Linn Benton Food Share

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Only two weeks until our first Pandemic Thanksgiving! It’s time to “talk turkey” (even for vegans and vegetarians) about less wasted food.

Imagine sitting at bountiful Thanksgiving dinner table. You’ve just filled your plate with an appetizing assortment of your favorite dishes. Suddenly, someone comes over and scoops up a quarter of what’s on your plate, takes it over to the compost bin and dumps it.

Shocking, right? But it’s a good metaphor for how the average American family wastes at least 25 percent of its food purchases every year, at a cost of $1,600! What’s also wasted are the Earth’s precious resources — water, energy and soil — as well as the human labor that went into that food.

But we’re all about changing that. Right, Conscientious Food Consumers?

Turkeys roaming in Philomath (staff photo)

Let’s talk live turkeys first….

Wandering wild turkeys are not an uncommon sight in urban areas of Oregon, including certain neighborhoods of Corvallis and Philomath. Both comical and majestic, these birds are generally tolerated by their fellow urban dwellers. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife stresses: Don’t feed the turkeys! If your neighborhood flock (and their you-know-what) becomes too big of a nuisance, you might want to apply for an ODFW “turkey hazing” permit. (No hassling the turkeys without one!)

Here are a few fun facts about our iconic Thanksgiving mascot from the Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District.

TALKING TURKEY: Celebrating Safely

Whether you’re planning and preparing a Thanksgiving meal for meat-eaters, vegetarians or vegans, this year’s celebration will be very different under the threat of COVID-19. Health safety guidelines from the CDC and the Oregon Health Authority advise avoiding travel, moving activities outdoors (where feasible) and limiting the number of people gathering ’round the Thanksgiving table.

TALKING TURKEY: Planning and Shopping Your Meal

*A meatless “Tofurky” roast (WikiMedia Commons)*

So let’s “talk turkey” about our Turkey Day logistics. That includes vegans and vegetarians who don’t eat actual turkeys! For many of us, based on what we already know about living through this pandemic, Thanksgiving 2020 may be unfolding as follows:

A smaller dining group, which means smaller quantities of food will be needed (and potentially less wasted) compared to previous years; SO
Your holiday Meal Plan and Shopping List may be less ambitious than in previous years; COINCIDENTALLY,
Your holiday grocery budget may be smaller than previous years, depending on how COVID-19 has economically impacted you personally and/or your family; SO
Your holiday Meal Plan may be based more on cooking with what you have on hand in the pantry and in your freezer (as listed on your Freezer Inventory), which you’ve been stocking and managing throughout the year; AND
You’re already shopping strategically with Shopping Lists for those socially-distanced, in-and-out trips to the Farmer’s Market, the Co-op or other local markets, or for online grocery orders.

With our Kitchen Confessions this year, we hope we’ve helped you become familiar with these Smart Strategies (highlighted above in bold) to help you accomplish the above tasks. They’re all available in both English and Spanish from our Wasted Food Prevention Tool Box.

In addition to those at our own website, we love turning folks onto resources like these for Thanksgiving (and year-round) meal strategizing:

Make your own turkey bone broth and/or stock: Don’t let these nourishing and valuable parts of the turkey go to waste!
StillTasty.com, “Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide,” for getting clear before Thanksgiving about how to handle those leftover cooked turkey pieces, that leftover gravy and those cooked giblets your kid doesn’t like;
First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op’s “Budget Bites” – budget-minded meal plans for a week’s worth of meals for two adults;
BigOven.com, also has meal planning and shopping lists (and tons of recipes). Upload your own recipes! (They could use a lot more vegan/vegetarian ones!)

TALKING TURKEY: Caring and Sharing

The 40th Annual Benton County Community Holiday Food Drive, in cooperation with local food pantry organizations like Linn Benton Food Share, will also be affected by this year’s pandemic. For 39 years, legions of caring volunteers assembled and delivered holiday meal food boxes throughout the county to thousands of low-income individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. These efforts are too risky this year with COVID-19.

Instead, the Food Drive is collecting only monetary donations for grocery gift cards, redeemable at the Corvallis Grocery Outlet, where recipients can shop for themselves this Thanksgiving. Food will continue to be available for distribution and pick up at Food Share’s warehouse and other local pantries, like the one in South Corvallis. All monetary donations to the Holiday Food Drive will be used to benefit Benton County residents in need, and are tax deductible.

