my dream company

Someday, I will create an organization that takes food from food banks that’s too ugly to serve to the people the food gets sent to (and my department sends food to kids, so anything with the slightest blemish qualifies as “too ugly”) and reinvents it. Ugly tomatoes become tomato sauce, delicious and healthy. Ugly bananas become banana bread. Stale bread becomes bread pudding (and, in a particularly genius flash, get this- the unhealthy dessert-y things, rather than given to food-insecure people who already get crappy unhealthy food, can be marketed as treats and sold as something benefitting a nonprofit. This will create an income stream, use up unwanted food, and let people feel good about themselves for buying bread pudding).

In the meantime, I will do it on a small scale in my own house. Lately, with apples. Billions of apples.

 

Fact: when you get a large produce donation at the food bank, it often means that produce is kinda busted. It still tastes good, it’s still healthy, but it’s not winning beauty contests. Let’s be honest, that’s why they’re donating it.

Thanks, Quebec! Still generous!

 

So here’s what you do for a MINIMUM of effort:

CROCK POT!

Who doesn’t love ‘em?

Slice or chop up as many apples as you can cram in there (about 12, in my case). No need to peel; they get super soft and it’s easier not to and it improves fiber. So to me it just seems insane to peel them. But I guess you can if you really hate being healthy and having your life be easy. Chopping the apples makes it more puree-y, keeping them in slices makes it more like pie. A personal choice.

I like to throw in a cinnamon stick and perhaps some orange peel for seasoning. I’ve tried a cardamom-ginger-nutmeg variation that was good. The pineapple core I threw in one time added a certain je ne sais quoi. (Yes, I HAVE made this a lot!)

 

Regardless, the end result, after, say, four hours on high or 8-10 hours on low, will be delectable.

 

Amazing combo: homemade applesauce with Greek yogurt! Apple pie a la mode, practically, ish; ‘cept with protein and fiber. Packed it for lunch many a day.

I’ve also just in general been throwing together random creations with sliced/chopped/grated/pureed apple in them for various social occasions.

These I threw together ridiculously haphazardly and they tasted like APPLE FRITTERS. And they weren’t even that unhealthy! Holy cow!

Apple “Fritters”

2 T butter
2 T canola oil
2 T molasses
1 egg
2 T sugar
1 cup plain ol’ white flour
2 T spelt flour
2 T wheat germ
2 small apples, finely chopped

Beat together butter through sugar. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in apples. Form blobs and bake at 350 for 13 minutes or so. Makes 9.

 

Amazing texture. The egg/molasses/butter thing just… worked, man.

So, there were more. Many more. There are still more. There will still be more.

Frankly, the pressure is starting to get to me. If anyone has any thoughts on what to do with these (or suggestions for what to bake with them :D), send them my way!

In the meantime, I will chop. Chop and slice.

 

As directed in the recipe for Vegan Apple Ring Cake. I am so not a vegan, but I am always reluctant to use my delicious farmer’s market eggs in a way that they and their extraordinary flavor will largely disappear into a batter and they’ll be used simply for their leavening.

Anyway, this wasn’t vegan because I used real buttermilk :D

But I just decided that I really wanted to make a bundt. I think they’re so cool looking; we inherited my grandma’s bundt pan; and the one and only time I made a bundt in my life I was in probably high school and we’d gotten a bundt baking mix but it was a layered bundt with like a crumb topping type thing… except in the middle… anyway upon inverting it from the pan it promptly fell apart.

Mind you, it was delicious, but consider this my bundt redemption recipe.

 

Reasonably healthful, with some whole wheat flour; healthy fats; and apple chunks folded in…

… and apple slices atop, sprinkled with sugar (they said turbinado; all I had was brown).

Gorgey porgey out of the oven.

And the smell! That little bit of rum you put in really gives it a special oomph!

Waited a safe interval of time to invert it, and held my breath given past experience…

Gorgeous! Very pleased.

I actually froze it for a shindig I’m planning next week. Per my grandma’s freezing methodology: in plastic wrap, then foil. Cakes generally freeze beautifully.

Not just apples, I’ve also brought home a few bruised and busted pears.

Ginger pear preserves, from Cooking Light, sounded swell.

I combined the ingredients, with a few substitutions (2/3ded everything; was outta lemons so used grapefruit; didn’t have the liqueur so I used some old stale ginger ale; reduced the sugar and accidentally added too much water. I am klassy.)

