Redneck fois gras.
I knew the gelatin wasn’t gross. But IME it didn’t fry up all that well either. Better to remove it before slicing the SPAMaloaf into the frying pan.
“I want it crispy & I want it now!” is incompatible with excess liquidy goo.
I just made my monthly contribution to my favorite local food bank. I called and confirmed with them again that they would much prefer that I shop for them. I always ask what they particularly need at the moment (this month was cooking oil, bread and instant coffee. Last month was corn tortillas, pasta sauce, eggs and fresh fruit). I also ask what they particularly don’t need (pasta this month). I threw in a couple of items in my pantry that I wasn’t going to use as well. I always add those little tubes of over the counter pain relievers and feminine hygiene products. For me doing the actual shopping and bringing them a bunch of bags of food is so much more gratifying than sending money.
This time of year is particularly a good one to help your local food bank.
Back in the day the reason sardines were packed … well, like sardines is because the fish were cheaper than the olive oil they were packed in.
I read an article where the writer advocated cooking a steak on very low heat – like 250F – to taste then finishing it off a minute or so per side at 500. He called it redneck Soo Veed.
That’s called “reverse searing.” That way you get “rare” meat that is still cooked through. I cook it at 250 until I consider it done, and then pan-fry it for a few minutes to get that nice Maillard effect.
I was visiting my wife’s parents some years ago and saw her mum unpacking several tins of spam from her shopping. I was surprised, but said nothing and asked my wife about it later. She laughed and told me that her dad swore by it as catnip for fish - he went fishing most weekends.
FWIW, the supermarkets I use have collection bins at the exit. At one time they would have had wordy explanations of what the food bank(s) did and didn’t (“No more tinned tomatoes!”) want, but now it seems anyone who’s going to donate knows what is and isn’t sensible (though I wish more would know how to stack tins and packets), and the bins just have a generic plea. And if the food banks didn’t want the stuff they wouldn’t collect it from the supermarkets, even if it’s small beer compared with what they’re getting by other means.
I’m now volunteering at the local pantry a few hours per week, and have some impressions to share, though not too much cold hard data just yet. If anyone has questions, I can try to get answers.
(1) This operation moves 2-3 tons (4000-6000 pounds) of food per week. I’m not sure yet how many families or individuals are typically served, but people get several bags and boxes totaling perhaps 25-100 pounds per family. (Informally, single people get less, and big families get more. All this is based on stated need; there’s never an income threshold or anything like that. We try to give people what they ask for, but of course we don’t give one person all the steaks.) It’s run out of 2 large rooms where food and household items are stored and staged for a weekly pickup as well as weekly delivery to homebound people. A single volunteer coordinator manages all this with a small army of volunteers, 5 days per week, with food available to customers just once per week for a couple of hours.
(2) All donations are welcome from everyone, food or cash. I don’t know yet all the different things they do with cash, but I know they buy food with it. This purchasing of food is managed solely by the volunteer coordinator, who either goes to buy it herself, or sends a volunteer out to do that. She’ll know what’s most needed that week, of course, and will buy that.
(3) Food principally comes from the local megamart grocery, the local rich-people grocery, a local bakery, and the regional food bank. The food bank drives up a big truck to the door, but everything else has to be picked up by volunteers in their own vehicles.
(4) Unfortunately one of the local retailers sends a lot of crap, and the most pressing job whenever a volunteer brings in a carload is to go through everything to find the raw chicken or whatever hiding under a huge pallet of winter squash. They are notorious for just heaving random shit into crates, good stuff mixed with absolute foulness. It’s obvious to me that stoned teenagers are packing these crates with zero supervision, and if it were up to me, I’d tell the one store, thanks but no thanks. All the retailers are donating only unsaleable stuff, as far as I can tell, but day-old bread is pretty darn good, as is milk that still has several days of refrigerated life, etc. Some of it looks a little tired, but most (not all) is OK of course.
