Marketing is a lot of work. . .

I can't say I'm pouring my time into marketing into the Pantry Cookbook with the same gusto as writing it, but I have been plodding along with my efforts, because if I do nothing to draw attention to the book, it'll just sit there, a lonely lump in the ether.  So!  What have I been up to?

First of all, there is the Facebook page.  What can I say, it's free.  I've been using it as a place to stockpile links to articles and websites that might be of interest to food banks.

I have also been using Facebook to get in touch with food banks.  It turns out a search for the term "food bank" yields a list of about three hundred.  I have left greetings on all of their walls once, and I am now going back for a second round.  It's tedious, but like I said, free.

I cringe that my messages on their walls might be seen as spam, but so far the only responses I have seen have been positive.  Most of the feedback is of the "wow, thanks for doing this!" variety, but I did get one food pantry state outright that they will make the Pantry Cookbook available free-of-charge to their clients.  Hooray!

The representative from that particular food bank described some of her food bank's patrons as "second generation non-cooks."  That phrase has really stuck with me.

Closer to home, my neighborhood food pantry, the Franklin Food Pantry, found two businesses willing to cover the printing costs for a first run of 300 books.  These will be made available to clients, and this gave me the opportunity to see what difficulties people are likely to have when attempting to do their own publishing.  Most notably, I need to make it clear that if a program wants to add some simple benefactor information into the cookbook, there are two pages I strategically left blank just for that purpose.  Not that I mind if anyone wants to get out their digital tools and really monkey with the book!  It just happens that changing the number of pages can have unintended consequences, such as causing everything previously on a left-hand page to end up on the right, and vice-versa.

On the non-digital front, I picked out five big-looking food banks and mailed them each a copy.  This afternoon, I heard back from one of them:


"On behalf of the nutrition education staff at the Capital Area Food Bank of Washington, DC, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude for sending us a copy of The Pantry Cookbook.  In our department we are dedicated to carrying out the mission of the food bank, that is, providing the underserved communities of our nation’s capital with sufficient, nutritious food while simultaneously offering education around the food we distribute.   This book will no doubt serve as a valuable tool for more fully carrying out that mission."

Well!  It's not an absolute yes-we-will-print-your-book-right-away, but someone there is excited about what I have done!  I will put on my patient optimism hat, and imagine that the Pantry Cookbook is being handed around, discussed, and perhaps salivated over.  Just a little

CreateSpace: Questions Answered!

I called up CreateSpace to get more information on publishing. The nice fellow walked me through the steps of submitting files, getting and reviewing a proof, and ordering copies. Basically, if I have the whole month of November to wrangle these steps, that will provide ample time to iron out last-minute bugs and order up a Big Box of Books. (And that will also give me the month of November to do NaNoWriMo - win!)

The other things that I discussed with the nice phone fellow were more specific to this project. If I use a Creative Commons copyright thingee that specifies that anyone can publish this book so long as the profits go to to a non-profit organization, then yes! CreateSpace will have no problem with this. Other groups can upload the same files. Their copy will be assigned its own ISBN, but that's the only difference.

This is FANTASTIC! It means any food pantry can upload the digital files to CreateSpace, and then direct their supporters to buy copies online, or or place bulk-order copies for their patrons, entirely independent of me. Especially good, since I was envisioning a best-case-scenario gone horribly horribly wrong, with me being swamped with phone calls and having to order Big Boxes of Books for food pantries all over the country. (Shoot for the moon, knock the moon out of the sky, rocks fall, everyone dies!)

My last question for CreateSpace involved royalties. Could I split my royalties so that half goes to a non-profit org? Sadly, no, they can only send royalties to one person.

I'm still on the fence about making money from this, and I'm frustrated that I would have to choose between taking the royalties or giving them all away.

In the News!

There is a nice article in the Milford Daily News about Franklin's food pantry and its ties to the community garden. And there's a nice photo of the pantry's director, Anne Marie Bellvance. Hi Anne Marie!

What Exactly Is the Pantry Cookbook?

Check out the new digs! Things over in the garden blog were getting too cluttered up with recipes and rough drafts, so I have opened up shop here. This blog is not meant to be anything final or fully organized or complete or pretty. It's just a staging area, so that I can get feedback on what I am doing, and so that the folks at Franklin's Food Pantry can keep an eye on things.

So what is the Pantry Cookbook? In case someone new wanders in here, let me explain. There are people who need the services of food banks who do not know how to cook. If you get all of your meals from fast food and heat-and-serve prepackaged foodstuffs, that's a surefire way to A. not get enough nutrition, and B. become obese, since the cheapest of premade calories are refined carbohydrates - empty calories.

Most frequently it is families with children and the elderly who need the services of food banks. But it can also be college students, or adults who have found themselves in between jobs.

