Food Drive - Million Noodle March

[Dr. Otis Lansa]

Sharing the Holy Meal is a Virtue of Pastafarianism. I propose that each Pastafarian donates to their local Food Bank as they can afford in honour of Holiday, in the form of pasta and / or sauce. Other food-type charitable donations in His Noodly Name are welcomed; we'll convert based on dollar value or whatever else we can figure out.

If we can figure out how many individual spaghetti noodles are in a bag of spaghetti, we can aim for a goal of 1 000 000 noodles!

Please donate what you can for those who must go without pasta, and post here to keep a tally of our contributions in His Noodly Name. I might even be able to talk the Admins into awarding the title of Pasta Philanthropist Extraordinare to the person with the biggest donation, but do it for His Noodlyness, not for the title!

Happy Holiday, Merry Saucemas, and a Happy Noodle Year!

Donations to Date: (need details on g of pasta and mL of sauce eventually, so we can make a grand combined total!)

Auntie Dee Dee: 48 packs of Spaghetti (48 lbs), 24 x 32 oz sauce (22.7 L) - 43,200 Noodles!
PLUS 40 lbs beef and 10 whole chickens - 72,600 Noodles! TOTAL 115,800 NOODLES!
amenabletopasta: 2 Goats = 90 kg Cheese/year - 100,000 Noodles!*
boghog: 6 Packs of Spaghetti (30 lbs) + 3600 g Linguini + 900 g Penne + 1800 g gnocci+ 3 kg rotini; 4.4 L Sauce - 27,200 Noodles!
Doc: 20 Packs of Spaghetti (40 lbs) + 2 hours pasta-riffic volunteer work - 23,000 Noodles!
Disco: 2 hours pasta-riffic volunteer work - 5,000 Noodles!
Alpaca: 8 Packs of Noodles (8.8 lbs) - 4,000 Noodles!
Griffin: 3 Packs Noodles; Sauce (511 mL) - 2,000 Noodles!
TeamQuiggan: 1.8 kg of Spaghetti Goodness 1,800 Noodles!
Sir Francis Drake: Lasagna Noodles, Penne and Noodle Sides - 1,300 Noodles!
------Grand Total----------
269,700 Noodles


*so far this is the first goat (cheese) donation, so I'll assign a noodle equivalent at 1g = 1 noodle. Since cheese costs MUCH more than pasta, I'm probably short-changing amenabletopasta, and have added a 10,000 noodle bonus for sustainable pastability (and meatball potential). The conversions are on page 4. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 100 noodles.

[Alpaca]

For the record, I have donated eight bags of noodles to charity this season.

Ye olde Thermometer of Progress...e
Updated as the noodle count gets updated. Pasta thermometer coming soon-ish.

[NoOneOfConsequence]

I've donated several cans of Spaghetti-O's, does that count?

[KC Observer]

Unfortunately Spaghetti-O's are seen as an abomonation in the sight of FSM. However, for the purposes of donating cans of it to charity/food banks, they are a viable option and FSM applauds your charitable demeanor and actions.

The venerable Dr. has issued forth a worthy challenge. I accept the duty on my part and will also contribute some higher quality jarred sauce (after all, what's pasta w/o sauce?). I know it's not the same as home-made, but then, that's harder to donate and I don't know whether a food bank will accept home-jarred products.

You know, Bobby needs to market FSM Pasta and Sauce! What a concept!! I get dibs on bringing forth the idea (unless someone can document and point out an earlier date where this idea has been proffered). Oh, the marketing slogan pastabilities!!!

[NoOneOfConsequence]

Unfortunately Spaghetti-O's are seen as an abomonation in the sight of FSM.

That's why I figured I had better get them out of my house.

[Griffin]

Am clearing out my freezer as it's all five years old. Sure there's some sauce pots in there. Rushing off to donate right now. Put me down for 2 sauce pots and one noodle (I need my noodles right now so can only spare one).

[anon1mat0]

Should we proselytize (say, marking the boxes of pasta with 'FSM') or the idea is to remain virtuous and anonymous?

[Dr. Otis Lansa]

I'm going for the virtuous and anonymous option, although I might print out a pamphlet and slip it in the bags with the donations. I'd say anyone making an exceptionally large donation may want to do so on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Perhaps we can print out the greeting card to include with the donation? That shouldn't be too offensive to anyone.

EDIT: Printed out a page of the cards (9/page) to include as small gift tags in the bags. Will put the url for www.venganza.org on the backside. Might as well spread the word a little. I think we have an Interfaith Food Bank here... persons donating to a single-faith foodbank may want to be a little more tactful.

[Griffin]

What if someone, like one person, donated a million noodles? Wouldn't that mean you'd printed too many gift tags? Surely we should be fighting to save waste at this time of year?

[Dr. Otis Lansa]

Then we'll go for 2 million! I figure I can use them for other things too... posting on bulletin boards etc. I had a choice of sizes... 9 seemed like enough. I only printed ONE page, mind you... less would have been wastefull!

We just need to figure out how many spaghetto's in a bag... Griffin, perhaps some extraordinary googling would help?

[Griffin]

No it's worse than that. One hoop does not necessarily equal one noodle. We need to appoint a whole Science Team for this.

Incidentally, I tried googling "many spaghetto's in a bag" but it broke the rule and didn't even get one hit anyway.

[anon1mat0]

I just took a look at a 1 lb box of spaguetti (Barilla if you must know) and I estimate ~500 noodles in a box, assuming that there are not many broken. As an approximation 2000 boxes would reach the goal of 1 million noodles.

[Dr. Otis Lansa]

Next bag / box I get, I'm counting. Spaghettini would count for more, of course, but we'll use spaghetti as a standard.

So far, the goal is 2000 lbs of spaghetti, plus some sauce (500 gallons?)...

[Alpaca]

Come, we need more philanthropy!

Would this warrant a sticky to attract attention?

[Griffin]

Ok, I suppose I can spare another noodle. But no more.