Building close-knit communities through our local food system is a goal for Food Recovery Coordinator Laura Buck, who started at the agency as an intern and volunteer, and now manager of our Food Recovery Kitchen.
For Laura, much like the nutrients in the soil contribute to the quality of the food, the relationships we build with others contribute to the overall well-being of our community. Everything is connected.
“A healthy food system means a healthy social fabric in the community,” Laura said. “I have come to appreciate the art of food recovery.”
For those who have spent time in our kitchen with Laura, you can see it truly is an art form. Where others see chaos, Laura sees opportunity. Any given day is different in the kitchen based on what food items come through our doors.
Our Food Recovery Drivers transport food from a handful of local restaurants and grocery stores to the Hunger and Health Coalition, diverting it from being thrown away and instead the food going to use. Items that come into the Food Recovery Kitchen could come from places such as Appalachian State University, Chik-Fil-A, Samaritan’s Purse or any combination of grocery stores in town.
Laura typically has no idea what foods will be coming into the kitchen and then makes quick decisions to figure out how to use those foods to create meals for those receiving food at HHC. For some the ever-changing nature of the kitchen could be daunting, for Laura it’s fun to think on the fly.
To explain what the kitchen is like, Laura said, “You’re just having fun with your friends and there’s also a ton of food around.” Add in that maybe you’re having to find space for 50 gallons of milk while also going through eggs to guarantee none are broken and ensure enough meals are made to provide for people coming for food that day.
Laura oversees the average of 3,100 meals per month the agency has been distributing since Hurricane Helene. This is compared to the first year of the program’s start in 1999 when it distributed a little less than 100 meals per month, and even its second year with around 500 meals per month.
An important building block of a healthy local food system not only considers the food we eat every day, but the waste we leave behind — ultimately leading to wasted money and poor environmental practices. Each day, Laura takes a look in the refrigerators at the agency to see what all food needs to go first, and then she said she knows the task at hand. She’ll find ways to use the food that could go bad first to get it out of the door as fast as possible to folks. Laura’s question, “how do we not build an economic system based on waste?”
“I’m building micro-systems in the kitchen to stop food waste in the community and in the kitchen,” Laura said.
Food recovery is a practice she also uses when cooking at home. She explained that she started practicing food recovery in college to track the amount of food waste she was creating. During a semester, she tracked that she only wasted half of an egg — the egg white.
At home, Laura uses silicone ice cube trays to preserve herbs — such as basil — using cooking oil that she then freezes. She pops the frozen herb and oil mixture out of the mold when she wants to use them, like in a soup recipe. Sometimes if spinach wilts too quickly, she’ll blend it up and use it in a recipe. At Hunger and Health, she’s been using bunches of bananas in dump cake or muffin recipes to ensure they get used before they ruin or using carrots and ginger to make salad dressing.
Laura said the secret to food recovery is building one’s kitchen skills. She said following a recipe can be great but can sometimes have a tendency to create food waste. For example, if a recipe calls for a teaspoon of a niche item, and then you never use that item again, that would be creating food waste. She recommended learning more about what a recipe actually calls for when suggesting certain ingredients.
“I understand that in this baked good, when it calls for an egg, it’s calling for moisture,” Laura explained. “If I don’t have an egg or don’t want to use my egg in this way, I can use applesauce. If I have an applesauce that’s open or going bad, then I can use it in this way. Understanding what recipes mean when they say that it gives you more power in order to control your food.”
Overseeing the kitchen, Laura said also a big part of her job is her relationships with the volunteers who work with her. She mentioned that a contributing factor to mental health for people — especially older folks — is relationships with others.
“That’s another big benefit of the kitchen, we are doing this together every week,” Laura said.
If you’d like to volunteer alongside Laura in the kitchen, fill out a volunteer form at www.hungerhealthcoalition.com/volunteer-questionaire.
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