#Food Pantry

[rosalind2013]

I say this as someone who works at a nonprofit: the attitude “someone who has nothing will be grateful for anything” is harmful and dehumanizing when it’s used to justify donating something ripped, stained, or expired to someone less fortunate.

Homeless people deserve clothing with good structural integrity. Victims of house fires deserve linens that are free of stains. No one should have to eat expired food. It’s disrespectful to give people scraps when they’re already hurting.

Please, out of respect for your fellow humans, check the dates on your food donations before you drop them off.

[soft-homestyle]

Stay cozy.

@soft-homestyle

[irrepressible-domovoy]

PSA!

The US government is now halting shipments of food to food banks and pantries in Michigan.

And they're doing it in other places, too, like California and Ohio. (There are others, but too many to link all of them)

As far as I can tell, there's no real explanations and the Biden administration promised more funding last year, but the government now says it's "unsustainable expectations."

What's "unsustainable" is expecting society to keep running if everyday people who keep it running go hungry.

Please, contact your representatives, local and national, and tell them to fight this.

Food banks have steadily shown an increase in food insecurity over the years and it's more and more necessary for more people every day. There is no possible way pantries can be expected to help even half of their regular visitors without government assistance.

[gardening-guy]

worked yesterday on making food to donate to the local community fridge! in total, there's 3 containers of fried rice, 3 containers of roasted potatoes, 8ish bags of banana bread, and we'll see how much soup i'll have soon

[voluptuarian]

How to Eat From the Food Bank/Food Pantry

I've seen a number of posts recently encouraging people to utilize their local food banks if they're struggling financially, as well as providing some basics on how one would go about doing that. I've been relying on the food bank myself for about six months now, and it's been very helpful. However, as somebody who was pretty new to cooking and was mostly using pre-made dishes when I did, when I first started going I found the food I was getting completely antithetical to how I cooked and ate and struggled to figure out how to utilize what I was getting. I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position, so I thought I would share the strategies I've learned for making the most of food bank offerings, and the best and most affordable dishes I've found to make with them!

What To Expect/What You'll Need

Food banks tend to cater to families, assume you know how to cook, and expect you to own kitchenware and have pantry space. So if you don't have them already, go to goodwill and get like a 13x9 cake pan, basic soup and frying pan, a stock pot, and a decent size mixing bowl for your own good. (You can get them like one per paycheck if you need to, or even ask friends and family if they have extras, but you Will need them.) You'll also want some cooking utensils, like ladles, spatulas, and decent knives. And God help you if you don't have much pantry space, because every flat surface in your house is now going to be covered in food cans and your crisper drawer will not be enough to hold all the fruit and veg you'll be inundated with. (Sadly, at least where I am, they don't give out milk and that's like a basic ingredient for a lot of the food they're actually giving you, so idk what's up with that.) They usually also assume you have a car, and if you're like me and don't, absolutely bring your own bags because they probably will not have any, reusable shopping bags are perfect for this. Bring more of them than you think you'll need.

Foods you will likely get at a food bank

produce (I frequently get potatoes, onions, oranges, carrots, squash, melons, lettuce, cabbage, green onions, salad mixes, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and so. many. apples. It's especially abundant during the summer and fall, when people will donate extra produce from their gardens and fruit trees. Good luck finding places to store all that, though.)

boxed macaroni and cheese

dried beans

dried pasta

bagged nuts

bagged rice

canned food (canned spaghetti/ravioli, applesauce, various canned vegetables, and many varieties of beans-- I've most frequently gotten pinto, kidney, navy, and black beans.)

a protein option (at my local one they usually offer a choice between eggs or an egg substitute and some kind of frozen meat, like fish sticks or breaded chicken.)