This book is primarily going to be a collection of recipes that follow these guidelines:

1. The ingredients are all "whole foods", meaning as unprocessed as possible, with the exception of such things as bread and cheese.

2. The ingredients are as cheap and readily available as possible.

3. The recipes are as simple as possible.

4. The recipes are designed not just to help someone cook that single dish, but to teach them the fundamentals of how to cook. Thus the cookbook includes instructions for making things as simple as fried eggs or sauteed greens.

5. The recipes are divided into quick recipes, longer-cooking recipes that can be made in advance, and recipe components that can be made in advance.

6. The recipes require only the most basic of kitchen equipment. No electric gadgets, with perhaps one or two exceptions.

Friends and kind strangers have generously made contributions to this collection - thanks! Please do continue to pass along recipes that you would like to share! I can't promise that they will make it into the cookbook, or that they will remain unchanged if they do, but even the ones I have to discard inspire me.

Would you like to test recipes for me? I do need feedback particularly from people who aren't already good in the kitchen. I want to know if my recipes are easy to follow, and if they result in a tasty outcome.

The cookbook currently has about 60 recipes, and needs at least another 40 to be fully rounded. The book will also contain a list of the whole foods that the recipes are based on, including nutrition and basic storage and processing information. It will also contain a section of other information, such as general food and kitchen safety, and examples of how to plan a week's worth of meals.

Thanks to some terrific feedback from friends about how people use their cookbooks, I think I have an index scheme that will help to guide new cooks through all of this. It will go something like this:

Part 1: instructions on how and why to use the book, table of contents.

Part 2: an organized list of common, inexpensive whole foods, including nutrition, basic cooking, handling, and/or use instructions. Each food item will be followed by a list of the recipes it appears in, with page numbers.

Part 3: recipes, divided up into entrees, side dishes, desserts, etc.

Part 4: miscellaneous information on food safety, basic kitchen equipment, planning for a week's worth of meals, etc.

Part 5: index.

My first goal is to get all of this written and compiled into a format that can be shared online as a document, and cheaply printed. Printed copies can be made available to food bank users, and also used as a fundraising tool.

Franklin Food Pantry Steve Sherlock also envisions this becoming the start of a wiki, complete with glorious hyperlinks!

My basic goal is to get this up and running for the Franklin Food Pantry, but I dearly hope it will be good enough that other food banks and nutrition programs will want to use it.

Inspirational Food Pantry Visit, Oats, and Tuna

I finally visited the Franklin Food Pantry today, and I'm still giddy! After two years of following his blog, I finally got to meet Steve Sherlock, who is on the pantry's board of directors; and I also got to meet Anne Marie Bellavance, who was simultaneously running the pantry, directing a gaggle of volunteers, and giving me a tour.

I can't believe how excited they are that I am writing this cookbook for them! Right now I feel like I could wear a cardboard sign that says "will work for raw enthusiasm!" (A rather tasteless joke, I know, considering that the aim of this project is to help people who are out of work and out of grocery money. But I'm all bubbly, and I approve of off-color humor.)

Along with meeting these wonderful people, I got to see what exactly is on the shelves of a food bank. It turned out to be about what I expected: boxed prepared foods, canned whole ingredients, peanut butter, tuna, pasta (lots of whole grain), rice (including brown), bread (or at least an empty table where day-old Panera bread spawns at regular intervals) and some freezers and refrigerators containing ground meats, whole chickens, eggs, and sometimes cheese and frozen vegetables.

Food pantry users can stop in weekly for bread, and can schedule a monthly visit to fill up a bag of groceries. That doesn't strike me as very much, but I imagine when you are in dire straights for food, it would mean the world. And their policy is that when a new client comes in to sign up, they leave with a bag of groceries whether or not they are able to get all of their paperwork in order at that time.

Steve is working on the new and improved pantry website, including straightforward info on how to sign up to become a food pantry client, and how to sign up to become a volunteer.

I got to present them with a first draft of the cookbook. It's already 25 pages, and contains almost 40 recipes! Steve wants to eventually put it in wiki format, and he was excited at the idea of using printed versions to sell for fundraising.

After having made hundreds of mostly useless pieces of art that have gone under my bed or sold for a pittance, it is an amazing feeling to be making something that has such potential to immediately help people, both directly, by teaching them how to wisely stretch their food dollars, and indirectly, by raising money. Hopefully, this will be a useful enough tool that it can be passed along to other food banks around the country.

Now then; here are today's recipes. The pancakes are adapted from a Joy of Cooking recipe. I cooked the book's version this morning with great success, but have not yet tested this simplified version. (The original calls for cooked oatmeal. Surely that was meant to use up leftovers, and not a necessary step.) The second I will be testing for dinner, and the third is untested so far.

