Edible Tulip

Campell's Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive

I receive a fair number of emails to this blog. Some are downright odd, others are inappropriate, a few I don't have the knowledge to answer but the rest are from people out there in the world doing good deeds and wanting me to write about these things to spread the word. The internet after all is a fast and quick way to deliver news.

This week I got an email from Lauren. She's working with Campbell Soup Company in their annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive. In collaboration with the National Association of Letter Carriers (U.S. Postal Service), Stamp Out Hunger is the nation's largest food drive. The event happens tomorrow. It is ONLY for residents of cities and towns (and owners of mailboxes) in the United States. If you're an American please read the following and start packing those grocery bags!

35,000,000 Americans are at risk of hunger.

Get involved on May 12th!

How can you help?

Place bags filled with nonperishable food items next to your mailbox.*
Your letter carrier will pick them up and deliver them to local food banks!**
It's that easy to make a big difference.

*Donate items like canned meats and fish, canned soup,juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice. Please do not include items that have expired or those in glass containers.
**If you live in an urban area check with your letter carrier or bring food to your local post office and they'll deliver it to local food banks.

Postscript: I'm curious whether or not Campell Soup Company has a presence in Canada (regional office, etc.). I'm also curious if we have a similar food drive initiative here in Canada that involves our Canada Post. I don't see why we couldn't orchestrate a similar food drive with an organization like Second Harvest. Second Harvest is an incredible organization working to "recycle" food in Toronto so there's not only a reduction in wastefulness of fresh food but it continues its cycle to various social services (breakfast programs, after school youth centres, women's shelters, emergency food banks, community hostels) which unfortunately there are many that exist in Toronto and most are constantly in need of fresh food. Fresh food isn't an option for a nation wide food drive or even a city wide food drive but non-perishables are. Anyone local have any ideas about organizing a food drive in the city of Toronto? I'd love to hear them.

Cookbook Review: I Am Grateful, Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude

Disclosure: I live in Toronto, Ontario. I do not have access to the abundant harvests available year round in places like California. It is also early spring in Toronto; we’ve only recently caught sight of the sun. Preparing food with raw ingredients that are organic isn’t always a possibility for me with items like nuts, avocados, strawberries, fresh coconut, and Irish moss from the coast of Jamaica. And while I love and source and eat fresh and raw foods daily, I cannot for my own well being even contemplate eating full time a raw food diet, both because of my geographic locale and because in the Ayruvedic spectrum I am a vata which means I am supposed to avoid uncooked foods! I ate once at the live food restaurant in Toronto, Live Organic Food Bar located on Dupont Street, and ordered the vegan sushi. It was an enormous serving beautifully plated and crafted out of untoasted nori filled with chopped vegetables and in lieu of cooked rice, blended parsnip. Let’s just say that about an hour after my meal, the 48 parsnips it probably took to fill the rolls had me doubled over in agony. Apart from all of that, I am a strong advocate of local and organic foods – I eat seasonally and I eat as low on the food chain as possible and as freshly as is reasonable given my climate and physical temperment.

I Am Grateful by Terces Engelhart with Orchid

Terces Engelhart has had a hard life. That much is obvious in the introduction to her cookbook I Am Grateful as she shares with the reader a personal saga involving two sexual molestations, 20 years struggling with anorexia and bulimia, three marriages and three divorces, one domestic violence situation, and three children. She refers to herself as a Hero and she has a dream where “Jesus came to me and asked me to serve at the Last Supper”, she encourages the employees at her restaurant, Cafe Gratitude (recipes from I Am Grateful were adapted from the restaurant menu), to train themselves in choosing their thoughts and she names the items on her menu things like I Am Loved or I am Adoring (and the staff won’t let you get away with pointing at a dish on the menu) and when your meal come it is placed before you with the pronouncement “You Are Loved” or “You Are Adoring” or whatever it is you ordered. Thus you ARE what you eat. If you order I Am Responsible then You Are Responsible, and so on. You have to ask for it by name thereby, in the view of Terces, you are practicing saying something new and affirming about yourself. But before you reject this book as out of hand vegan voodooism (which I almost did), let me tell you what I came away with once I’d put my own judgements aside: as a way to kick the ass of an eating disorder, the author starts a food business; she supports local farmers, sustainable agriculture, and environmentally friendly products; rather than give over to addiction and discouragement as a result of her difficult life, she chooses to create her environment around living, organic foods which reflects a commitment to self sustenance and the nurturing of others. These are all reflective of the way restaurants have come to treat their food/their menus as a value-based commodity.