Former Viking Tyrone Carter helps deliver Thanksgiving meals

PLYMOUTH, Minn. (KMSP) - Gathering in your own home can be as comforting as the comfort food dished out on Thanksgiving Day. That's why one former Vikings player and a Plymouth restaurant group are making it their mission to deliver home cooked meals.  

“We've actually been making food for five weeks,” said Shawn Taher of Taher Food Service. “Eight tons of turkey - that's 16,000 pounds of turkey."

The pairing for this meal is one part Taher Food Service in Plymouth and one part former Viking and Gopher player Tyrone Carter.

“We found each other one year and every year it just keeps going and going,” said Taher.

"It's just like paying it forward,” said Carter. “If they are able to see someone in their situation before and comes back and gives they'll be able to come back and do the same thing."

Carter has been giving back to people in need, for years. He first did so in his Florida hometown and now continues to help out in his adopted home of Minnesota.

“I can relate to some of these families,” said Carter. “I was once like them. I didn't know where my next meal was coming from.”

On Tuesday, they delivered 120 meals to three shelters in Brooklyn Park and Carter will go door to door in Minneapolis and St. Paul, delivering 100 more.  

Food is something that brings people together and these meals allow people to have that family dinner in their own home with all the fixings.

Taher Food Service made 28,000 meals this holiday season from their kitchen in Plymouth. Five thousand meals were shipped to Houston and 1,500 were sent to Chicago. The rest stay in Minnesota for a number of causes, shelters and people in need.