By Judith Redmond

Several years back, Full Belly Farm was awarded a contract with the Alameda
County Community Food Bank to deliver fresh vegetables to their clients in
senior centers and halfway houses. The idea was to supplement the other food
that the Food Bank was delivering which was mostly canned and processed.

In thinking about what to deliver, we were told that the seniors were not
likely to want difficult-to-cook veggies, things like winter squash that
were hard for arthritic bones to cut into, or anything with strong flavor.
Further, many of the seniors lived without ovens or well-stocked kitchens.
On the other hand, we were told not to worry much about our deliveries to
the halfway houses where there were full-service kitchens and even
occasional cooks on duty.

I made the deliveries for several months and was delighted to find that
after a few deliveries, a crowd of people would turn out to welcome the Full
Belly truck when I pulled into the senior centers. After they had gotten to
know me, they started presenting gifts of peppers that they had marinaded,
or tomatoes that they had canned, or cooked treats that they had prepared
for my lunch that day. One time a group of them even sent the farm a thank
you card that they had made, full of signatures and messages about the
veggies. Clearly cooking, canning and swapping recipes was no challenge for
this crowd.

In contrast, though I never met many of the people living at the halfway
houses, I started getting messages from the Food Bank that the clients there
were having difficulty using uncommon vegetables. Watermelons, carrots and
peaches were one thing, but turnips, kale and kabocha squash were something
else. It turned out that cooking was a challenge in the halfway houses
where most of the residents were young men, fresh out of prison, trying to
find their way along.

With my age falling between the younger people and the seniors, I realized
that in one generation we have lost our appreciation of how to cook and
preserve foods. Both populations faced challenges in using the fresh foods,
but it seemed that the veggies brought back memories for the seniors of days
when they cooked from their gardens in busy kitchens, perhaps without a lot
of equipment, but using recipes passed down to them from their parents.

The CSA box brings some of those challenges into your busy lives –
finding the time to cook with friends and family, using veggies that are a
bit unpredictable, rediscovering the delights of chopping, dicing, slicing,
steaming, and sauteing!

We thank you for your willingness to experiment and wish you blessings on
your meals.

Judith is a partner at Full Belly Farm

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• Farm Fresh Fare Fuels Senior Athletes
• Romano Beans with Fresh Herbs