Next week: Honoring this land and its Native peoples this Thanksgiving; Getting ready for loving those Thanksgiving leftovers!

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Now that we’ve all had a number of weeks of staying home and doing our part to fight the spread of the coronavirus, how’s the “new normal” at your house? Besides keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe, healthy and constructively occupied, it’s been a lot about food, hasn’t it?

We’ve gotten a horrific reality check about the pandemic’s disruption of national food production and delivery systems — via news of catastrophic waste from unharvested produce rotting in farm fields, dairies dumping milk and slaughtered animals going into landfills, due to reduced work forces and virus outbreaks at meat packing plants.

As we are part of the EPA’s “Food Too Good To Waste” program, No Food Left Behind-Corvallis received news of efforts to mitigate this disaster such as the USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and Feeding America, a national food bank network. But these efforts are just ramping up.

Rising to the challenge, here in our own backyard, is one of Oregon’s largest food rescue, gleaning and distribution organizations: Linn Benton Food Share. This non-profit food sourcing and distribution “hub” — and a Sustainability Coalition partner — has served food pantries, soup kitchens and housing shelters in Linn and Benton Counties since 1981!

The COVID-19 crisis has brought increased food insecurity to our region, and not only among the most vulnerable populations. With the goal of 2500 meals delivered per week, Food Share is mobilizing volunteers to help prepare food boxes at their warehouse. They’re pros at training volunteer food handlers and ensuring their safety. If you or someone you know can help, just scroll down their home page and fill out the short form.

Hooray for “the helpers”! (Hat tip to Mr. Rogers!)

Grocery shopping sure looks a lot different now. We’re reducing our trips to the store, trying to keep the proper distance from other shoppers, or just skipping it and ordering groceries online! Why not supplement your next online grocery order with fresh, locally-sourced food products from the Corvallis-Albany Farmer’s Markets? You can do that with the CAFM’s new online pre-order and pick up system. Hooray again, for the helpers who are supporting the GoFundMe campaign that supports that effort!

“Eating out” is also pretty different now — more like “taking out” then “eating in” at home. A number of local establishments have switched to the take out and/or delivery business model, but with the phased re-opening of some restaurants, be sure and check the latest updates from Coalition partner Visit Corvallis.

Back at home, the “new normal” means we’re planning and preparing most (if not all) of our own meals, being more conscious with the food we have, and stretching our grocery budgets as far as possible. Some “Smart Strategies” to help you in those endeavors were highlighted in our previous installment of “Kitchen Confessions.”

In my kitchen, I’m juggling four “Eat First” areas in my fridge/cupboard — which means I’m Loving My Leftovers more than ever. Hey — there’s an app for that! Check the “Apps!” area of our website for a wonderful tool called “Big Oven” for thousands of recipes to help you invent new meals from the smorgasbord of your leftovers or least-fresh foods.

Simply start with just three ingredients and a button labeled “Big Oven, what can I make?” Your kids will love getting creative with it, too!

Now for this week’s Kitchen Confessions from our staff:

*****

Karen Confesses:

I put off inventorying my cupboard pantry for, like, forever! Now there’s no excuse, and I found this package of seasonal baking mix that had been colonized by pantry moths.

$$$ Wasted: $2.99

Lessons Learned: Meal planner to include more pantry checks each week; reorganize pantry with visible “best by” and “use by” date tags with more perishable food items/packages in the front.

Jeanette Confesses:
I didn’t need the whole can for my meal, so I covered it to use it in the next day or two – and forgot it!

$$ Wasted: about $2

Lessons Learned: Once opened, avoid storing acidic foods in metal container. Move remainder into a clear glass jar as a visual reminder.

*****

This “lesson” also highlights the critical issue of food safety. Avoiding foodborne pathogens is right up there with not contracting the virus! Guess what — there’s an app for that too!

Downloadable from NFLB’s “Apps” page is the “Food Keeper” tool, developed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute. It’s an authoritative source for how to preserve the freshness and quality of all those precious groceries.

As we head into the next phase of “new normal” in the COVID-19 era, we hope you and yours will stay well, stay connected and stay tuned!

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