 

Things seemed to be bubbling along nicely in the second round of boiling (when the recipe said wait 12 hours, I waited… 19? But that shouldn’t matter, right?!)

 

Anyway… it was suddenly… mahagony.

Proving not for the first time I was not an expert jam maker in a past life; I made caramel.

So I shrugged, threw some sea salt in there (duh, salted caramel) and pretended it was deliberate. Can’t quite summon up the nerve to taste it, but the boy is excited.

on the job

The other day I was at a community event with my boss and our SNAP (otherwise known as food stamps) outreach coordinator. This woman came up to us and went, “I hear you’re the nutrition ladies!”

I opened my eyes wide and said UM, YES!

My job is so cool.

This is a day in my life! At the Capital Area Food Bank. This was a typical day in that I spent a lot of time around food, but an atypical day in that I got to go to a fancy shmancy event and EAT food. (Highly delicious food, at that).

My day begins by walking into our building. I have an office (my first time with my own desk- guys it is just so exciting) but most of our space is a warehouse.

The warehouse guys are awesome. One of them decorated these pumpkins and left them in the lobby to greet visitors and volunteers.

 

I start the day. Drop stuff off. Catch up on email.

My next stop is the warehouse. A place where I do a big part of my job.

My program, Kids Cafe, is the program that makes weekly deliveries to after school programs. Those programs can then serve a daily snack or supper to their kids.

This is funded (in part) by CACFP, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, a USDA program that funds after school/day care/etc. places where kids go. Basically, the philosophy is that low-income kiddos can get free or reduced breakfast and lunch when they’re at school, but getting a snack (or, really, more like a substantial dinner) at the community center where they go after school helps ensure they’re not ending the day hungry.

SO. I help pack those deliveries.

Rodney, our driver who makes all of our deliveries (who is one of the funniest people I know, and hunts on weekends with a bow and arrow and has promised us all deer chili), will have laid out the food we will be packing that day.

We have a group of volunteers pack our nonperishable foods (granola bars, canned veggies, raisins, oatmeal, etc.) once a week on Tuesday afternoons (volunteer here if you’re local and interested!).

However, things that are perishable- that’d be bread, frozen foods, meat, and most importantly FRESH PRODUCE WHOO HOLLA- get packed the day of.

The food bank people are rock stars about getting fresh produce. We try to send out three fresh items a week (and of course, also things like canned green beans and boxed mashed potatoes and 100% fruit juice and the like)

It’s especially great when fresh produce items are culturally appropriate—can I get a MANGO?!

(Yes, those apple boxes are from Lancaster county. Local, baby!)

Lots and lots of stuff gets laid out. Lots. That stuff. This stuff:

 

A bunch of those boxes are from our walk in cooler and walk in freezer.

I can totally handle walking into the cooler, but MAN I HATE THE FREEZER. It is super cold and super dark and somehow, somehow despite it being a highly inhospitable climate, there are still MICE. (And don’t get me started on in the cooler. It’s GROSS. And since when did mice like cauliflower? I thought they only liked junky fatty things!)

Quirks of the USDA that I find interesting: the food bank delivers food and then gets reimbursed by the government. However, there are different rates. If a site serves a snack, that’s two food groups, and they get reimbursed a small amount. (An example would be like an apple and a granola bar). If, however, they serve a supper (5 food groups- a grain, a meat or meat alternate, two kinds of produce- 2 fruits, 2 veg, or one of each- and milk) the food bank gets reimbursed more than twice as much.

And in another USDA quirk, yogurt doesn’t count as milk. Neither does cheese. Those are both meat alternates. The only thing that counts is white or chocolate, 1% or less fat, liquid milk. It means we get a LOT of milk.

I’m incredibly entertained by the running cow on our new containers of milk.

I also have a CD from the Virginia Department of Health that I keep meaning to listen to- it’s children singing/wrapping songs about healthy cooking.

I know. I know.

Anyway, so on any given day we get our “pull sheets”. That will go to the site, and has the items we need to pack for them for the week, as well as the menu they use to serve their meals. Then Rodney the driver, Amy my boss, and I go around grabbing things and filling boxes.

I’m impressed with the variety, although dang those kids love their meat.

