They’re about to prepare and cook pumpkin enchiladas for a campus kitchen delivery shift next month – but first there’s a more pressing need at-hand: the students must help label and load two types of meals serving 75 people in the community that morning. Among the dishes: 17 whole, roasted turkeys.

The students – part of the hotel restaurant/management program, led by campus kitchen advisor Susan Callahan – unpack freezers to reveal a full Thanksgiving meal, and then some.

Residents of The Dwelling Place, an agency that works with 17 families to transition them from homeless to secure family life, receive boxes of all the fixings for a complete Thanksgiving feast, plus an extra frozen meal for a later date.

Families at The Dwelling Place might start their campus kitchen meal with fresh-baked bread, homemade gravy on mashed potatoes or steamed carrots and broccoli. Then it’s on to the main courses: sweet potato casserole and a ten pound roasted turkey, served with fresh cranberry relish. For dessert: pumpkin pie and homemade chocolate chip banana bread.

Volunteers piled this feast, along with the extra frozen meals, into three compact cars for transporting to families happy to feel the stress of providing a feast for the holidays melt away.

To deliver every part of the meals to The Dwelling Place clients, the delivery shift went an hour over schedule. But for the satisfaction of stocking refrigerators full of Thanksgiving goodies, it was well work the extra time.

A volunteer preps whole roasted turkeys for families at The Dwelling Place - Susan Callahan

Looking for more news on how Turkeypalooza went for other campus kitchens? Read the news stories linked below, or stay-tuned for the final numbers next week.

Turkeypalooza, University of Nebraska, Kearny

Turkeypalooza, Wake Forest University

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Obama Foodorama has an in-depth perspective on the dangers of Senator Grassley.

Further technological advances in the world of farmers markets – online pre-orders.

Tennessee prisons are now composting food scraps.

Watch out! A call for caution when dumpster diving.  Which was also covered in this blog back in March

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$52 million of those cuts are coming from Human Support Services and Other Low-Income Programs.  To put this in prospective, the next largest cut is for Public Education at $17 million. 

I urge all of you to visit the Save Our Saftey Net website, look through the information, and sign the petition to urge the City Council to reconsider their budget cuts.  The hungry and homeless shouldn’t face the brunt of the economic burden for the rest of the District.

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Jessica Biel has a bad habit of wasting food.

 Don’t mess with Texas, especially when it comes to restaurant waste.

 Chris over at First Helping explores how the recession has affected homelessness.

 With the Locavore movement gaining steam, local seed banks are beginning to pop up across the country.

 US Food Policy has released a list of the top 10 policy destinations, complete with Google Earth pictures.

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A city in

Our friends over at Beyond Bread have started a new “Glean for the City” initiative.  They estimate that each volunteer group can glean enough food to feed 1750 people.

Michelle Obama and her girls were in Rome this past week.  It just so happens that they stopped at the most famous gelato shop in the city.

Fellow DCCK intern Turner Shaw continues his homelessness oral history project with “Joe Homeless”

President of DCCK, Robert Egger, recorded a podcast detailing the massive state budget shortfalls across the country.

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A lot of stories are never written.  In fact most stories never are supposed to be.  The idea of folklore passed down from generation to generation is a powerful one.  But the power is not in the story, but in the listener.  In the idea that someone out there cares to lend and ear.  And sometimes even a hand.

The lives of people are often painted on a canvass of words.  Walking by someone on the street you might not recognize that picture.  The depth, the details, the history all go unnoticed.  Well First Helping, is looking to change that.

The First Helping Blog has done just that.  The stories that you probaby didn’t stop to hear you can find in their Oral History Blog.  Just remember, the power of the story isn’t just about the storyteller.  Listen, and maybe today we’ll all learn something.

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My daily life is pretty easy.  Mostly everything is scripted and generally painless.  I check my bank statements online, I do my laundry at 9pm on weekdays and I pay higher rent to walk to the Giant blocks from my house.

In today’s economy everyone doesn’t have it so easy.  Check out this article.  Being poor means you don’t have access to a lot of the things we take for granted in our daily life.

