Kids get bored of eating the same sandwich day after day. Here are a few quick-fix tips to make your family healthy, fun, and safe lunches to go!
Fruits of Our Labor
Hey there! I'm Samantha, one of the new Local Food Outreach Interns at the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, here to help us get more locally grown produce. On Friday, August 12th, I had the pleasure of going on my first field gleaning, EVER! Not only was it my first time field gleaning, but it was my first time picking apples too! Needless to say, I had no idea what to expect. I met with a group of enthusiastic volunteers at the Central Crops Research Station in Clayton, NC to glean Gala apples. The sun was shining, but it was unseasonably cool. The apple orchard was full of trees bursting with fresh Gala apples that were begging to be picked!
I learned that this gleaning was a collaboration between the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and the Society of Saint Andrew. They frequently share opportunities with each another, combining volunteers, farm contacts, and resources to get the food to hungry people.
We were shown the two rows of apple trees that needed to be gleaned and given the instructions to pick, pick and pick some more. So, that we did...
I was amazed at the dedication of the field gleaners; they truly stopped at nothing to collect all the apples, standing on buckets and intertwining themselves in apple branches to reach the highest ones.
In only an hour and a half all the apples had been picked! As we scoured the tops of the last trees, a Food Shuttle truck arrived driven by another volunteer, and the volunteers split into two groups to finish the picking and to load the truck. The truck drove between the two rows of trees, and volunteers brought bags and buckets of apples to the truck, while three of us emptied them into large cardboard bins. In the end, we filled two and a half of the bins.
Not bad for a morning's worth of work. After we finished, we all enjoyed a sweet snack. During the break, I had a chance to chat with some of the volunteers. It was so invigorating to hear and see other people as invested in local food and helping distribute food to those in need as myself. Also, it was great to see a group of people coming together to help others in need. The morning was definitely filled with smiles, hard work, sweat, and kindness.
For me, the car ride back to the food shuttle was full of anticipation. How many pounds of apples did we actually pick? My amateur guess was 1000 pounds...
Well, the scales don't lie. My guess was way off, because we picked over 1820 lbs of apples! WOW, that is nearly 1 ton!
The apples were distributed to local communities in need through free Mobile Farmer’s Markets and partnering hunger relief agencies. I couldn't help but smile the whole way home from field gleaning. I am officially hooked, and I can not wait to go on another one soon!
To see more photos from gleaning, visit our Flickr photo stream.
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle's Hunger Free Summer Delivers 42,000 Meals to Triangle Children Facing Food Hardship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jul 26, 2011—
Raleigh, NC - Inter-Faith Food Shuttle is providing a Hunger Free Summer for thousands of children in the Triangle while school is out for the summer, including 150 children from the Stony Brook neighborhood whose families are still recovering from the April tornadoes.
“There are more than 110,000 children participating in the free and reduced lunch program in the Triangle during the public school year. Unfortunately, it is a huge struggle for the majority of these families to feed their children during the summer,” said Kia Baker, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Director of Food Recovery & Distribution. “Inter-Faith Food Shuttle goes directly to the neighborhoods where these children live, camp, and play during the summer and provides them with healthy, nutritious food. At each of our eight sites, children receive hot lunches daily and bags filled with five breakfast meals and five snacks to take home. By summer’s end, we will provide more than 42,000 meals over ten weeks. The heartbreaking truth is that our food is critical to many families’ ability to feed their children. Without our Hunger Free Summer program thousands of children may not eat in our community.”
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Hunger Fee Summer operates during the weeks that traditional school calendar is not in session (6/13/2011-8/19/2011).
Eight IFFS Hunger Free Summer Sites:
- Stony Brook Community (Wake County) – *Tornado Relief* - Serves up to 150 children daily. Partnership: Centro Internacional de Raleigh
- Franklin Village (East Durham - Alston Ave. and Taylor St) - Serves 150 children daily. Partnerships: East Durham Children’s Initiative and City of Durham Neighborhood Improvement Services
- KaBoom Playground at Shepherd’s House UMC (East Durham - N. Driver and Main St) - Serves up to 100 children daily. Partnerships: East Durham Children’s Initiative and City of Durham Neighborhood Improvement Services
- Five other enrolled, camp-based sites
The Hunger Free Summer program is supported in part by a grant from the ConAgra Foundation.
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle pioneers innovative, transformative solutions designed toend hunger in our community. www.foodshuttle.org.Talking Heirloom Tomatoes with "Tomato-man” Craig Lehoulier
When: Saturday July 30th 10 AM - 12 PM Where: Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Teaching Farm -- 4505 Tryon Rd Raleigh NC
Fee: $15 donation to benefit IFFS Young Farmer Training Program. Work exchange and scholarships also an option! No reservations needed.