Foods I recommend you regularly buy yourself if they're not providing (most of which will be used in at least one of these recipes)

cheese (esp shredded)

milk

salt, pepper, and dried spices/herbs (these are not too expensive generally, if you buy them like a week at a time you can get a nice collection in not too long, and if it comes to that they are very easy to steal, but sometimes food banks will give them away as well.)

butter

cooking oil (olive oil is used in multiple recipes I'm sharing here, so that's what I'd recommend-- sadly it is spendy.)

garlic (it makes everything better, honestly, and it will last a long time in your cupboard, too.)

marinara/spaghetti sauce or other pasta sauces (now most these place are already giving out cans of sauce, so why bother buying any? Because they exclusively provide only the blandest, most watery, most worthless canned marinara/tomato sauces known to man. Do not bother trying to use these on pasta-- you can use them for other things, though, which I'll get to. But you'll need something to put on all that boxed spaghetti.)

Go-To Dishes for Food Bank Ingredients:

7 Can Soup - I am not exaggerating when I say this is now the staple food in my diet. Thankfully it is tasty, extremely easy to make, makes enough to last for days, gets better the longer it sits in the fridge, and can often be made with just what you get from the food bank. (Also great for popping in a tupperware for a comforting work lunch.) And you can buy the needed ingredients for less than $6 typically, so even if it's a bad week and they don't give you anything you need, this is still a very cheap dish to make. The basic recipe included here uses pinto, kidney, and black beans, plain diced tomatoes and diced tomatoes with chilies, corn, beanless chili, and a cheese of your choice, but you can easily change it up or add ingredients as well.

My way: I add dried spices, usually a little garlic salt, pepper, and a dash of paprika; as for cheese, shredded Mexican blend is my favorite for its smoothness but pepper jack is great too, and I often mix different kinds. I also play around with the beans I use depending on what I get, but also to taste-- using ranch beans instead of one of the standards is especially nice, and gives a richer flavor. (I haven't tried it with dried beans, but if you have bagged and not canned, I'd assume you could get away with substituting one of the the canned options for a dried one, but not more than that or the flavor will be too weak.) If you prefer a brothy-er soup throw one of those aforementioned tasteless-ass canned marinara sauces in with the beans, it adds more liquid without watering anything down. You can easily add a cooked meat in as well, I love throwing sliced kielbasa in when I can get it. And I usually wait until an old batch is getting low, throw a little water into the pot to soften the leftovers up, and then drop a whole new batch of ingredients in with it, it adds the more intense flavors of the older soup into the new batch (and means I don't have to wash the pot out in between.)

Rumbledethumps (Vers. 1, Vers. 2)

This is a baked Scottish comfort food with a great name. I regularly get given cabbage when I go to the food bank and for a long time was like, what can I possibly do with this? I also frequently end up with a lot of potatoes, more than I need. This dish uses up both of those, only requires a few additional ingredients, and is pretty easy to make even if you don't cook. (Also cabbage, onions, and potatoes are pretty inexpensive, too, so if you're missing one that's not prohibitive.) I've included two recipes as examples, but there are lots of variations you can make, and upping or lowering the amount of cheese, throwing in garlic or spices, or adding or forgoing meat makes it easy to still reliably make regardless of what ingredients you have or how much you have to spend on extras. (I would say, if you can add more cheese, do it, but then I am a cheese-loving gal.)

Briam (Vers. 1, Vers. 2)

This Greek dish is just designed to use up produce and I LOVE her for that. Early on I was absolutely bewildered by all the produce I was getting, and constantly struggling to use it up before it went bad, and briam solved all those problems. And it tastes and smells Divine. I even made it for Thanksgiving this year. Cooking know-how needed is minimal, and the prep is the most labor intensive part, then you just throw it all in a cake pan and put it in the stove. In a typical week you will probably get most of the vegetables you need to make this, and may need to buy a couple squash or tomatoes at most, as well as a few fresh herbs, so it's very affordable. And not only decadent, but a really nice break from a lot of the more processed dishes you'll get-- also vegan!

I've included 2 versions, one is a written recipe with photos, the other is a video of someone prepping briam (the first dish in the video), and while it doesn't provided measurements for everything, includes a lot of ingredients that the written recipe doesn't. My own method combines both of these recipes, so I wanted to share both, but also having a video example is nice sometimes, too.

