Truckload of muffins
Sisters bake sweet support for lunch programs
REGINA — Darlene Hillis has never been one to sit still for long, and with the pandemic giving her more time at home, she began turning to her love of baking more often than usual. Soon she was baking much more than she or her four children, who range in age from 16 to 24, could eat on their own, so she began looking for ways to use her baking to help others. Hillis thought of a local centre, Carmichael Outreach, and asked her sister Lorie Matthewson if she would be willing to help bake muffins together with a few of their friends to support the organization’s lunch program. Matthewson quickly agreed to the idea and so did a few of their friends. “Then it just grew,” said Hillis. Others in the community began hearing about their efforts and asking if they could help out, and soon enough Hillis and Matthewson had a route established to pick up muffins once a week to donate. “We would set the date and drive around and pick up these muffins and we had our little route figured out. It was a good time for us anyways, to chat and get caught up,” Hillis said of the time with her sister. To date, the duo has donated nearly 450 dozen muffins and a few cookies in six weeks — some baked by them, but the majority baked by people in the community who supported the idea. At times there were so many muffins they hardly fit in the back of a truck. “We had to stop at Sacred Heart to unload and then go and collect the last of them,” Matthewson said of one week where they picked up 110 dozen muffins. “The truck was so full.” The first two weeks they donated the baked goods to Carmichael Outreach. Then, since both sisters are former teachers with the Regina Catholic School Division, they spent the next three weeks donating to different Catholic school lunch programs. Last week they donated to a public school and are hoping to do the same this week. After that, Hillis said they are not sure if they will continue through the summer months. But even this many muffins felt like only a drop in the bucket of what these groups needed, said Hillis, when many of them are handing out hundreds of lunches a day. “When you think of all the people that need help, like ‘Oh big deal, a muffin’ … but every little bit helps,” said Matthewson.