In recent years, I find myself increasingly melancholy in the days leading up to Christmas. There is a lot I want to love about the holiday, like stopping and spending time with loved ones, and the outpouring of kindness on one another. These are beautiful sentiments, but so often hard to focus on during the hustle and bustle of the season.
Read more »Federal food assistance programs, particularly WIC and SNAP, have the ability to carve out spaces in which individuals can be empowered… The increased buying power that SNAP offers low-income families and individuals is a tool they can use to take control of their diet. WIC, even with the restrictions, is yet another tool. These resources, along with other resources such as budgeting and nutrition education, provide a space in which individuals have authority over what they eat and how they use their personal resources. And this authority, this control over their being, gives spaces for empowerment.
Read more »“They are not for me,” replied the women “some friends are down on their luck, so I’m helping them out with groceries.”
I love this time of year when tomatoes are a plenty.
I recently joined a farm co-op, where you work a few hours a week in exchange for vegetables, meat, and eggs. They just started the work co-op about a month ago, and conversations are plentiful among members about the positive impacts it is having on their lives. I was having one such conversation last Saturday as I helped clear out an area for fall planting.
We were chatting about the wonderful opportunity it gave us, the grounding feeling of working for our food and how rich we felt eating it, when a relation of the land’s owner came up to pick some tomatoes.
“What are you making?” asked my fellow co-op member.
“They are not for me,” replied the women “some friends are down on their luck, so I’m helping them out with groceries.”
As she worked her way down the tomatoes and to the peppers she explained that she was getting them everything they need to make a big of pot of chili, enough to freeze. Something to fill their stomach, and warm their souls.
Looking at the red tomatoes in her arms I couldn’t help but smile. It’s hard to feel down on your luck with a few of those at hand. There is something about a good meal that makes life feel abundant.
I hope that her friends feel abundance and love when they sit down to that meal of red hot chili.
Elise Springuel is an AmeriCorps*VISTA working with the Presbyterian Hunger Program and she likes her tomatoes hot off the vine.
Read more »Tomorrow is Independence day. The day we American’s celebrate the signing of a document that asserted that all men were created equal and with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On the Forth we normally assert those rights and pursue our happiness with flag waving, gracious displays of fireworks, and grilled food. I’m not knocking it, I enjoy a good cook out. But I do find it interesting that many think of this day as display of patriotism.
Read more »I am going to share with you, a poem:
Enriched flour
and cheese powder,
monosodium glutamate
and ammonium sulfate,
silicon dioxide
and yellow number 5
Okay, it is not really a poem. Just a selection of ingredients you’ll find listed on the back of the store brand cheese-its box in my recycling bin…
It’s the dirty laundry of this food justice advocate. But I air these treason in favor inclusion and the prevention of burnout.
Read more »…
That evening I sat on my front porch and stared at my green grass and budding bushes. I wanted to throw a 2 year old style tantrum, of not understanding why the world was so unfair. I was ready to take control of my food system. I was ready to get back to the dirt and simpler times. I was ready to turn my yard into a demonstration of how to do so. But for reasons beyond my control, I could not.
How was it that the ecological revolution I saw budding in myself and my backyard was so easily derailed by the previous industrial one of my predecessors?…
“From dust you were made, and to dust you will return.”
Our bodies were created of earth; they are sustained by what we intake, which is grown by, or feeds off the earth; and ultimately we will return to the earth.
I wonder however, if the modern world version of the phrase should be, “From fossil fuels you are made, to them you cannot return”
Read more »“I just want to peek inside real quick. Okay?” I said. The plastic sign read “Village Pantry,” with a big red tomato on it. It was right around the corner from an apartment I was considering, and I was curious to see what I would be dealing with.
“Of course,” my dad agreed with a laugh, as I jumped out of the car and through the doors of the corner store. I quickly darted up and down the isles, glancing at beef jerky, chips, and candy bars. I picked up a sandwich or two in the “Bistro” case, noting the offsite packaging plant.
After my curiosity was satisfied, I walked out of the store and back to my car.
“Did they have a good organic section?” Dad joked.
“Not even a tomato,” I replied before pulling out of the parking lot, “or a can of beans to stock the pantry.”