Food Not Bombs Middletown

Today we shared the kitchen with the church folks who were preparing a dinner so we kept our cooking to a minimum. Made a broccoli/cauliflower soup and a rice and veggie stir fry. The church also donated a box of doughnuts. We were concerned the food would go too fast, but the crowd wasn't too large today. There was also competition! 😛 A church group was already set up across the street giving out hot dogs and beans. But our soup, stir fry, and bananas went quickly anyway. Then a car pulled up to St. Vincent DePaul looking to donate but there was no one there. They asked us if we could use the food they had leftover from a race and we said definitely! They had a whole box of perfect bananas, a large bag of gorgeous oranges, more doughnuts, bagels and some individually wrapped sweet treats. People took the fruit by the bushel and the doughnuts by the box to share with others as we wrapped up for the day. The rain held out- it was muggy but there was a...

This being the 3rd Share Sunday this season, we feel like we are getting the hang of putting on a food share event. We arrive at the church at 11 to fire up the ovens and get the water boiling. On the "menu" based on what we picked up Friday and had in the freezer was a mixed vegetable soup, roasted potatoes, and cooked kumquats. We did some research on these before hand because we figured they'd be a difficult "sell" on the table because they aren't common. So fun facts: they are a relative of the orange (not surprising), native to china but are grown in many warm climates including the U.S., and the flesh tastes strong and sour but the skin is edible and tastes sweeter. A basic recipe online suggested simmering them in water, sugar and cinnamon for 40 minutes. We roasted the multi-colored fingerling potatoes... ...And made soup from bags of frozen vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, red peppers, butternut squash. We also added ...

Today ION was rather busy when we stopped by to pickup what the owner had set aside for us. There also wasn't as much "blemished", unsuited for sale food as we have been getting in weeks past. This was actually a good thing since we have been accumulating more than we can cook! We welcomed the light load and can hopefully use a lot of what we are storing in the church freezer this Sunday. Check out this great selection: Spiralized veggies! The butternut squash and sweet potato smelled too funky to save but all of the zucchini was good to go...  Look at these beauties. Awesome colorful little potatoes which Mary, our resident vegan chef volunteer 😊 suggested we roast and toss in these great fresh herbs. Had she not mentioned this, I might have threw the herbs in the oven too and burnt the flavor right out! Added benefit of being a FNB volunteer: the opportunity to learn and perfect some cooking skills ...