Then it’s time to hunt around the warehouse. Everything we get is in bulk, and it all arrives on pallets (sp? I was going to write “palates” but obviously that is not correct. Though apt for a food blog).

We actually only half half a row in the warehouse… it really isn’t enough for all our stuff.. as a result things are fairly disorganized and spread all around the floor and the shelves and you have to climb around to find them.

 

But really that is sort of fun. “Oop! Need canned fruit! It’s up there! Time to Spiderman it up!”

Then we pack. Tip of the hat for using recyclable cardboard boxes out to the sites (and trying to reuse them if they’re still in good shape).

  

We also just appropriate boxes that fruits and vegetables get delivered in to pack, too. Those banana boxes are pretty ubiquitous. (As evidenced by the fact that there’s one in my boyfriend’s living room. He works at one of our delivery sites). Cool fact about our produce- we get a lot of it at a PRODUCE AUCTION. Are people familiar with these? I want to go to one!

Wag of the finger for wrapping items in plastic bags :( I get that for hyegenic purposes it’s necessary for some things (any meat, for example), but I really want to head in a more sustainable direction (I currently have a crush on the Pittsburgh Tote Bag Project) for things like fresh produce.

We are responsible for weighing everything we pack, in subcategories (produce, bulk, and bread).

I have also grown up close and personal with my tape gun. These things are such a pain.

 

Packing in the warehouse is great in that it is a lot of physical activity. Though I am slightly scared that I will inevitably throw out my back. Every time I bend over I kind of wonder if this’ll be the time I hear something snap and be unable to get back up.

Just as an example about the rather unusual activity level for a poli sci major’s postcollege job, the other day we got a donation of over 600 pounds of pumpkins. So great, right! The kids at their after school p;rograms get to make jack o’ lanterns for Halloween!

Yeah, yeah…

Guess whose job it was to pack all that?

Okay, so that is the grueling and toiling part of my job (though again, I actually really like that! I hate sitting behind a desk all day).

My job also had some GLAMOUR on this particular day, due to our annual fundraiser: Empty Bowls. Apparently this style of fundraiser is spreading around the country like wildfire. The idea is this: local potters donate beautiful bowls. People come to attend this fundraiser and purchase a bowl (ours were $25) as a donation to the food bank, then enjoy delicious soup donated by local restaurants.

The selection of the bowls was beautiful and varied.

   

Amy and I were originally assigned to be greeters at the front door, telling people to go up to the eighth floor… while, er, standing directly next to a sign that greeted people and told them to go to the eighth floor.

Anyway, we got relieved of that duty and got to go up and eat soup!

We were in a really beautiful space donated to us for the event. I wish turnout had been bigger :( We were talking about it later and we may’ve just picked the wrong neighborhood. I feel like we would’ve cleaned up if we’d been by one of the big government agencies buildings. Federal workers would’ve been all over this!

Anyway, more food for me :D

Hurray for using compostable bowls for eating!

Hurray for lots and lots and lots of bread! (Donated by Corner Bakery. There were a lot of big loaves- I ended up just ripping off pieces!)

   

I ended up trying LOTS of kinds :D

First I enjoyed a butternut squash and white bean bisque from 1st& Fresh.

The highlight was definitely the roasted carrot garnish. I am all about texture in soups!

I had the best clam chowder I have ever tasted from Ris. Perfect balance of broth and creaminess, perfect seasoning, perfectly cooked veggies.

Amy, my supervisor, had never tasted clam chowder before! She liked it :D I mean obviously, if you’re going to try something for the first time, it’s pretty nice to get it from one of the best restaurants around. I grew up on Campbell’s :D

The bowl was enhanced by extra butter they insisted on melting on top (!). I also had a great hunk of sourdough ripped off one of the Corner Bakery loaves.

So rich I didn’t finish it!

Probably my favorite soup was a carrot-lemongrass one from Gepetto catering. In all honesty, I couldn’t really taste the lemongrass… it was just really really good carrot soup, to me. That cracker came from them. It had thyme in it. MAN it went PERFECTLY with the soup.

And finally, in the so-rich-I-didn’t-finish-it-but-man-I-sure-ate-a-lot! category, was wild rice and mushroom soup from Morton’s.

I never order cream-based soup but gosh it is good.

This had really wonderful meaty mushrooms (a bunch of different kinds; couldn’t place them all), and really nice seasoning.