How did we get to where we are now economically.  Greed, most certainly.  Compassion, most certainly not.  Businesses that prey on those who have access to the least; didn’t we learn our lesson the first time? 

Go ahead, google next day loans.  The first 30 pages are littered with sites just begging to loan you money.  Pictures of stacks of $100 bills.  All for 25% of your paycheck.  My checking is free.  But what if you aren’t educated on what to do?  Pictures designed to bait the uneducated.

Subprime mortgages, credit targeting and security derivatives were all in the pursuit of money.  Why don’t we pursue making our cities stronger communities?  Why not help those who are struggling so they contribute to the economy?  Shouldn’t we be working together to fix the problems of our future instead of exploiting them for a profit.

Will we ever learn?  CKP certainly hopes so.

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Poverty experiment is an eye opener: Experimenting with downward mobility teaches community advocates in Utah about the day to day difficulties that low-income people face, from dealing with unexpected crises, like a broken car, to just “being a little hungry all the time.”

The cost of shelter: The controversial decision to start charging people with jobs for shelter space in New York City has garnered lots of media attention over the past couple of weeks. Is this “preposterous” and “inhumane” or just a sign of the times? 

First Lady Speaks to Corporation For National and Community Service: When it comes to service, Michelle Obama has been walking the walk by volunteering all over DC, and this week, she also talked the talk at a meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service:

When I thought about the things that I cared about, the things that I was passionate about, service was always somewhere in there…So my goal was to figure out how I could not do that in my spare time, but how I could make my work service.

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 What does it mean when one of the world’s richest nations starts squatting?

College of Dupage farm feeds needy, provides education: A student farm at the College of DuPage grows organic food for the People’s Resource Center, a local social service agency, faces funding cuts.

Food pantries face growing demand: Yet another story about the growing need for emergency food aid throughout U.S., this one from Chapel Hill. Here, I like the focus on how community support has sustained operations.

Cargo bikes rule the world: The Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College inaugurated the bike delivery shift. Who’ll be the next to deliver meals via alternative transport?

FoodWise Manifesto: I dig what they’re doing.

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I’ve decided to start an indefinite series of posts on some of these complexities.  My goal is to facilitate a discussion amongst you, the readers.  I think the voices of those who are doing your work often go unheard.  I’m hoping to provide an opportunity to talk about some of these issues.

Personally I find there are a lot of issues that are part of hunger, poverty and homelessness that people never want to talk about.  And when they do they are behind very closed doors.  Is it because people feel uncomfortable discussing the issue?  If it goes unspoken will it disappear?  Or do we worry that no matter what, we’ll never leave a lasting mark?  Those questions lead me to the first issue that I want to hear your opinions about.  Giving money to those on the street

I give money to people on the street.  Just a few weeks ago I was walking to an event at the National Cathedral School in DC with Liz and a gentleman stopped me.  He told me didn’t have the money to get back to his home in Bethesda and couldn’t get his money on his card.  I didn’t have any cash, but I wanted to help, so I traded my (commerative Obama) Smartrip Card with him so he could get home.  Liz gave him a few extra dollars to make sure he had enough to get home.

I have no problem doing this.  I rarely have money on me (why I had to trade Smartrip Cards with him).  I typically use a debit card for everything I spend money on, so I’m not constantly giving money out, but when I have it I’m inclined to do so.  The Smartrip Card did have some meaning to me, but in the end I hope if I was stranded and trying to get home someone could extend me the same favor.

I think that everyone goes through some difficult times in their life; for some it lasts much longer than others.  When I give money to someone on the street I hope they use it for the right things.  I hope they don’t use it towards anything that could be harmful to themselves but I don’t know that’s ever the case.

I’m not sure how I feel about what other people choose to do or even if I have a right to care about it.  I recognize everyone has the opportunity to do with whatever they want with their own money.  But I sometimes think it’s a bit cold hearted to walk by someone that clearly in a part of tough times.

So what do you think?  Feel free to disagree with me.  Elaborate and share.

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