My way: I've prepared dozens of different versions of this since I started making it depending on what veggies I have while generally falling somewhere between both versions, and it's always delicious. The key is to make sure you balance out starchy and watery vegetables-- look at the suggestions in Vers. 1 and try to keep whatever substitutes you make to the same proportions. (Also if you use carrots, wait until they've gotten a little soft and bendy; fresh, hard carrots will take longer to bake than all the other vegetables and won't cook soft in time otherwise.) For flavoring ingredients I rely on garlic, dried thyme, green onion, Italian parsley, fresh dill, and rosemary, preferably fresh if I can afford it. Sadly herbs are expensive, so if you have to pare it down, garlic, parsley, green onion, and fresh dill are all you really need (I can't skip the dill, it's So Important for me.) and use dried herbs to fill it out. I also like to chop up half a regular yellow onion (or several smaller ones) into fairly small pieces as additional flavor layer, then I use a whole red onion diced into big pieces as part of the regular ingredients. I use twice as much salt as the recipe suggests and only about 2.5 1/4 cups olive oil instead of 3, and skip the tomato paste (you won't need it.) I roughly peel my potatoes as well as any cucumber or zucchini (I tend to find it a bit bitter if I don't). I also like to cut up all my large veggies and throw them in a large mixing bowl, then dice up all my fresh herbs into a smaller bowl, where I combine them with the salt, garlic, and dried herbs, and 1/4 cup of olive oil; then I pour the herb bowl into the veggies, mix them well so everything is evenly covered with flavorings and oil, then dump that into the baking pan, and then add the rest of the oil and water. (I like to get the last of the herbs and spices out by pouring one of the 1/4 cups of water into the little bowl first to rinse it, and then dumping that into the cake pan.)

Adasi (Persian Lentil Soup)

Haven't made this yet because I still haven't bought mint or turmeric, but it looks easy and delicious, plus it's not uncommon to get bags of dried lentils from the food bank, they last a long time, and they're not that expensive to buy either. It's also another vegan option! Also this is one of the few lentil soup recipes (and soup recipes period) that didn't involve blending it afterwards-- I do not have a blender or a food processor, as many people don't I'm sure, and certainly don't have the funds to buy one just to make soup with, so this recipe was a treasure! (Also the instructions say to soak the lentils overnight, but that's not actually necessary-- and you could get away with skipping the parsley or lemon juice, if you needed to.) I feel like this would make a great topping for rice, too.

Hopefully this well help anybody using the food bank to maximize what you're getting, as well as making the jump into real cooking less intimidating for those just starting out. Happy eating!

[bubblegum-magnesium]

[starsteemer]

Ever since I was a little girl I thought food should be free

[chronicallycouchbound]

I successfully convinced a toddler at the food bank that my rollator is a racecar so today is a win

[ravenroseglaive]

Black Woman Farmer Sounds the Alarm on our Food Supply

[dismalpizza2]

I messed up budgeting this month, while I'm not completely broke there wasn't anything left for fresh fruit or veggies. I live in a community with Jewish food pantry that serves neighbors from all walks of life (Jewish or not) including kosher clients. I'm blown away by how much good fresh food they gave me and how friendly everyone was. They didn't bat an eye at knowing what I could actually cook since I have only a Dairy kitchen. They even had special Rosh Hashanah bags with apples, honey, frozen challah, and candles! If you're genuinely struggling to afford the holidays check with your local Jewish Federation/JCC/Shul/JCFS and see if they can point you to a food pantry that can help.

[robertpallesen]

Free Pantry, Portland, OR © Robert Pallesen

[bumblebeeappletree]

Recipe timestamps:

Chicken & Dumplings 2:13

Minestrone 12:35

Cheesy Chicken & Rice 22:25

Corn Chowder 29:03

5-Can Chili 34:32

Link to folder with every free printable: https://drive.google.c...

