By Lynette Johnson *
Wandering into a local discount store last weekend, I found a lone red potato in the parking lot. Probably it fell out of a shopper’s bag, but why did it stay on the asphalt?
Was it too much trouble to pick up?
Was it simply overlooked?
Did the buyer think it was “bad” because it hit the ground?
According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 25% of the food we purchase, we end up throwing away. Whether ...
By Lynette Johnson *
A couple of weeks ago, I participated in the Reduce and Recover: Save Food for People conference at Harvard Law School, sponsored by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. While there, I met and talked a bit with Doug Rauch, former head of the Trader Joe’s grocery store chain.
Doug still thinks about food all day, every day. But now he’s thinking about food he couldn’t ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
Zucchini … the Rodney Dangerfield of the vegetable world (although it is technically a fruit,) it gets no respect. There’s even a “National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day,” when it’s fair game to give away the prolific produce without permission. (Mark your calendars for August 8, and feel free to leave some for me!)
I’m going on record as one of the people who loves zucchini. It’s a chameleon in the kitchen, a vegetable that ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
My phone rang on Friday, showing an unfamiliar number and area code. The woman on the line wanted to talk about a piece I had written for the SoSA quarterly newsletter last year about our long-running partnership with Refugee Support Services here in Charlotte, North Carolina. The agency is a nonprofit that does amazing work helping newly-arrived refugees get on their feet with English as a Second Language classes, offering support in filling out job applications and ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
Sometimes the sadness in the world gets to be too much for me. This has been one of those weeks, as we as a nation try to sort out the events in Orlando that left 49 of our brothers and sisters dead and more than 50 physically injured. I say physically, because the emotional and spiritual injuries on their families and friends — and on those of us who grieve the senseless loss of life anywhere ...
Continue Reading →By Charlie Overton
The best kept secret of the United Methodist Church”— that’s how Mike Smith describes The Society of St. Andrew. A former president of the Holston Conference of United Methodist Men, Smith recalls his first encounter with SoSA at a 2008 national conference in Nashville. “I had never heard of SoSA”, he says, “but Wade (Wade Mays, national Meals for Millions coordinator) was there showing the SoSA video of sweet potatoes being dumped into the landfill.”
After finding out more ...
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