Jenifer

Butternut squash

November 5, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

The arrival of fall brings with it so many pleasures–beautiful foliage, football, the start of the holiday season and many more. One of the things I most look forward to with the arrival of fall is the winter squash season, and my favorite winter squash is the butternut squash. These somewhat pear-shaped squash have a slightly sweet, nutty flavor similar to a pumpkin. As a matter of fact, when I asked a local Amish farmer which of the pumpkins he grew would be the best for a pie, he took me to the butternut squash and said this is what we use for pies. Not only do butternut squash taste delicious, but they are a good source of vitamin A including beta carotene, fiber, potassium and magnesium. Their ability to be used in sweet and savory recipes makes them a highly versatile vegetable.

These squash are grown in the summer, but harvested in the fall, so right now is the height of butternut squash season. They are readily available in farmers’ markets and grocery stores and because they are in season they are reasonably priced and full of flavor. Butternut, and most winter squash, store well if you have the right place. Stored in a cool, dark place, butternut squash can last for 2-3 months, maybe longer depending on your conditions. This potential for long term storage allows you to buy several of them when they are at their cheapest.

Not everyone is familiar with butternut squash. I know I wasn’t until a few years ago. Most recipes begin with roasting the squash, but it can also be sautéed and cooked in a soup. Here are some recipes to try. And while I enjoy butternut squash in dishes, sometimes my favorite way to eat it is to just roast peeled, cubed butternut squash tossed in olive oil (or any vegetable oil) with a little salt and pepper.

Winter Squash Puree

from Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day

1 Tbs. butter, plus more for the pan
1 butternut squash (or any other winter squash except spaghetti squash)
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Additions

yogurt or sour cream
brown sugar and cinnamon
finely chopped chiles
curry powder
raisins
sage
parmesan, cheddar or goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter a baking sheet. Slice the squash in half using a big, sharp knife. Scoop out the seeds and fibers. Set the halves facedown on the sheet. Bake in the oven until a knife poked into the squash goes through easily, 30-40 minutes. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat. Scoop the squash from the skin and place it in a large bowl with the garlic, the butter from the pan and any other additions. Mash and stir until smooth. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

This recipe makes a great side dish. I would also use it with goat cheese as a spread on toast in the morning!

Baked Garlicky Butternut Squash

from Main Course Vegetarian Pleasures

1 large (3 1/2 pounds) butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice
1/3 cup olive or other vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbs. minced parsley
salt to taste
liberal seasoning of black pepper
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, toss squash, oil, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. Spoon vegetable into a shallow baking dish, making sure the squash is in a single layer. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheese. Bake for 1 hour, or until the squash is tender, but not mushy.

Again I have made the above recipe using just oil, salt and pepper!

Butternut Squash & Black Bean Tacos

recipe courtesy of Chester County Food Bank

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into small cubes
2 cans of black beans, drained, rinsed and warmed.
3 Tbs. olive or vegetable oil
1 Tbs. of chili powder or other spices (maybe cumin)
salt and pepper to taste
8-10 corn or flour tortillas
1 cup sour cream or cheese (optional)
salsa or hot pepper, diced (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pile squash on a baking dish, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with chili powder or other spices and 1 tsp. salt. Toss to coat the squash evenly. Spread the squash in a single layer on the pan and roast for about 25 minutes, stirring once about halfway through. The squash should be very soft and browned around the edges. Remove from oven and set aside. To make the tacos: fill the tortillas with the squash and beans. Top with the optional ingredients, if desired, and serve right away. Any leftover taco filling can be stored in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.

Instead of tacos, you could put the filling into a burrito, make a quesadilla or mix it with crunched up tortilla chips to make a taco salad. You could use pinto beans instead of black beans and cooking dry beans is a cheaper option.

I have so many more recipes for butternut squash. I could almost eat a butternut squash every week for most of the season and not repeat a recipe. I hope these the recipes above inspire you to cook a butternut squash, especially if you have never tried one! I’m off to cook one now to use in Butternut Squash Lasagna.