I need to consult my Joy of Cooking more often: it was published in the 50's and contains wonderful old-school tips, like the method of judging a pan's heat by flicking water into it.

Oatmeal Pancakes

(quick meal)

Makes about 12 pancakes.

1 ½ cups rolled or quick oats

1 ½ cups milk

½ cup whole wheat or white flour

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

(optional) 2 tbsp melted butter or bacon grease

1 egg

(optional) frozen or fresh berries, chopped dried fruit, chopped nuts

Preheat a griddle or large skillet at a medium-high heat. In a mixing bowl, combine egg, milk, salt, baking soda, and oats. Beat with a fork until thoroughly mixed. Melt the butter in the microwave, or by putting it in a metal measuring cup and setting it on the hot cooking surface. Stir the melted butter or grease into the mixture. (The butter or bacon grease should prevent the pancakes from sticking to the pan.) Add the flour. Stir until the mixture is mostly mixed, but still has a few lumps.

You can tell that the griddle or pan is the right temperature by flicking a few drops of water on the surface. When the drops skitter around, the skillet is the right temperature. If the drops immediately become steam, the skillet is too hot. If the drops don’t move around, the skillet isn’t hot enough.

When the skillet is the correct temperature, spoon the batter into the pan. Cook the pancakes for about three minutes, until golden brown on the bottom. If you want to add optional berries, fruit, or nuts, sprinkle those on top of the pancakes now while they cook. Push them down into the pancakes with your fingers if necessary. Then flip the pancakes, and cook for an additional three minutes or so, until cooked through.

Serve with maple syrup, butter, honey, or jelly.

If making large quantities of pancakes, or cooking in many batches, set the oven on its lowest setting, and stack the finished pancakes on a plate in the oven.

Pancakes can also be frozen, and reheated later in a toaster, in the microwave, or under the broiler.

Creamy Tuna Pasta

(quick meal)

This is a quick version of Tuna Noodle Casserole that uses whole ingredients instead of canned “ cream of” sauces. Such canned sauces are low in nutrients and high in sugar, salt, oils, and other things that would be best left out of one‘s diet, such as MSG. Feeds four or five people.

1 chopped onion

(optional) canned or fresh mushrooms

1 or 2 cans of tuna

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp flour

1 cup milk

1 or 2 cups vegetables, such as frozen peas, chopped broccoli, frozen spinach, etc.

(optional) 1 cup of grated cheddar, Swiss, or other cheese

(optional) dill

Salt and pepper to taste

Egg noodles, or pasta, or rice

Start cooking the noodles or rice. In another pan, melt the butter, and sauté the onions and mushrooms for a few minutes. Sprinkle in the flour, stirring over the heat for another couple of minutes, and then add the milk. When the milk comes to a boil, add the tuna and veggies. Simmer until the veggies are cooked to your liking; then stir in the grated cheese, and add salt and pepper and optional dill to taste.

If you opt not to use cheese, try adding more tuna or more vegetables to fill out the meal.

Serve over egg noodles, pasta, or rice.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

(cook in advance)

Cooking tuna noodle as a casserole may take too long to be convenient on a busy weeknight, but comes in handy if you have more cooking time and a large group of people to feed. It also makes sense for pot lucks, because it can be cooked a few hours in advance, kept warm in the oven on low heat, and then brought to the potluck in just one container.

Tuna Noodle Casserole is almost the same as Cheesy Tuna Pasta, except that it is baked. To make tuna noodle casserole without using canned “cream of” sauces, follow the above directions, doubling or tripling as necessary. Egg noodles are traditional, rather than rice or pasta, but any of the above should work. Instead of adding the cheese and veggies to the sauce in the pan, layer all of the ingredients in a casserole dish, with the pasta or rice on the bottom. Top with extra cheese and bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees until the sauce bubbles.

[Edit] After testing this tuna pasta recipe again, and not getting great results, I have reworked these tuna recipes.

Food Pantry Cookbook: First Deadline

Hello to everyone who has contributed recipes or who has considered doing so! On Saturday the 19th I will be meeting with Franklin Food Pantry board member Steve Sherlock (and checking out the food pantry, woot!). I intend to print out a first copy of the cook book for him to share with the board. It'll have about half of the final content in it, and will still be in a first-draft stage, but hopefully it'll give them a good idea of where I'm going with this, and it will help them figure out how they would like to make it available on the Food Pantry's webpage. Perhaps it could be used in printed form as a fundraising tool, too.