“Tomato Man” Craig Lehoulier can be found at the Raleigh Farmers Market every Spring selling his amazing heirloom tomato and pepper plants. Regular customers have crowned him the "Tomato-man" due to his extensive knowledge and willingness to share his expertise. From seed to transplant and fertilizers, tying and suckering to pests, Craig is your man when it comes to learning about growing and enjoying heirloom tomatoes and peppers. Join us this Saturday at the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle farm to learn from our neighborhood expert!
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle's Cooking Matters Celebrates Families with AHA and Energize
Congratulations to all those who graduated from our most recent Cooking Matters course! The program, which began six weeks ago as part of a collaboration between Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, Advocates for Health in Action, and Energize, gave five families the opportunity to take advantage of free CSA memberships coupled with cooking and nutrition classes. Led by IFFS’ UNC nutrition interns, Katrina and Maria, and Chef Lynn Edgar, participants were taught how to create nutritious and tasty meals using ingredients from their own CSA boxes.
This past Tuesday evening marked the final Cooking Matters course for this program, and families arrived to find their CSA bags filled potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, swiss chard, cucumbers, bell peppers, and a special gift from Tarheel Foodie, Susan Sink - , sundried cherry tomatoes.
As students arrived, they formed into two teams. Chef Lynn supervised one group in the kitchen as they chopped basil, garlic, onions, and chard, than moved to the stovetop where the vegetables were sautéed and where two different tomato sauces simmered away. All these toppings went onto lightly toasted whole-wheat pita rounds, along with some shredded mozzarella cheese, and three trays full were placed in the broiler so that the cheese could melt.
Meanwhile, in the dining room, Katrina and a handful of students in charge of the evening’s dessert, shredded zucchini, measured flour, sugar, and cocoa powder, and lined muffin tins with cupcake wrappers. A couple of tweaks to the original chocolate cake recipe (substituting apple sauce for some of the oil and adding zucchini to the batter) made these cupcakes low in fat, nutritious, extra moist, and so good that almost everyone went back for seconds.
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Low Fat Chocolate Cake Recipe 1 ½ cups all purpose flour ¼ cup cocoa powder 1 tsp baking soda ¾ cup sugar ½ tsp salt 2 tbsp canola oil 3 tbsp apple sauce 1 tbsp vinegar 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup cold water 1 cup shredded zucchini non-stick cooking spray
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Over dinner, Maria discussed various nutritional topics with the families and shocked us all with a compilation of nutritional facts from various fast food joints (turns out, a large milkshake from Baskin Robbins can have as many as 1,900 calories!). Maria also introduced MyPlate, a helpful way to visualize the correct amount of servings from each food group should be present at each meal.
Though last night marked the last Cooking Matters class, the families will continue to receive CSA shares for the next two weeks. IFFS was happy and proud to be able to partner with these families and organizations and produce yet another successful series of Cooking Matters classes! We would especially like to thank Ben’s Produce and New Grass Gardens for supplying the CSA shares and AHA for helping make this happen.
Take the BackPack Buddies Challenge!
Take the BackPack Buddies Challenge! http://www.icontact-archive.com/ntyt7Si5lVUqcibkDwSZa5Es643qq_Ns?w=1.
Young Farmers and Groovy Kales
Lindsay here, coordinator of Field Gleaning at Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. Yesterday IFFS’s Field Gleaning and Young Farmer Training programs teamed up to accomplish a monumental task: we gleaned 2,824 pounds of kale in less than two hours, during one of the hottest days of the year! Apprentices from our Young Farmer Training Program took a field trip to help glean, along with our gleaning partner Society of Saint Andrew and youth members of White Memorial Presbyterian Church, at Burch Brothers Farms in Faison, NC.
The Young Farmers led teams of youth in a competition to harvest the most kale. The Kalemonsters, Groovy Kales, Camels, and Trouble worked hard and cooperatively for about an hour and a half to figure out the most innovative ways to glean kale, with the Kalemonsters coming out by a hair on top, and winning goody bags of IFFS gear and candy…. Yes, candy. The irony is not lost on me, and in the future I’ll be discussing healthier prize options with our Nutrition Director.
Charlie Greg of Burch Brothers Farm graciously took some time to speak with the Young Farmers and answer questions about Burch farming practices. Growing on the farm's large scale is very different than what they have experienced at the Food Shuttle Farm, and they asked great questions to understand the differences.