Price analysis of each Meal in a bag (Not including bouillon which can be purchased once and distributed amongst almost all of the meals for personal use, if making to donate it's best to either include the entire package of bouillon or omit it if needed)

Chicken & Dumplings $8.25

Garlic & Herb biscuit mix $1.25

2 cans of chicken $2.50

Cream of chicken soup $1.25

Evaporated milk $1.25

Mixed vegetables $0.75

Diced potatoes $1.25

Minestrone Soup $6.25

Pasta $1.25

Pasta sauce $1.25

Carrots 0.75

Kidney beans $1.00

Green Beans $0.75

Diced tomatoes $1.25

Cheesy Chicken & Rice Soup $8.00

2 cans of chicken $2.50

Black beans $1.00

Corn $0.75

Diced tomatoes & green chiles $1.25

Spanish Rice $1.25

Velveeta $1.25

Corn Chowder $7.00

Corn $0.75

Diced potatoes $1.25

Cream style corn $1.25

Evaporated milk $1.25

Cream of chicken $1.25

Biscuit Mix $1.25

5 can chili $6.75

Kidney beans $1.00

Pinto Beans $1.00

Black Beans $1.00

Diced tomatoes & green chiles $1.25

Tomato sauce $1.25

Chili seasoning $1.25

[renee-writer]

Some tips and guidance if you donate to food pantries derived from feedback by those who use them:

1. Everyone donates Kraft Mac and Cheese in the box. They can rarely use it because it needs milk and buttr which is hard to get from regular food banks.

2. Boxed milk is a treasure, as kids need it for cereal which they also get a lot of.

3. Everyone donates pasta sauce and spaghetti noodles.

4. They cannot eat all the awesome canned veggies and soup unless you put a can opener in too or buy pop tops.

5. Oil is a luxury but needed for Rice a-Roni which they also get a lot of.

6. Spices or salt and pepper would be a real Christmas gift.

7. Tea bags and coffee make them feel like you care.

8. Sugar and flour are treats.

9. They fawn over fresh produce donated by farmers and grocery stores.

10. Seeds are cool in Spring and Summer because growng can be easy for some.

11. They rarely get fresh meat.

12. Tuna and crackers make a good lunch.

13. Hamburger Helper goes nowhere without ground beef.

14. They get lots of peanut butter and jelly but usually not sandwich bread.

15. Butter or margarine is nice too.

16. Eggs are a real commodity.

17. Cake mix and frosting makes it possible to make a child’s birthday cake.

18. Dish Soap / Dishwashing detergent is very expensive and is always appreciated.

19. Feminine hygiene products are a luxury and women will cry over that.

20. Everyone loves Stove Top Stuffing.

Most people buy what they think food pantry users want, but have never asked them. If you help families, single people, foster youth and the homeless, this list can help better tailor your donations!

Credit - original owner

[gardening-guy]

was going to go to bed but instead ended up deciding to make a big slow cooker soup to donate to the local community fridge tomorrow

i'm making homemade veggie stock overnight with the scraps of 3 potatoes, 3 carrots, 1 onion, and some bits of garlic peel. i chopped up all those veggies too to refrigerate overnight until the morning. in the morning, i shall strain the veggie stock, add in the chopped veggies to slow cook, boil some rotini noodles (or whatever else we have), and add some shredded chicken once everything is together and cooked :)

soup for da community <3 🍲

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Reverend Raymond Brown and others hand out bread and milk to unemployed people outside St. Peter's Mission, around January 23, 1931.

Photo: Associated Press

[lilysblogofshadows]

Beet Soup with Canned Beets Recipe

Beets are rich in fiber, folate, and manganese. They also can reduce inflammation and blood pressure. Spiritually beetroots red color reminiscent of blood reminds us of passion, energy, life, and connection to ancestors. Food Banks often give canned beets. This is how I use canned beets:

Ingredients

Oil/Butter

1 small onion, chopped

Salt and Pepper

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

4 cups stock

2 cans of beets, drained and cut up

1 can kidney beans, drained

Apple Cider Vinegar

Dill (fresh or dry)

Steps

1. Saute chopped onion in fat. Salt and pepper it. After it's soft, add the garlic. Saute till you smell the garlic.

2. Add stock, beets, and beans. Bring to boil. Slim off foam. Cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

3. Add salt, pepper, vinegar, and dill to taste and smell. This soup is better on the sour side in my opinion.