By Healthy Food For All

“Clean your plate, don’t you know there are starving kids in the world.” As we tried to hide our broccoli in plain sight on our plate, little did we know that Mom was a social activist way ahead of her time and little did we care that she understood the value of that food. On the eve of Mother’s Day, a group of 40 people gathered at the Warner Park Community and Recreation Center to share a feast made almost entirely of food that was destined to be thrown away. Hosted by Healthy Food for All (HFFA), Soup to Nuts: A Food Recovery Dinner was an opportunity to share with the community the mission and accomplishments of their project as well as have a conversation about the issue of food waste.

The dinner, artfully prepared by Thony “Mango Man” Clarke of Café Costa Rica, featured foods recovered by Healthy Food for All to be packaged and aggregated for distribution through Dane County Food Pantries. The dinner started with an appetizer of roasted cashews and candied pancetta, moved to a large salad of local greens, featured shakshuka and roasted pumpkin as the main course, and ended with ice cream over a cinnamon roll. The only food served that was not recovered were the eggs for the shakshuka and the salad dressing for the greens.

“With 40% of all food grown in the United States never being eaten it just makes sense to capture the food and all the resources that went into growing and making it rather than sending it to the landfill,” said Chris Brockel, coordinator of the Healthy Food for All Project. “Healthy Food for All has a goal of recovering and distributing 135,000 pounds of prepared food and 40,000 pounds of locally grown produce in 2017, and we are well on our way to achieving those outcomes.”

Healthy Food for All is a project of the Northside Planning Council and operates out of FEED Kitchens.