In New Orleans, food is just one of the many ways that residents help each other during hard times. And it’s been no different in the days after Hurricane Ida, which flooded or destroyed homes, tore up trees and knocked out the entire city’s power grid.

While chefs and amateur cooks alike piled plates high with comfort food, residents with generators charged their neighbors’ cellphones and revved up chain saws to clear downed trees, while volunteers at a local church handed out bags of cleaning supplies and boxes of diapers.