Hot meals, jam pastries for some hungry Haitians

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Most of Haiti's quake survivors are getting by on dry emergency rations, but several thousand feasted on Wednesday on hot meals of rice, beans and chicken, as a U.S. charity kitchen joined the aid effort.

Christian group Food For The Poor was also distributing boxes of Pop-Tarts -- jam-filled pastries topped with icing and donated by food company Kellogg Co -- to hungry and wounded people in the devastated Haitian capital.

The group, in Haiti for 25 years, had to close its kitchens for several days after last week's powerful earthquake. But its staff are now back cooking up steaming vats of relative "gourmet food" again from its ample stocks of rice and frozen chicken, beef and pork.

As word of the hot food spread, people made homeless by the earthquake filed into the group's feeding center and Jamaican soldiers also arranged a truckload of thousands of boxed hot meals to be delivered to a survivors' camp in the capital.

Staff also sent boxes of Pop-Tarts, which provide sugar, fiber and some vitamins, to hospitals, which are operating with foreign medics and have no kitchen facilities at present.

"We have been cooking again since Monday. We are not a disaster relief agency so we're not really equipped for this situation, but we're trying to partner up with people with more logistical capabilities," said Beth Carroll, 35, at a feeding center in a grimy slum where pigs forage in banks of reeking garbage around a river of waste water.

"We are trying to prioritize hospitals because right now they have no kitchens. The hot meals are difficult for them to manage but the Pop-Tarts are going down well. They're not the most healthy of foods, but they're sweet and calorific."

Even before the 7.0 magnitude earthquake largely destroyed the Haitian capital, Food For The Poor estimated half of the country, and two-thirds of children here, were malnourished.

Since last Tuesday, finding enough food has become an issue for everybody, even those who were wealthy.

An American expatriate running a guest house in Leogane, two hours outside the capital, told Reuters this week she was surviving on ready-to-eat army meals since losing all her possessions bar her watch and glasses in the earthquake.

FOOD A MATTER OF CHANCE

What many Haitians are eating now is largely a matter of chance. Those who managed to salvage cash from their houses can buy rice, vegetables, cooking oil and pasta at street markets.

Portions of spaghetti flavored with tomato ketchup are sold at some street camps, and people whose relatives bring them food from outside the city sometimes share with neighbors.

But food aid so far is limited to vitamin-enriched biscuits and bags of dried rice and beans. Many people have gone days without a warm meal.

"My house is gone, I have nowhere to sleep and no food. My brother and sister are dead. I haven't eaten since Monday," said Destina Bengo, 23, at the Food For The Poor center, which is also doling out plastic shoes and medical supplies.

The center, which can feed some 30,000 people a day, has seen a sharp drop in its regulars since the quake, with many presumed to have perished or fled the capital, but newcomers are quickly making up the numbers.

In a gated yard where scores of people sit in line for the kitchen window, people having to turn to charity for the first time sit staring at the ground. Many carry plastic buckets which they will fill with food to take to their families.

"I am sleeping in the road with five other people," said Mirlande Donne, 39, clutching a half-pack of World Food Program vitamin-enriched biscuits.

"A water truck came once and we have these biscuits but it's not enough. The food here is very good," she said.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Cynthia Osterman)