Bread for the City

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>We’re approaching the half-way point for Holiday Helpings 2009. And we’ve already distributed over 5,000 holiday meals — a turkey with all the trimmings — to DC’s most vulnerable residents, offering these families the opportunity to enjoy their celebratory meal in the dignity of their own homes.

We had the pleasure of hosting both Leon Harris (ABC-7) and Cokie Roberts (NPR) at our Northwest center. Enjoy the highlight video developed by Bread for the City’s own Amy Johnson!

It is important to remember that Holiday Helpings extends beyond the Thanksgiving holiday through December 24. So although 5,000 healthful, holiday meals is impressive, we still have another 3,500 to go to reach our goal. The best part is that it’s not too late to get involved! Just $28 will bring Holiday Helpings to a family of four. This Thanksgiving, show your gratitude for all that you have by giving back to those who need it most.

>Cross-posted from the DC Food For All.

Everywhere we turn, we’re reminded that Thanksgiving is here. Most conversations focus on setting a beautiful table, cooking a moist turkey, making side dishes that could stop conversation, and baking pies to match.

And these things do matter. It also matters that the holidays, like all days, are healthful.

So at a recent cooking workshop here at Bread for the City, I participated in a conversation with our clients about how to make Thanksgiving healthful, without compromising flavor or tradition.

To get started, we talked about our various Thanksgiving table traditions, and came up with a list of what the clients called “Thanksgiving must-haves.” It included: turkey, ham, brisket, and/or a roast; gravy; green beans; macaroni and cheese; stuffing; sweet potatoes; corn; mashed potatoes; rice; cooked greens (collards, kale, spinach, mustard greens, etc.); bread; cranberry sauce; and of course dessert.

Now, as part of our Nutrition Initiative, we are working with our clients to identify other ways to eat healthfully even with limited resources. For example, last year Bread for the City scrapped canned gravy from our holiday menu (as it not only has super-high sodium, but it’s also expensive!), and instead passed out recipes for how to make your own gravy from the turkey’s drippings.

This time around, we sorted many of the Thanksgiving must-haves into two categories: non-starchy vegetables (e.g., lettuce, tomatoes, cooked greens, garlic, asparagus) and starchy vegetables and grains (e.g., sweet potatoes, corn, rice, and bread). Having had quite a few cooking classes under their belts by now, the people in my class noted that, ideally, the non-starchy vegetables on one’s plate would take up more space than the starchy vegetables and grains. But when we looked at the list of Thanksgiving must-haves, the starches/grains appear to have overtaken the non-starchy vegetables.

Our solution to this problem? Add vegetables wherever possible. After I offered some suggestions, the class participants really ran with the exercise, and came up with the following suggestions themselves:

• For the green beans: Cook with onions, garlic, and/or broccoli.
• For the macaroni and cheese: Add spinach, cauliflower, and/or tomatoes.
• For the stuffing: Include plenty of celery, garlic, onions, pepper, and/or carrots
• For the mashed potatoes: Mash in garlic, celery root, rutabaga, and/or cauliflower.
• For the rice: Add plenty of fresh herbs, like parsley and mint.
• For the greens: Don’t forget the onions and garlic.
• And make a salad, as well!

Bread for the City client Gail prepares Thanksgiving dinner in her home.

We then made a healthier macaroni and cheese with low-fat cheese and milk, loads of chopped spinach, and whole wheat pasta. The clients couldn’t believe how good it was. Then they were wowed by our fresh cranberry relish, an addition or alternative to highly sweetened cranberry sauce.

And it’s easy to make. Here’s the recipe:

2 ½ cups of fresh cranberries
1 ½ cups of walnuts
1 apple
2 cans of pineapple rings in their own juice
3 stalks of celery

Directions:

Finely chop cranberries and walnuts.
Mix them together in a large bowl. Then pour in the pineapple juice from the cans.
Chop apples, celery, and pineapple rings and add to bowl.
Mix well.
Feel free to adjust the proportions to taste.  (I make mine a little different each time.) Enjoy!