(Yes, I started layering all my soup in the same bowl. It seemed wasteful to get a new bowl each time!)

Good times, man!

There was also caffeine-free Diet Coke (I’m sorry, but what is the point?! I mean, unless you’re a Mormon, I guess. But to me, caffeine is kind of the whole POINT of Diet Coke!), of which I accidentally drank two cans. Artificial sugar, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Actually, real sugar, I wish I knew how to quit YOU.

But dang, these cookies from thebestcookies.com were, in fact, THE BEST! They tasted so FRESH! And all their ingredients were organic and Real Food. Dangerous, man. Plus the people who worked there obviously got to take home leftovers… so…. there are four of these in my freezer.

seuss day

Work event.

Our kids get free books from Reading is Fundamental. We decided to do a Dr. Seuss-themed holiday reading extravaganza for our book giveaway. (Kid: “Why Dr. Seuss? Is it his birthday?” Me: “…No, we just like Dr. Seuss.”)

I wore whimsical footwear for the occasion.

 

We invited parents and family to be a part of our book party, and as such served refreshments. Since I got seriously tired of almost-empty boxes languishing in our kitchen for far too long, I decided to make Clean Out The Pantry Snack Mix.

The dry goods:

Ritz crackers. Animal crackers. Graham crackers. Cheese Nips. Corn Flakes. Frosted Flakes. Cheerios. Grape Nuts.

Considerable textural and flavor variety, eh?

The fun glaze ingredients:

Nuked together. It smelled like delicious sin.

 

Did not capture the final image, but suffice it to say that Snack Mix is more like Crack Mix. Actually, the kids were largely uninterested. But the staff, oh the staff. We could not stop.

Another party supply was an awesome, culturally-appropriate, super nutritious thing sent by the food bank:

Beautiful fresh ripe avocados!

For for mashing… tortilla chips in the background… that can only mean GUACAMOLE.

I’m sure that the parents of the kids I work with make far, far superior guacamole to my own, but all things considered I did all right. I used gorgey fresh avocado (so perfectly ripe! I’m guessing the food bank got it because the grocery store had to move it cause it’s so ripe and I say LUCKY FOR US!), salsa that already had a lot of goodness (tomato, onion, chiles, spices), and fresh lime juice.

 

I brought the limes from home. Yes, they are unattractive (we buy large Costco bags and some of them don’t get used for… kind of a long time). But they are fine on the inside, honest.

All mashey mashed together and we had ourselves a beautiful bowl of guacamole.

Another one that the staff went CRAZY on. And we have leftovers (it was a LOT of avocado!).

Storage tip: if you want the avocado to keep from turning brown, refrigerate it with plastic wrap pressed down on it and also- this is key- leave a pit in. There’s something chemical about having the pit in it. I don’t get it, but it’s cool and it works.

So as usual I prephotographed these things before our event and got nothing from the event itself. Though I’d never show our kids’ faces in the blog anyway, obviously.

Anyway, as so often happens, I worked late and then sat around with my coworkers wrapping up the day, cleaning up, and kvetching about our job. Which is fun, and necessary because despite having a fun job it also has its stressful moments. However, the eating of the ludicrous amounts of snack mix, guacamole, and Swedish Fish was NOT necessary.

I came home and had no interest in dinner but wanted to precook for potluck, ideally something wholesome to undo some of the abuse I had just wreaked on my body. Seriously, this job!

Anyway, inspiration struck. My aunt had sent me a text earlier this week:

I lacked the energy or the desire to research and then execute something ambitious from Epicurious, but I sure as heck had carrots:

Remember the monster carrots I cut up at work? The kids barely ate any.

We tried to put them out again today, and the kids and the parents… barely ate any. My boss said that rather than food going to waste (shame shame shame never ever!) one of us should just take them home, which I did.

I just did a super basic carrot soup, beginning by sauteing onions and ginger on medium-low heat until the onions were very soft.

 

Then I added the carrots, and covered them with water. Felt like being virtuous and cupboard-cleaning some more so I added the last fifth or so of a can of orange juice concentrate in our freezer and the last of a basically empty jar of paprika. Then brought all that to a boil, and simmered, covered, until the carrots were tender. Then blended in phases in a blender with some chopped fresh parsley.

For flavah, I finished it off with sherry, balsamic, salt and pepper, cumin, and a bit of honey.