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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Hunger in America

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  • From: "Sharon Gordon" <gordonse@one.net>
  • To: "self-reliance, networking, and simple living, for small farm sustainability, rural independence and security." <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Hunger in America
  • Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:19:51 -0500

I would much rather have the list you posted of what you couldn't get. I
have a few suggestions about useful things to do with some of what they do
give if you should want some of it in the future.

>stale bagels
1)French or Italian bread salads (best in summer when you have tomatoes from
your garden
2) Croutons in soup or salad
3) Slice of bread in soup such as for french onion soup
4) Bagel chips. Sort of like a bagel version of melba toast.

>nd small pudding-type desserts,
1) Use as ingredient in muffins. Cut back sugar and other liquid
ingredients as necessary
2) If it's vanilla pudding, you could use a container to make rice pudding
reducing sugar and milk as necessary.

>And canned beef stew,
1) Often the problem with this is that it is too salty. What I'd do is use
say 1/4-1/2 cup of it as a flavoring for a new batch of vegetable soup or
bean soup. A bit of it could also be used to flavor rice, noodles, a
casserole, quiche, or pot pie.
2) Then freeze the rest in small portions to use as flavoring later.

>and sugar-laden cereals.
1) This is hard if it's a total junk cereal, but if you can get granola or
rice crispies or chex, there are lots of things you can do with them.
2) For vitamin enriched over sugared children's style cereals, you can use
them as a flavoring in something healthier. Some could be crushed and used
as an ingredient in muffins. Some could be used as a topping for oatmeal or
cream of wheat (example fruit loops). I have also known people to mix them
with healthier cold cereals and skip adding sugar. For instance 1/4 sugar
smacks and 3/4 raisin bran or 1/4 cocopuffs and 3/4 crispex are good combos.

> Also cans of tuna;
1) this you could take and give to friend who could use it who can eat tuna.
2) Could also be useful to someone who has fallen on hard times and is
trying to keep their pet healthy.

>They do give out one can of vegetables each time,
1) This would be why so many people concerned about food security point out
the extreme lack of fruits and vegetables in the diets of people on low
incomes and the resulting needless illnesses.

> one jar of peanut butter or jelly. The peanut butter is the
> sugar-salt laden variety, unfortunately.
1) This you could use in muffins, reducing the sugar and salt in the recipe
as necessary.
2) Peanutbutter also makes a great asian style sauce over meats or noodles
or stirfries. It's most common in Thai recipes, though you can modify the
Thai recipes to make them non-hot if you don't care for hot foods. If the
sauce includes a sweet fruit, you could use less of it to compensate for the
sugar. And if it uses fish sauce or soy sauce, you could sub something else
or low sodium soy to compensate for the salt in the peanut butter.

>
> Also they give out very high quality venison, but we're
> afraid to eat it since we found out where it comes from (CWD
> is a possibility).
1) I have seen references to this, but don't know much about it. Does this
contaminate all the meat or just some of the organs? Do you know if it's
inspected to rule out CWD in each animal?


>stale doughnuts
1) I am having trouble coming up with something. Do doughnuts work as fish
or crab bait?
2) If they are stale as in dry but not rancid, they might could be ground to
crumbs and used as part of pie crust ingredients or topping for a fruit
crumble. This also works for dried out, but not rancid cookies. Ginger
snap crumbs make a good pumpkin pie crust for instance.
3) Sweet croutons in a fruit salad.

You were mentioning that there were two pieces of fruit a month, and that
the only fresh vegetables were from you and another person. I wonder if you
could work out a trade with a fruit farmer in your area who doesn't have
much of any time to vegetable garden to swap your extra veggies for some of
their extra fruits. I looked on the computer at the yellow pages in your
area. There are some farms that I can't tell what they have fairly close.
For sure there are several fruit farms and orchards 30-40 miles from you.
If you go to
yahoo
yellow pages
put in your town, state or address
Business to Business
Food and Agriculture
and then look at all the links under there you can see what is near you.

And if you ask now if you could work something out and they agree, you could
specifically plant extra of some things they would like to have that grow
well for you.

It really takes every ounce of creativity to do this doesn't it?

Sharon
gordonse@one.net





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