Meanwhile, by the end of today, more than 5,000 DC families will have received Bread for the City’s Holiday Helpings feasts (including a turkey and all the trimmings; low-sodium stuffing; pasta; and fresh produce from our Glean for the City program). Few, if any, of these families could otherwise have afforded such a feast. For readers who would like to support our Holiday Helpings campaign — just $28 for a family of four — please visit www.breadforthecity.org/holidayhelpings

Happy Thanksgiving! 

> The forecast was ominous for Glean for the City’s final Gleaning (on Saturday, November 14th). Rain had been pounding Parker Farms for days. It stopped only hours before we planned to hit the fields.

>We received a special visit today from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton!

Our beloved delegate helped stuff some of our special holiday feast packages, and also passed out frozen turkeys to our clients (who were thrilled to see her).

Afterwards, Executive Director George A. Jones gave Congresswoman Norton a tour through our facility. As they walked through the medical clinic (see below), Norton and Jones discussed our expansion plans, which will more than double our capacity.

(See the entire set here.)

Have you joined in with Holiday Helpings yet? At this point we’ve distributed around five thousand complete turkey to families who would not otherwise be able to afford to share a holiday feast in the dignity of their own homes. Just $28 will bring Holiday Helpings to a family of four. Give today at:

>This post is authored by Aviva Bellman, Bread for the City’s medical clinic coordinator.

Media reports about the H1N1 vaccination have painted a scary picture. For instance, a recent Washington Post article quoted a doctor describing “an unprecedented amount of verbal abuse” at medical clinics; another indicated that supplies are being underutilized in some parts of the city. Confusion abounds.

Some people are over-eager to get vaccinated, fearful that there isn’t enough to go around. Other people fear that the vaccine may actually be harmful. It isn’t. But this makes for a very stressful and confusing time for both patients and health-care providers.

And yet, I am happy to report that at Bread for the City, things are proceeding relatively well!

To be sure, this season is challenging: we are much busier than usual. H1N1 vaccination has significantly increased the number of walk-in visits, at times with entire families walking in mid-clinic. Vaccinations are eating up break time and sometimes keep the staff working late.

At the same time, we do not have limitless amounts of the vaccine – and according to CDC guidelines, we can only vaccinate people who fit into key vulnerable groups (including young people, ages 6 months to 24 years old; people who have certain chronic illnesses including asthma, diabetes, and HIV; pregnant women; caregivers to infants; and healthcare workers ourselves).

But I have yet to see a patient be upset when informed that he or she cannot get the vaccine. And, though some qualifying patients do end up opting out of the vaccine, we are fairly effective at explaining to at-risk patients that it is not only safe but important to their health.

This level of communication is deliberately fostered through our model as a medical home. Unlike “drive by” medical providers like health fairs and mass vaccination sites, a medical home allows for strong relationships to develop between people and their doctors. Our patients meet with staff members whom they know and trust, and who take the time to explain they people don’t qualify for the vaccine, or why it’s important for them to take it. Generally, our patients trust us in either case.

As a matter of fact, last week we received word that the DC Department of Health (DOH) “will be adjusting its current H1N1 vaccine clinic schedule, by reducing the number of free H1N1 vaccine clinic locations for priority groups in the District and increasing the amount of vaccine available at doctor’s offices and community health centers.” This means, presumably, that medical homes and other community clinics will have more capacity to vaccinate more people. At BFC, we think that is a very good thing indeed.

(For more about Bread for the City’s medical homes model, watch this video below.)

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Look how much the Help the Homeless Walk is!!

Join Bread for the City this Saturday on the National Mall for the Help the Homeless Walk. It’s only $25 for adults and $15 for youth (age 25 and younger). Bread for the City gets 100% of your registration fee, and you get a snazzy t-shirt, some exercise, and if you’re lucky, we’ll let you hold the cool BFC banner. (See above– it’s really fun)

Register here: http://bit.ly/31xXuP. Don’t forget to choose Bread for the City as your beneficiary organization!

Hope to see you there!

>Dickstein Shapiro. We’ve written about them before on here, but man oh man, they just keep knocking our socks off.

George and I had the honor today of presenting an award to Dickstein Shapiro for their service to Bread for the City. Dickstein volunteers work in our food pantry, participate in Glean for the City, and provide hundreds of hours of pro bono legal assistance. (I swear, they never sleep.) Dickstein Shaprio also represents the biggest contributor to our annual Holiday Helpings campaign (firm and staff). In fact, they’re closing in on $2 million since they started giving in 1996.