What happened to the kale? Most of it has already gone out into communities around Wake and Johnston County. The same afternoon we picked it, victims of the recent tornados were receiving it through our tornado relief program, and likely serving it for dinner.
Well, I’m pretty sure everyone had fun, and we harvested gorgeous, healthy kale for our communities with limited access to fresh produce. Mission accomplished. Many thanks to our Young Farmers, the youth of White Memorial Presbyterian, our rock solid core gleaning volunteers, Society of Saint Andrew, and especially Burch Brothers Farms! I look forward to working with you all again soon.
Crop Walk Raleigh Announces the Annual Event's Date, Time, and Benefiting Organizations
INTER-FAITH FOOD SHUTTLE IS PARTNER AGENCY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jul 13, 2011—CROP WALK RELEASE
Triangle - The 2011 Raleigh CROP Hunger Walk will be held on Sunday, October 30 at 3 p.m. The Walk will start and finish at Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh. The CROP Hunger Walk is a community-based fundraiser that seeks to end hunger locally and across the globe by benefiting Church World Service and several local organizations, including Urban Ministries of Wake County, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, Catholic Parish Outreach, North Raleigh Ministries, and Partners for Strong Communities. Individuals, companies, and more than 200 Raleigh area congregations demonstrate a community effort by participating in the CROP Hunger Walk each year. We hope that the 2011 Raleigh CROP Hunger Walk will be the best yet! For more information, please visit http://www.crophungerwalk.org/, call 888-CWS- CROP (888-297-2767), or become a fan on Facebook or follow @cropwalkraleigh on Twitter.
IFFS 20 Year Partnership with NC State Farmers Market Yields Over 50 Million Pounds of Fresh Produce for Local People Facing Food Hardship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jun 30, 2011—RALEIGH
Today, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle celebrates its 20 year partnership with the NC State Farmers Market by recovering fresh North Carolina produce, as the Food Shuttle has done six days a week since June 12th, 1991.
The impact of this two-decade partnership is immense -- 50 million pounds of fresh food donated by the farmers, retailers and wholesalers of the NC State Farmers Market delivered to agencies providing food to people in need.
As in most things, it started with one person who wanted to do something good. That person was Barbara Johnson, a farmer from McCullers, NC. Barbara donated one Wednesday afternoon in June 1991 and by the end of the following week, everyone on the Market was participating.
IFFS volunteers would pick up the daily unsellables from the wholesalers and the truckers in the morning and the farmers and retailers in the afternoon. For the first time area soup kitchens and shelters could serve their guests fresh fruits and vegetables -- the most nutritious foods that were impossible to get before Farmer Johnson’s donations.
Jill Staton Bullard, co-founder and one of those original volunteers at the State Farmers Market said, "The summer of 1991 was a critical turning point for us. We had to decide where to spend our energies and we decided to go with fresh foods. Between 1990 and 1991 IFFS experienced a 1,542% increase of food donations because of our partnership with the State Farmers' Market. We went from 12,500 pounds of food recovered from restaurants and grocery stores in 1990 to192,850 in 1991 because of the wonderful donors of fresh fruits and veggies at the NC State Farmers Market. "
"When Jill and I first met we hit it off right off the bat when I worked for the USDA as an egg inspector. She has always been concerned that healthy food reaches people who are hungry instead of being thrown out,” commented Market Manager Ronnie Best. "Because of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, our farmers are able to do so much more than recycle food. Unsold produce is collected by the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. The Food Shuttle redistributes it to people who are hungry. When food is not fit for human consumption, the Food Shuttle composts it for use on their teaching farm. That way food donations that are not used to feed folks are feeding the soil. This is a great partnership for us and we are happy to join with the Food Shuttle in marking this anniversary.”
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Inter-Faith Food Shuttle pioneers innovative, transformative solutions designed to end hunger in our community.
http://www.foodshuttle.org/
A Big Green Thumbs Up for Plant a Row for the Hungry Members!
Big ups to all our Plant a Row for the Hungry members! The PAR pounds have started to flow, and we just reached the 2000 pound mark yesterday with a donation from Soap Stone United Methodist Church! Then today’s donations from Logan Trading Company shot us up to 2,437 pounds for the year! We’re thrilled that donations are coming in at about 1.4 times the rate of past years, and we’re forecasting that gardeners will donate 10,000 pounds of fresh, home grown produce this year! Many heartfelt thanks to those of you who have shared your abundance with Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and those we serve.
Want to help make Plant a Row even more successful? Spread the word! Tell your friends, neighbors, postman, hair dresser! The more people PAR-ticipate, the more fresh produce we can provide to people in need!