Barely a Drop in the Bucket

October 29, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

The food pantry where I volunteer operates on an appointment basis. One client is scheduled every half hour. This method of operation ensures a manageable flow of clients receiving food and keeps the waiting area from becoming too congested. Unfortunately it also creates a backlog of clients waiting to receive an appointment for food, sometimes as long a two weeks. When a client is unable to keep an appointment, they go back into the line of clients waiting for an appointment.

The past two weeks, during my time volunteering at the food pantry, something unusual has happened. Clients scheduled to come and get food have not come in for their appointment. I volunteer from 9am-12pm, so usually only 6 clients can come in during that time to receive their monthly allotment of food. Often we have one client out of the six not show up, but this past week only one client came in for food. During that time we were also able to assist someone who came in without an appointment, but was eligible to receive food. The previous week only half of the scheduled clients kept their appointments.

At first glance clients not coming in for food may seem like a good thing. Maybe their situation has changed for the better. Maybe they are no longer food insecure. But after almost a year volunteering in food pantries I have learned this is probably not the case. In the past clients usually fail to keep appointments to get food because their ride fell through or their car broke down. They have missed appointments due to illness, either their own or another family member. During the winter months weather is a factor, particularly for the clients who walk. Sometimes clients schedule their appointments to coincide with a break from work, but for whatever reason that break doesn’t happen as scheduled.

My point in sharing my concern with clients not showing up for their appointments is not to complain about wasted time or denigrate our clients. My intent is to show how this situation perfectly illustrates one of the “Seven Deadly ‘ins'” of the emergency food system, as posited by Janet Poppendieck in her book Sweet Charity. The “deadly in” to which I am referring is inaccessibility. This particular food bank is open from 9am-4pm, 3-4 days per week, but only on week days. Furthermore clients must have an appointment to receive food. They must remember to call two weeks before their eligibility date because of the roughly a two week waiting period for an appointment. If they find at the time of the appointment they can not make it, as stated above, them must start the process all over again. Calling to cancel is helpful for food pantry staff, but usually the cancelation, if it comes at all, is last minute as the reason is usually unforeseen. Consequently, staff is rarely able to reschedule another client on such short notice; therefore, not only has the originally scheduled client not received food, but s/he has also kept someone else from getting an appointment. All of these clients are in need of food, but due to the limitations of the emergency food delivery system it is inaccessible to them.

This example of food pantry clients missing their appointments also highlights another of Poppendieck’s “Seven Deadly ‘ins,'” the inefficiency inherent in the delivery of emergency food. Not only does this method of delivery require a sizeable three tiered system (federal, state and local agencies) to distribute the food, but it duplicates the food delivery system already in place in society–the grocery store. In our rural community there are at least 3 large grocery stores which are open seven days a week, two of which are open 24 hours a day. Additionally, there are several markets in and around town and a weekly farmers’ market during the growing season. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and cost effective to just increase the monthly SNAP allowance and make sure all those who are eligible to receive those benefits are getting them, instead of funding this inefficient, parallel food delivery system? This option would allow those who are food insecure and need assistance to use the system already in place in society when it is convenient for them, given their daily commitments, instead of relying on a parallel food delivery system that is much less convenient to access.

In a chapter from A Place at the Table, the companion book to the documentary of the same name, Joel Berg compares the emergency food delivery system to the fireman’s bucket brigade of the past. Prior to the mid 1800s, when there was a fire in a city or town, bucket brigades would be formed to combat the fire. Citizens would line up from the town well or another water source and pass buckets full of water to the fire, with empty buckets returning down another line. The problem was that these bucket brigades, although well intentioned, rarely put out any but the smallest of fires. To remedy the inefficiency of the bucket brigades local governments stepped in to create fire companies with better fire fighting equipment. Today we would never think of trying to fight a house fire with a bucket brigade.

Hunger in the United States is a fire that we are currently trying to fight with a bucket brigade. Local citizens in food banks, pantries and soup kitchens across the country are trying to put out the building sized fire of hunger with a bucket sized solution. Just like when the government of yesteryear stepped in to create a more effective solution to the problem of fires, the government of today needs to reorganize how assistance for those who are food insecure is delivered into a more efficient, effective method. I enjoy volunteering in the food pantry and the good feeling I get from knowing I am helping someone, but I look forward to the time when the emergency food delivery system of food banks, pantries and soup kitchens goes the way of the bucket brigade. Once that happens, maybe the fire of hunger in America will begin to be extinguished.

Hunger Walk

October 21, 2015Jenifer1 Comment

This past Sunday I couldn’t get the 10cc song, Things We Do For Love, out of my head. (I know. I’m dating myself.) That’s because of this line in the song, Like walking in the rain and the snow, and that is what we were doing, walking in the rain and the snow to help those who were hungry. My sons and I participated in the inaugural John H. Ware IV Memorial Hunger Help Walk to benefit 4 local organizations that help combat the problem of hunger in our area. In past years this walk has been part of the CROP Hunger Walk, sponsored by World Church Service. The local organizers in my town decided to break with that organization and sponsor the walk on their own for two reasons. First, the local entities receiving the funds raised by this walk did not see those funds for several months, often almost a year after the walk. Secondly, only 25% of the funds raised in our town came back to the local organizations. The remaining dollars stayed with the World Church Service, presumably to cover administrative costs and assist with efforts abroad to combat hunger.

Over 150 people turned out in spite of a dramatic dip in temperatures to participate in the walk, which included 3 different loop options–a 1 mile, 5K or 10K walk/run. Participants included people of all ages. I was especially pleased to see a large group of teenagers, many of whom were walking in support of a local youth organization that was receiving a portion of the money raised by the walk. The chilly wind and clouds did not seem to dampen spirits and as we started off, we were greeted with a brief snow shower, followed by a couple of light showers later in the walk. The inclement weather only seemed to add to the sense of camaraderie among the walkers.

I applaud these local organizers for deciding to take on the sponsorship and organization of this walk and keep the funds raised in the community. At the opening ceremonies when this change was discussed, those gathered vocalized their approval as well. Unless people are making a donation to a specific disaster or tragedy relief effort, most people want their donations to stay in the local community. Furthermore, I think this walk helps to make people, who may not be, aware that a hunger problem does exist in their community and that there are resources within that community trying to assist those in need. When I talk to folks about my endeavors and volunteering in the local food pantries, I have been surprised how often the response I receive is one of astonishment that we have food pantries in town. I hope this new model works for the organizers and future years walks will be able to operate in the same manner, with all the proceeds remaining in the local community.

Progress

October 14, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wanted to form a committee to help me work on issues affecting those who are food insecure. That group met for the first time this past Monday evening, and the experience, for me, was very uplifting. First, I was just excited that people had shown up! As I chose people to approach to be on the committee, I tried to select members based on skills, contacts or specialized knowledge I thought they might be able to bring to the group. That evening, as each person introduced herself, I was further encouraged to hear that each of them seemed committed to helping the food insecure. Furthermore, I learned that some had personal experiences that brought them to the table and some had additional skills or contacts I hadn’t known about that could prove to be helpful.

Our first plan of action is to do something about the scarcity of summer feeding programs in our community. We discussed what would be entailed in starting a large program that would require the involvement of the school district or some other parent organization like one of the local churches. We also discussed starting a smaller operation that we could handle on our own. Each option had pros and cons and would require the logistics to be arranged. As we discussed the hurdles of each option everyone participated in the dialogue, offering insight and possible solutions. Each member of the group eagerly volunteered to make inquiries or gather information, and we all left the meeting with something to do before the next one.

Throughout the meeting I was inspired by the eagerness of the group to move this project forward and willingness of people to volunteer to help. I am so glad I decided to put this group together. They will keep me encouraged and moving forward, provide points of view previously unconsidered and share insights I do not possess. We will be meeting monthly, and as we clear hurdles and make progress, I will report on those successes.

Community Meal, With a Side of Dignity

October 8, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

Pinpointing the first example of meals prepared and distributed to the needy proves an impossible task, as societies through the ages have recognized a moral obligation to feed those of it’s citizens who were hungry. Evidence of providing free meals to the needy can be found through out history in most countries. Organizations providing these meals, often called soup kitchens, were in wide use in the United States during the Great Depression. According to Janet Poppendieck in her book, Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, most societies, including the United States, rejected the idea of soup kitchens as a solution to feeding the hungry, because they stigmatized users by demeaning them and segregating them from the rest of society. Consequently the use of centrally prepared and served meals, like those found in soup kitchens, fell out of favor until the emergency food epidemic of the 1980s, when their numbers begin to increase dramatically (Poppendieck, 14).

Today, organizations providing a prepared meal for those in need take steps to reduce the stigma that receiving a free meal can cause. One popular way organizations attempt to maintain the dignity of those receiving a free meal is to have volunteers function as wait staff and serve diners on real dishes. Efforts are taken to eliminate waiting in long lines. Some larger agencies have moved to a café style operation, where diners can place an order after choosing items from a menu (Poppendieck, 247). Another way organizations providing a meal to those in need reduce the stigma associated with receiving that meal is to invite the whole community to partake of the meal. These meals are often referred to as community meals and everyone is welcome to dine. Usually a donation is suggested, but not required.

Once a month the Presbyterian Church in our town holds a community meal. The meal is served at dinner time on the last Sunday of the month and is open to anyone. In keeping with most community dinners, a donation is suggested, but not required. The idea for this meal originated with the Church’s youth group in the spring of 2011 and is now overseen by the outreach committee. In the Church’s Fellowship Hall, several rows of long tables are set with placemats, silverware and glasses. As diners arrive they may sit where ever they choose and are served the meal by volunteers on real plates. The meal consists of a meat, starch, vegetable and roll. For beverages, there is a choice of water, iced tea, coffee or hot tea. Once most diners have arrived and been served, those who wish can receive seconds, provided there is enough food left. When diners finish their main meal, several desserts from which to choose are available. Approximately 120 meals are served to diners each month at this community dinner. During these meals, the Church’s Fellowship Hall lives up to its name, as friends, family, neighbors and strangers from all socio-economic levels sit down to eat together.

Twice this past year I have had the opportunity to help at this community dinner by serving the meal, bussing dirty dishes and participating in the final clean up once the meal is finished. The experience, for me, has been a thoroughly enjoyable one. I enjoy the camaraderie of the fellow volunteers, the exchange of pleasantries with those I know and the satisfaction I receive from helping others, both the church’s outreach group and those eating the meal. Of all the tasks I do, I particularly enjoy serving the meal and clearing the plates away when diners are finished. Regardless of one’s life circumstances, being served is a treat. As a mother, I know how much I truly appreciate when someone in my house volunteers to wait on me. So by serving someone who may be food insecure a warm meal with a smile, I feel like I am treating them and giving them back some of the dignity that gets stripped away when a person has to struggle on a daily basis to obtain enough food to feed themselves or their family.

Pennsylvania Budget Impasse

September 30, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

half dome — Image courtesy of porbital at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The first time I remember ever hearing anything about budget impasses or government shutdowns was during the fall/winter of 1995-96 when the Federal Government shutdown twice after President Clinton vetoed a spending bill sent to him by Congress. I remember feeling apprehensive at the thought of our government shutting down. How long would it last? What would happen? Once it was all over, however, what I remember most about these shutdowns was that Yosemite National Park was closed during the shutdown and people who had planned vacations to the park were quite upset. (I was living in California at the time.) Upon reflection, I’m certain there were other, more pressing problems this shutdown caused, like the curtailment of health and welfare services for military veterans, or the suspension of disease surveillance by the CDC, or the furlough of government workers during the holiday season.

Fast forward to the present where it seems that government shutdowns or the threat of a shutdown is a regular occurrence. Take for instance my state of Pennsylvania, where on June 30, 2015, Governor Tom Wolf vetoed the budget bill passed by the General Assembly. It is three months later and the state of Pennsylvania is still operating without a budget. Just yesterday (9/29) Governor Wolf vetoed a stopgap spending bill. While most governmental functions continue, billions of dollars are not flowing to public schools and other social services providers. Caught in this budget impasse are food banks, pantries and other emergency food providers who rely on food from the state food purchase program. Typically food banks and pantries participating in the state food purchase program receive a line of credit which can be drawn down to purchase food to be used for distribution at the food bank or pantry. Unfortunately, no emergency food provider has received their current fiscal year allotment.

Fortunately, not all emergency food providers are feeling the pinch as a result of this budget impasse, due in part to how they are funded. For instance Philabundance, which is funded mostly with private donations, is probably not feeling the loss of these funds, but at the small food pantry where I volunteered yesterday the effects of the lack of this state funding were readily apparent. The shelves that hold the state supplied food were only half full. The pantry had no milk and very little meat, most of which was ground beef. I have never seen the supplies so depleted! Clients left the pantry with a smaller supply of food. Each week that passes without a resolution to this budget stalemate will result in a dwindling supply of state food for this pantry’s clients.

The purpose of this blog post is not to point fingers or lay blame on one side or the other. Rather, I would like to make readers aware of the consequences resulting from the current unwillingness to compromise that seems to exist at all levels of government. These are real people, often children, senior citizens and people who are disabled, who are being impacted. I worry that as a society we are becoming complacent with our politicians’ unwillingness to compromise. Or even worse, that we view their actions as a virtue. Unfortunately, there are real life consequences when both sides are unwilling to negotiate. The time has come for all politicians to get back to the work of governing, and sometimes that means sitting down with someone who has political beliefs different from the ones you hold and working together through compromise to reach a solution.

Good and Cheap

September 23, 2015September 23, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

In keeping with last week’s blog post about the SNAP Challenge, I want to write about a cookbook I bought earlier this summer. It is called Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day by Leanne Brown. This cookbook grew out of a capstone project for Ms. Brown’s master’s degree in food studies at New York University. She calls this cookbook a “book of ideas” and a “strategy guide” rather than just a book of recipes. Each recipe has only a few essential ingredients, but most include a list of additional ingredients that could be used to enhance the dish, if one’s budget allowed. Additionally, each recipe includes a beautiful color photo of the dish and a note, providing preparation hints, information about an ingredient in the dish or other helpful information about the dish. Some of the recipes also contain a paragraph set apart by a dotted line with further helpful cooking tips that would pertain to that recipe, making the cookbook very user friendly for the novice cook.

Recipes aren’t the only things you will find in this cookbook, however. It begins with a history of the book and states the author’s philosophy regarding eating, both well and inexpensively (the key is fruits and vegetables). Brown then spends several pages discussing tips for eating well and shopping economically, including supermarket strategies and a list of items she feels are worth the expense. There is a section on what to do with leftovers, so that they are more enticing to eat and a page showing a seasonal growing chart for fruits and vegetables, so that you can purchase produce in season when it tastes best and is the cheapest. Toward the back of the book are sections on flavoring your food, cooking in bulk and other cooking techniques.

The recipes are easy to follow and each dish is nicely displayed. I have only made one recipe out of the book, but it was quite tasty and I will make it again, as well as look for others to try. I love that she offers so many ideas about altering the recipes that the cookbook becomes more of a springboard to countless other creations. I think it is a valuable resource for the cook, especially the novice one, looking to eat well, yet frugally. In addition to assisting those receiving SNAP benefits, it would be a great resource for a college student or someone living on a fixed income. The last thing I really like about this cookbook is the pledge that for every copy bought, a copy will be donated to someone who needs it, but can not afford to purchase it. Furthermore, Brown offers a free downloadable copy of the cookbook on her website for those who either can’t afford a copy or just want to try a recipe or two before purchasing. I encourage you to go to her website and check out this cookbook. The link is provided below.

Leanne Brown’s website

SNAP Challenge

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015Jenifer1 Comment

Gwyneth's food — Gwyneth Paltrow’s SNAP Challenge purchases

I have thought about taking the SNAP Challenge several times over the past few years. Participants of the SNAP Challenge pledge to live on roughly $4.00 per person per day, which is the amount of the average daily food stamp benefit. Emergency food providers have taken the challenge. Politicians have taken the challenge. Celebrities have taken the challenge. Although usually garnering positive coverage Gwyneth Paltrow received tons of negative press earlier this year over her food choices when she decided to take the SNAP Challenge.

When I became serious about understanding the issues around food insecurity, taking the SNAP Challenge seemed like one of the most obvious things for me to do if I really wanted to understand what it would be like to experience food insecurity. Yet I never have. I have my reasons. The first being that I have a family, and while this is my mission and they support me, they would not be too happy to subsist on a SNAP Challenge diet, nor do I think it is fair to ask them to participate to that extent for my cause. Additionally, do not I want to do double cooking duty by preparing a separate meal for me. Neither my family’s dietary discomfort, nor my lack of time to prepare double meals is the main reason I have never taken the SNAP Challenge. As a person who likes to cook a wide variety of food, I have a very well stocked kitchen pantry and I have not quite figured out how to take that pantry out of the SNAP Challenge equation. I could decide to not use any items in my pantry, but that seems a bit unrealistic. Most food insecure people have a minimum of kitchen staples to use. I could purchase only ready-made, preprocessed foods, but that doesn’t fit my mission to help those who are food insecure eat as healthfully as they can while stretching what little food resources they have. And so consequently, I have never taken the challenge.

This summer the perfect opportunity to take the challenge presented itself, and if I had only been thinking ahead I could have capitalized on the opportunity. Every few summers my family vacations in a cabin in Maine. The cabin belongs to another family and we rent it from them for the week. While the cabin is stocked with food belonging to the other family, we bring whatever food we need for the week. This would have been the perfect chance for me to take the SNAP Challenge, without having to worry that I was cheating by using some of the staples in my own kitchen. We could have bought our food, staying within the parameters of the challenge, and relied on whatever spices or other small quantity ingredients were available at the cabin. The only problem was that I didn’t think about trying this until half way through our vacation.

To be honest, it is probably for the best. I’m pretty sure my family would have revolted at the thought of turning our vacation dining into a SNAP Challenge even though when we take this vacation we tend to eat simple, easy to prepare meals. (Except for the lobster dinner. We were in Maine after all!) This is in part because the cabin in which we stay does not have electricity, and while it did have running water, it was pumped from the lake and not potable. The adequate, yet primitive nature of our cooking setup, dictates relatively simple meals. Some of the meals we ate included spaghetti with jarred sauce, vegetarian burritos with beans and rice, sandwiches, leftovers and other ready made foods like soup.

Once the missed opportunity occurred to me, however, I did begin thinking about what we had purchased, how much it had cost and what we could have done without. To feed my family of four for a week I would have only had roughly $112 to spend. Our total shopping bill was well over twice as much as that. When you factor out alcohol, lobsters, and items that can not be purchased by SNAP benefits, like toilet paper, our expenses would have been lower, but still considerably more than the SNAP Challenge allotment. Since we were on vacation I bought fun items, like cookies, chips and soda. Those items could have been sacrificed. We also had to bring in all our drinking and cooking water, as the water from the lake was not potable. That is an expense not usually factored into the average SNAP Challenge. Even without all these items I still do not think our total would have been the roughly $112 we would have had as our benefit.

In the abstract I knew SNAP benefits did not allow for much food to be purchased; they are not intended to totally supply a monthly allotment of food, even though they do for many. What this mental exercise accomplished for me was to concretely demonstrate, not only how little food SNAP benefits provide, but how difficult eating well can be if relying on SNAP benefits and how repetitive one’s food choices would be. I will probably never take the SNAP Challenge and I am okay with that. While I understand the intent of the challenge, I find it a bit flawed. Here is the challenge I have for you that I think will demonstrate the point the SNAP Challenge is attempting to make. Next time you go shopping keep your grocery bill. How much was it? Now figure what your household SNAP benefit would be ($4 per person per day for the number of days your shopping trip would cover). After you deduct all the non-food items, how far over that amount is your grocery bill? Now, examine what’s left and decide what you would do without to come within your SNAP benefit range?

Gleaning

September 9, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

Mention the word glean and most people will think of gathering information from various sources, because that is how the word is mostly used today. But glean has an historical definition, meaning to gather grain or other crops left in the field after a harvest. In some ancient cultures gleaning was encouraged as a method to assist those in need, an early form of helping the food insecure. The Bible and the Torah instructed farmers to leave sections of fields unharvested or to not pick up crops dropped during harvest. These crops were to be left for the poor or strangers.

