Given the proliferation and popularity of cooking shows (Hell’s Kitchen, Good Eats, Iron Chef, Top Chef, etc.) and how many professional chefs have become household names (Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis, Rachel Ray, etc.) it’s a great time to engage your team in cooking up some preparedness recipes, and planning how you’ll address feeding people with your emergency supply cache.

Two ideas:

1) Hold a preparedness potluck. Award prizes for the most creative and delicious treats made from foods in your disaster supply cache. Schedule this to coincide with when you need to check and rotate supplies.

2) Give everyone participating the same ingredients. Choose items like rice, beans and spices (think low-cost, healthy, long shelf life) and have a crisis and calamity cooking competition!

Empower the chefs on your team to cook up something great and fun!

Tip: Remember that Y2K left behind several books on disaster cooking — many available for just pennies!

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October 4th, 2010 | Tags: contest, Couch Potato Preparedness, empower, food, supplies | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Comments (2)

Virtually every emergency supply list includes advice about storing food for emergencies and disasters. Help your team to think of stored food as a resource “to thrive” not just “to survive” when emergencies happen.

Empower and support your team in making healthy food choices – help them prepare for health!

Tip: Encourage people to keep healthy snacks at work: nuts, dried fruit, granola, chewable vitamins, etc. In an emergency, it will help people to be more resilient and self-sufficient.

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September 13th, 2010 | Tags: emergency preparedness, food, health, Preparedness, Public Health, thrive | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

Thanksgiving celebrations almost always bring people and food together. With H1N1 circulating, this is a great time to help people adopt safer food sharing behaviors. Some solutions: have ample toothpicks, cutlery, napkins, small plates, small cups, serving tongs, scoops, and ladles – anything to minimize multiple hands coming in contact with shared items. Post attractive reminders about “no double dipping” of ANYTHING once it’s bitten or handled. Cut up or separate items that normally have to be pulled apart (bread, grapes, etc.) Strategically place hand sanitizer everywhere. Serve from smaller bowls and containers to reduce the number of people in contact with each offering. Remember: Make this a happy positive act of love and care, done to keep each other healthy, safe and well. Have a healthy, safe, and loving Thanksgiving!

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November 23rd, 2009 | Tags: celebration, Family, food, Preparedness, Thanksgiving | Category: 2009, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

The last six weeks of the year are traditionally filled with holiday celebrations and feasts, and food is often a big part of these events. Embrace frugality, sustainability and prosperity planning by striving for zero waste. Know which agencies in your community accept extra food. Call your local 2-1-1 service provider, search the web for potential partners, and start the event knowing how leftovers will be handled. Each agency has its own rules about accepting prepared food, requiring advance notice, etc. – so prepare now and arrange this in advance. Let’s make sure that no food goes to waste in our community and that we are prepared for this food to make a greater difference. Bonus: This builds your peacetime relationships with agencies serving vulnerable residents and flexes our collective capacity to leverage every resource – two great practices!

Check Out: Alameda County Community Food Bank

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November 9th, 2009 | Tags: donation, food, Holiday, partner | Category: STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

With all the holiday parties going on right now, there are plenty of leftovers … and just in time, too, as economic woes trickle down to an urgent need for food, everywhere. One of the efforts to help take this on is as simple as getting volunteers to pick up and deliver that food where it’s needed. Here in Alameda County, Daily Bread is making this happen with an all-volunteer staff, right up to Executive Director Patrice Ignelzi.

• When you have some extra food, call to get a volunteer to pick it up and deliver it.
• Calling ahead of time is better (it’s much easier to cancel a trip than to find a last-minute driver!).
• And best of all, if you can spare the time, consider volunteering as a driver.
• Food for more than, say, half a dozen people is best. It’s hard to justify the trip for one sandwich.
• Daily Bread volunteers drive their own cars, so they can’t pick up a huge truck’s worth of food. If you’ve got a large amount of prepared food, ask Patrice for advice on who could use it.

If you’ve got UNPREPARED food — still packaged; not cooked — call the Alameda County Food Bank. You can talk to Robert at (510) 635-3663 x361 to find out what food they need and what they can and can’t accept.

Daily Bread is a real grass-roots program, with all volunteers and no real budget. I don’t think they’ve got a webpage! Please help spread the word about this wonderful way people can help.

To schedule a pick-up, for more information, or to volunteer, please call Patrice Ignelzi at (510) 526-3123 or email her at patrice@pcsyes.com.

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December 18th, 2008 | Tags: donation, food, local agencies | Category: Alameda County, Uncategorized | Comments (1)