For Victoria Anzalone, most days are all about love and lasagna.

  • Nonprofit in Tampa fights childhood hunger with love and lasagna
  • Non-profit Where Love Grows, which has a zero tolerance for childhood hunger
  • To nominate an Everyday Hero, please email Michael.hardin@charter.com

Everyday Hero host Bill Murphy met Anzalone at the Liberty Mompierre Boys and Girls Club in Tampa where she and her volunteers were getting things ready for a special cooking class for kids.

It’s all part of her non-profit Where Love Grows, which has a zero tolerance for childhood hunger.  That’s something she became aware of after she fed a group of kids at a boys and girls club a few years ago.

“I mentioned to Ricky Gallen, of the Boys and Girls club, I never saw such little kids eat so much and that’s when he brought the statistic of childhood hunger that is 28 percent here in Hillsborough County, which is one of the highest in the country,” Anzalone said.

And she learned more about this heartbreaking and unacceptable statistic.

“They deal with food insecurity. They get free breakfast and lunch in school but dinners are questionable.  Weekends, summers, holidays,” Anzalone said.

So now, the youngsters get to make a pan of lasagna which they can then take home, bake, and share with their family.

Among the volunteers were some young faces from the New York Yankees organization who also took some time for autographs.

Along with the cooking classes, Anzalone’s organization, which began five years ago, feeds a minimum of 300 kids a month.

But why the cooking classes?

“Feed a fish, eat for a day. Teach to fish, eat for a lifetime. And that’s really the motivation behind the mobile cooking classes,” Anzalone said.

She also makes extra of everything and as we left she insisted Murphy try her special lasagna. Nothing like a great piece of lasagna.