivered the following morning, it was still sent to her husband’s doorstep — a source of bright light in a time of grief.

“Her husband was coming home from the hospital and was really very broken from having lost his wife of many years,” Fink recalls. “He came home and found the package there. It was so meaningful to him to have come home in such a place and to feel loved and cared for at a time when he really needed the support of a community.”

Yet Sweet & Savory isn’t just for times when people need support. “Even when you’re going through a joyous occasion, your community becomes so important to you,” Fink continues. “You can feel like people are thinking of you and along for this journey with you.”

A small taste of homemade food, she says, is a beautiful gesture that’s universal to all occasions. With positive feedback since Sweet & Savory’s launch, Partners Detroit hopes to expand the program in the near future to offer even more options to the local Jewish community.

“We’ve had people of all ages volunteer,” Fink says. “People have offered to come with their mothers and their daughters. It’s really been a special program.”

Pam Turkin, Debra Walter, and Judy Jacobs with a batch of babka they made for the Sweet & Savory packages.

Robert E. Paletz

Announces the Publication of A New Book

Streaming Life: A Poetic Journey, written by Robert E. Paletz, is a collection of poems that delve into the passion, pain and joy of life. Mr. Paletz was motivated to write poetry to make his own life, and the lives of others, happier and more fulfi lling with words and thoughts that could touch hearts and stir feelings of well-being. The author sincerely hopes this will be your experience as you read these heart-felt poems.

Available at: