This thread is for discussing and organizing anything related to ‘food activism’. There are lots and lots and lots of hungry people in every community, and preparing meals for people is the act of service I’m most comfortable with.
I’m a low content, low volume poster on this forum but this cause is important to me and I think it deserves it’s own thread. A generous forum donor has provided seed money for a few local forum members and myself to prepare a meal for 55 homeless/underfed folks in the Southern California area, which we’re going to do this Sunday night, 12/22.
We’re still working on the menu, but it will roughly be:
Beef chili
Cornbread
Roasted veggies
Dessert (taking suggestions)
Lemonade
Coffee
Goal is to provide a hearty, delicious meal at a fairly large scale and do so under a tight budget. 35 regular meals + 20 meals that must consider a variety of allergies and restrictions. The place that we found to cook/serve at has a commercial kitchen, which will make things easier.
Hopefully, we can pull this off once a month or so. This first meal will definitely be a test run and will challenge us logistically, but we’ll figure it out. Hoping to share some photos after the event, and to get people on this board excited about participating in their own version of food activism.
It’s fulfilling, and fun, and it’s a great counterbalance to consuming news media and dreading the state of our country and humanity.
I mentioned in a prior thread, the best 1-2 hours of my week are when I help out a charity that packs food bags for school kids to take home for the weekend. I’m just a grunt that moves heavy stuff, the folks who run it started at some point just like you.
Feel like I should post ITT. Helping other people is pretty easy and it feels awesome. I also typically get my kids involved (they will be with us Sunday helping to prepare and serve the meal) - being raised in an atmosphere of activism, gratitude for what we have, and service toward the less fortunate seems to have helped shape their worldviews. So that’s doesn’t suck either.
Veggie chili, gf cornbread, probably make all the cookies gf. Maybe do a sorbet or something for the egg/dairy allergies.
Shopping on Fri with @LFS. Really appreciate those that have messaged to offer support. The goal is to make this a 1x monthly endeavor, and if we achieve that then we’ll definitely solicit some assistance.
I would like to organize this in my community but kinda stuck on the logistics. How are you distributing the food? Are you distributing from a central location or bringing it around different areas? I assume there isn’t nothing to worry about from a permitting standpoint?
sriracha found a place that has facilities and clients that is letting us do this there (central location).
Our first effort was at a Food-not-Bombs event. The one we went to puts on a meal once a week. You might check if there’s a Food-not-Bombs group in your area. Lots of churches do something similar ofc. Those things might be a good way to connect with people if you want to start something new. Out of the people doing this in LA, I’m pulling the least weight, but even a sriracha would have a hard time doing this alone - you should connect with people somewhere.
I started by connecting to a local shelter that serves a lunch on Thursdays to about 40 women. About once a month I’ll cook lunch and bring it over warm and ready to serve. I know that other people/orgs that donate lunch will do sandwiches or even just order takeout and bring that over. I do stuff like pot pies and mac n cheese because I like to cook. But, it’s a lot of stress on my home to cook for that many people. Luckily I found a much larger shelter that has a commercial kitchen that lets volunteers come in and cook on-site, and then serve dinner to the residents. So that’s what we’re going to do for the first time tomorrow.
What really bothers me is that there is so much food waste AND so many hungry people in this country. At a local level, logistics is a huge blocker to bridging the gap between expiring/damaged food goods and hungry folks. How do you get food from the grocery stores? (takes a lot of relationship building), How do you transport the ingredients, and where are they safely stored? Where are they cooked, and how do the final meal outputs get into the hands of people that are hungry? The answers to these questions are all about logistics.
I’d love to deal with that problem on a larger scale one day. For now, we’re going to cook a delicious dinner for about 60 people and have fun doing it. My advice to you, to start at least, is to find a local charity that needs something you can reasonably offer. Lunch on Thursdays, maybe canned goods or other raw ingredients for a pantry, even just 10 cheese pizzas if that’s what your means allow. I just typed the word pantry and that reminded me, in almost every community there is at least one food pantry that runs a donation-based ‘grocery store’ for people to come in and ‘shop’ (for free). You could get in touch and ask them how you can help. Usually they need drivers to go out and pick things up when a grocery store contacts them to say they’ve got 10 cases of pinto beans with damaged labels.
Expanding on this, because now I’ve worked myself all up. Linda Hess, a local woman who runs Urban Harvester (food logistics charity), told me that the largest donation she ever received was 125,000 pounds of beef short rib. Some huge meat supplier in SoCal was trimming down short ribs for Asian grocery stores and they’d throw the trim into their freezer, for like a year. They literally filled their entire commercial freezer with little nubbins of beef short rib, and were going to throw it away until someone thought to call Linda. She coordinated getting it transported and donated to shelters and food banks all over LA county. 120,000 pounds of meat, almost hitting the trash, because the producer didn’t want to deal with it.
She told me another story about how all the LA county Costcos were the pilot market for a new rotisserie machine for the Costco rotisserie chickens. Well, the rotisserie’s skewer thingies that you shove the chickens on to spin were a larger diameter than what Costco previously used, so the fucking chickens wouldn’t fit! Like 10 or 15 Costco stores collectively had like 30,000 whole chickens that they couldn’t use for rotisserie, and they were going to throw them away until Linda found a way to distribute them.
It’s really infuriating to know that shit like this goes on around the country probably every day when there isn’t a hero like Linda Hess there to do all the hard work. Costco had no intention of doing anything with those chickens other than throwing them in the trash. That will probably never change. What can change is figuring out more and more sustainable solutions (logistics, mostly) to keep those chickens out of the trash and convert them into something tasty and nutritious for people that are so poor they’re literally eating cat food to stay alive.
I know this was mentioned somewhere, but we had a donor for this event. I’m pretty sure we will be doing this again and if anyone wants to donate let me or lfs or Sriracha know. This event was roughly $300. I’m taking the initiative here on soliciting, don’t blame LFS or Sriracha.
We cooked and plated about 50 servings of chili with cornbread and roasted veggies. Then served apple hand pies for dessert. Probably packed up another 15 servings for folks coming in later in the night.
Best part was sitting in the dining room eating with people and chatting. All said, a big success. We stayed right at the budget and people seemed happy with the food. Plus cooking with other people is fun.
Next event is Sunday, January 26th. If you want to help cook and serve, let us know. Our funding goal is $300 and we are currently 1/6th the way there. If you can help with that, PM Sriracha, LFS or me.