(5) Thus one of the most important volunteer jobs is processing these groceries as rapidly as possible as soon as they come in. In addition to the crates of random items, we also receive huge crates full of frozen chicken parts (luckily, bagged in family sizes), occasionally loads of fresh meat and fish, a lot of refrigerated prepared food like boxed salads, and mountains of fruit and vegetables, mostly pre-sorted and mostly good quality. There’s great randomness though, as you might expect – one week there’ll be 250 lbs of radishes to move, and people don’t actually like or need all that many radishes. I know that most of the food does move out each week, but they must end up throwing some out.
(6) All the refrigerators and freezers seem to be donated; there are about 12 of them, some household size, a few just 2 or 3 times the size of household appliances. There is never enough room in any of them, except the evening after the weekly distribution event. But if more were donated, there wouldn’t be much room to place the additional appliances. The whole operation seems to work at the very edge of its capacity; the bulk of the work is organizing and storing food in readiness for the weekly event.
(7) Individual preference is catered to as much as possible. Several people phone in orders each week, which are filled for them in advance; the people who show up in person indicate to the volunteers what they’d like, and the volunteer runs to get it for them from the storerooms, subject to limits of course. Perhaps for insurance reasons, I don’t know, the public does not browse the storerooms, and food is not taken out into the public area until it’s pre-packaged to the request of each family. I question the efficiency of this system, but I’m very new so I keep my mouth shut.
@Briny_Deep what is the demographics of the place where you work? The one I worked at in 1993 had a clientele composed mostly (>50%) of senior citizens.
AFAIK, over here, to access a food bank you need to be referred by a GP, local social services or charity of some sort.
I’ll try to find out. The answer is going to be anecdotal; all we ask for is zip code and number of persons in the household.
I live in a “blue” city in a “blue” state (U.S.) and I’ve noticed a strong ethos in most social services to assume people need the services they ask for. This can apply to free medical services as well, such as are available. I can understand the type of objections someone might raise to this POV, but the feeling is that human dignity is more important than ensuring there is no freeloading. The state food bank central network’s website has a big banner that says “Free Food FOR ALL,” and there’s a note that says " The program qualifications are all based on self-declaration. No further documentation should be requested or required. If you have an uncomfortable experience at a food pantry, please contact…"
You can see how this would map onto political attitudes, and for the record, I’m in favor of not requiring proof of need. On the other hand, local programs that hand out cash money, like rent assistance programs, do have stringent need requirements and this too makes sense to me.
I wonder how much the distinction is between programs directly funded by government versus those directly funded by donations / charities / etc.
IMO a food bank funded entirely by charity is far more likely to take people’s word for their need than one funded by some explicit government program. Charities that rely in whole or in part on government grants are a fuzzy middle ground.
Even the blue parts of the US are much more likely to have food banks not depending on direct government payments. Whereas in @PatrickLondon 's UK, all that stuff is directly funded by the government in a fashion akin to US WIC = “food stamps.” With the attendant government “needs testing” to manage freeloading.
I think as a general rule the distinction is less the funding source and more the type of assistance. While I won’t say human dignity isn’t part of it, there’s also another big reason - the expense of “verifying” eligibility. When I was a kid , school lunch wasn’t universal. Families had to fill out forms which were returned to the school and then tickets were issued- free for some kids, half price for others and some paid full price. This meant in addition to staff cooking and serving the food, there also needed to be staff to collect payment (whether cash or tickets). I put “verifying” in quotes because for a lot of programs, there isn’t any real verification - using my school lunch example again, if half the students in my high school applied for free or reduced-price lunch, how much staff time would be involved in checking proof of income for 2000 students? It can actually be less expensive to give everyone free lunch , which is what my city does now.
How much staff would a food pantry or soup kitchen have to add to verify eligibility? Are you going to limit it to SNAP recipients who can show a card? That means you don’t have to verify income yourself - but you also won’t help people without a SNAP card, even if they are eligible but haven’t finished the application process or suddenly lost a source of income. Senior citizen meals are provided in my city and funded by a combination of federal, state and city funds. The only requirement to get meals at a senior citizen center is to be over the age of 60. There are additional requirements to get home-delivered meals , but they are not income related. On the other hand, more cash-like benefits, like help paying rent or utilities generally requires documentation.
No, actually. There are of course various cash benefits from the government but people fall through various gaps in the systems, and food banks are charitable rather than government efforts, even though they ask for some official confirmation of need.