And while Partners Paul Taskier, Larry Garr and Michael Nannes do so much for Bread for the City– really, we’d be lost without them– what I personally find most remarkable is the groundswell of support we receive from every corner of the firm. When I think about it, it warms my heart.

So thank you, Dickstein Shapiro. You mean so much to us.

>[This is authored by Katie Vinopal, Nutrition Associate at DC Hunger Solutions, and cross-posted from the DC Food For All.]

A new report by So Others Might Eat (SOME Inc.) and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute finds that Temporary Assistance for Needy Familes (TANF) is not providing adequate support for the 16,000 low-income families in the District’s program. TANF is designed to provide job training, supportive services, and cash assistance, with the goal of helping adults who are able to work find jobs.

Others have written about the findings of the report and its innovative methods. What hasn’t yet been discussed is cash assistance, and in particular the supports available as families transition from TANF to employment.

At D.C. Hunger Solutions, we’ve often heard that cash assistance and food stamps rarely last the full month, leaving people without enough money to buy food. This report comes to the same conclusion, pointing out that the benefits TANF families receive ($428 a month for a family of three) are not enough to make ends meet. These families often face one or more weeks at the end of the month without enough money to buy food.

Research has consistently shown that even a temporary increase in food insecurity can have a long-lasting and serious impact on the well-being and health of families.

While the report recommends the District government increase cash assistance, something Fair Budget Coalition and others have pushed for, there’s another immediate step the District can take to improve food security for TANF families: adopting transitional food stamp benefits, a policy option that will help families moving from TANF to paid employment.

Adopting this policy makes sense for D.C. families. There is a reduction in public benefits that accompanies an increase in earnings which makes transitioning from TANF to work that much more difficult. According to the report, a family of three that works for $9 an hour at their job (well below the living wage at $12.10), will lose $4,512 in food stamp benefits annually. Even worse, many families drop out of the food stamp program altogether when they leave TANF, unaware that they may still be eligible for benefits.

As one TANF recipient says in the report, “It’s more than you get with TANF but when you look at it, if you take that job, they’re going to take all your benefits from you once you get that job, so that means you have no help with food.”

Under the transitional food stamps policy option, a family leaving TANF can continue to receive the same food stamp benefit, adjusted for the loss of TANF income, without any additional interviewing, processing, or reporting requirements, for up to five months. And the payment is 100% federally funded. Nineteen states, including Maryland and Virginia, have already adopted this option.

During this difficult transition from TANF to employment, the District must ensure that families do not go hungry. Adopting transitional food stamp benefits for these families is one important way of providing this support and moving families toward stability

Katie Vinopal, Nutrition Associate at DC Hunger Solutions

>There are people who make stuff happen. And there are people who make stuff happen. Bread for the City is a place that makes stuff happen.

That’s from ABC-7′s own Leon Harris. Leon is a DC area resident and supporter of Bread for the City. We invited him over to our Northwest center to help pass out some turkeys for Holiday Helpings. Leon arrived, smartly dressed yesterday afternoon on his way in to work and was immediately impacted with the number of people in our Northwest food pantry.

“I had no idea you all helped so many people,” he said with emotion thickening his voice as we walked back to the food pantry. “This is incredible. You know, we never think that there are this many people who need just the smallest gesture…just to make it through the day.”

Leon immediately grabbed an apron and, with ABC-7 cameras in tow, got to work laughing with clients, distributing food, and listening to stories. His booming stature and vocal personality was matched only by his enthusiasm. The energy level among the staff, clients, and volunteers in the food pantry instantly increased. “This is a story that goes beyond the holidays,” Leon said emphatically. “So much of my job is dealing with the worst – the very worst – that people can do to each other. And then I come here and see people doing their best… This is how I was raised. This is the way it’s supposed to be all the time. Not just during the holidays.”

Be sure to look for Bread the City to be featured on an upcoming ABC-7 newscast!

Thank you Leon Harris for partnering with our Holiday Helpings campaign! Thank you for helping to raise our spirits. Most importantly, thank you for helping to raise public awareness of the growing need that Bread for the City encounters every day.