Today, many emergency food organizations have gleaning programs. Some programs, like FOOD (Food On Our Doorstep) Share in Oxnard, CA coordinate an extensive network of volunteers and growers. This organization harvests an average of 50,000-60,000 lbs. of produces each month, mostly from farms, but also from backyard gardens and fruit trees. Other programs may just have a handful of volunteers who establish a relationship with a few farmers or gardeners. Currently Chester County Food Bank does not seem to have a gleaning program, but they did at one time. When I first considered volunteering at food banks, gleaning was one of the areas in which I had considered volunteering my time. It appeals to me in two ways. First, gleaning helps to eliminate waste. America is an incredibly wasteful society, embarrassingly so in my opinion, and keeping any fresh produce from becoming part of the waste stream, particularly in landfills is a step in the right direction. Secondly, gleaning gets fresh produce into the hands of people who would otherwise not have access to it.

I often wondered how successful a gleaning program would be in our corner of Chester County. While we live in a rural setting, most of the farmers growing on any large scale are Amish. I was unsure whether they would assist the non-Amish community and give away the fruits of their labor. I wasn’t even sure if they would have excess produce to donate. I know many Amish farmers have produce stands and travel to local farmers’ markets, but maybe they would keep any excess produce to share within their community. Or maybe there would be little to no waste because they canned or otherwise preserved their harvest and gave any marginal produce to their livestock to eat. They are such a simple, plain folk, maybe they very conscientiously only grew what they could use, frowning on excess. I just did not know.

This summer I got my answer. Every Tuesday morning a van belonging to one of the local food panties would go to Amish farms to collect what they could not use or sell. During the latter part of summer, when the vegetable harvest is in full swing, the van would return loaded with corn, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers and more! Learning this brought me happiness on many levels. I was glad to see folks in need of food getting access to so much fresh produce. I was pleased to see that food was not going to waste. And I was happy to know that this connection existed between our communities. I am quite fond of the Amish farmer who’s produce stand I frequent, and while I do not completely agree with all of their practices, I do believe we could learn much from them.

The Journey Continues

September 2, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

Summer is coming to an end. My kids went back to school Monday, and I am left wondering where the time went. This summer didn’t quite go as planned, but not many have and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. At first I felt like I hadn’t made any forward progress with this endeavor of helping those who are food insecure. I didn’t write nearly as many blog posts as I had hoped and I wanted to catch up on a backlog of reading, which did not happen. But as the end of summer approached, I realized that progress sometimes doesn’t feel like progress, because you don’t always move forward in a straight line. Sometimes you move forward by zig zagging or meandering.

This summer was about meandering. At first I felt like I was slacking, but I came to realize that I needed to take some time to be still and look at what I had done thus far and assess what I wanted to accomplish going forward. Luckily for me, the circumstances of summer gave me that time. I determined that I wanted to change my approach to my blog. I had started to look at my blog as my mission, and while it is an important part of my mission, it is not the mission. I also decided that I work better with people, if only to have someone to whom to be accountable. Consequently I have decided to assemble a group of people in my area who share my interest in assisting those who are food insecure.

Concurrently with my decision to form this group, two local women who read my blog about the lack of summer feeding programs in our town approached me to express their concern over this issue and their desire to work to remedy the situation. Eureka, my first two committee members! I have spoke to a couple more people I know are committed to the cause of assisting the food insecure and have a couple more people I want to invite to participate. Over the coming year I hope to work with this group on a summer feeding program and on developing others ideas.

One thing I never stopped doing this summer was volunteering, which was a different experience than volunteering when I first started. I can’t quite say why. Maybe because I am more comfortable with my fellow volunteers and the clients. But I also think it had something to do with the availability of fresh produce, which changed from week to week and became more plentiful as the summer progressed. Sometimes I felt like Santa, handing out presents to a room full of 5 year olds. Just this week while volunteering, I picked 54 pounds of tomatoes. Clients were waiting for them when I put them with the other produce. When I left 2 hours later, only a few pounds remained! Supplying this produce and having the clients eagerly take it fills me with a sense of joy and helps keep me invigorated to continue my journey.

My Tomato Picking Buddy!