Anyway, this next week would be a great time to get more recipes to me, if you have more to share. If you aren't sure that a particular recipe is entirely appropriate for this particular project, that's okay; I'll be testing and tweaking each recipe to make them suitable. Not all will make it into the final cookbook, but even the ones I filter out will be deeply appreciated. :)

Currently, these are the most conspicuous gaps in the cookbook:

beef (With an emphasis on dishes that use the least expensive cuts of beef, such as cube steak, or whatever cuts of meat go into pot roast. Ground meats are already pretty well covered.)
pork (Same as with beef.)
beets
wheat flour, preferably whole (I would like a very simple bread recipe, for example. And maybe a cookie recipe.)

Got a recipe you would like to contribute? THANKS!

[edit] Suzi responded with the following:

Cube Steak is versatile, yet not as cheap as one would think. Typically, it is sirloin that is run through a tenderizer.

Here are a couple things I do with it. . .

1. Cut into slices and cooked (Fry in butter) with onions and mushrooms. Used as sandwich meat. Sauce can be as simple as Worchestershire or you can make gravy with the drippings!
2. Coat with batter and fry to make chicken fried steak

Anything can be made into potroast.
Simple rules I follow:
Meat 3-5lbs(Chuck Roast, Top or Bottom Roast, etc)
Sear it so that the outsides are browned (this will trap in the juices)
Add in Carrots, Potatoes, Celery, etc.
Add in just enough broth to cover the meat 1/2 way.
Then, pop a lid on a put into the oven at 275 for 3-4.5 hours - the more sinewous the meat, the longer as low temperature.
This can also be accomplished in a slow cooker - on low - for 6 ot 8 hours.

Simple is best.


Cheap Pork -

I get boneless porkchops.
They are relatively inexpensive.

I pound thin - and lightly coat with flour.

Then, I fry/sear the outsides to just a light brown in a bit of butter.

Then, I pop them on a pan and stick them in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. .

Perfectly done - moist bites.
Typically, I serve with a few veggies and potato. =)

Food Pantry on my Mind

I’ve been thinking about food lately.

Fellow blogger and ever-dedicated-to-the-community Franklin resident Steve Sherlock is a board member of our town’s food pantry. He posts updates about the pantry on his Franklin Matters blog. A recent entry caught my eye: it was a list of items that the food pantry is particularly in need of. I skimmed over the list, made a mental note to drop off another bag of groceries for the food pantry. . . and then did a double take. A surprisingly large part of the list was for pre-made items, such as canned pasta, canned stew, or boxed side dishes.

So I asked Steve: wouldn’t it make more sense to stock the pantry with staples that are generally cheaper, and more nutritious? And I wandered away toying with the notion of writing recipes to submit to the food pantry along with donations of such staples - because in all likelihood if people aren’t cooking from staples, it is because they don’t know how.

Steve replied: “Michelle, I understand your desire for more of a healthy food request. We are heading in that direction. The Food Pantry instituted a farmer's market on Monday's last year to distribute the fresh produce we were able to obtain. We are working as part of the Community Gardens project to further that effort this year. By re-doing the Food Pantry website, we intend to incorporate a blog which will also feature healthy recipes. You also give me an idea that we can solicit recipes from the community (like yourself) as well as from other food and health writers. Thanks!”

Well, we certainly seem to be thinking along the same lines! So I’ve started writing down recipes. And not just recipes: I’m sticking to explaining the basics. What do you do with dry beans, uncooked rice, fresh kale, whole chicken, and the like? And perhaps just as important: how to you go about managing the often lengthy process of cooking from scratch with a hectic lifestyle in which the chefs may be working multiple jobs and raising children all at once?

I have read, and enjoyed, the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, but I found that at the same time as the book made me hungry for her lifestyle, it made me frustrated. The author was able to grow and cook most of her own food because she freelanced from home, and because she had decided to make a major change in her lifestyle that placed food-making as both her major hobby and as her career, in that it was research for her book.

These options simply aren’t available for so many working parents. You can’t harvest or tend a garden well if you aren’t home during daylight hours for most of the week. You can’t build and bake a casserole for your family if you get home at 6:30 PM and have small children to be fed. You and your family, it seems, can eat organic, home-grown food - if you are willing to set aside a fulfilling career in order to be a subsistence farmer and professional cook.

It’s no wonder that so many American families have turned to prepackaged foods. While I learned the foundations about cooking from my mother, I also experienced what happens when a stay-at-home mother goes back to work: boxed side-dishes, canned peas, and shake-n-bake.

But this is not to say that my mother made a mistake. Why did my father not step in and learn to cook, for instance? (He did contribute, but it was with the same convenience foods.) Why should she bear all of the burden for feeding the family, (and cleaning for the family, all on the heels of the inescapable biological duties of pregnancy and breast-feeding) when she also needed desperately to have a life away from cooking and child-rearing?

Our society has been in flux for a hundred years or more. Gender rolls have not yet settled. As a society, we are seeking a balance that gives women (and men) the freedom to choose and swap and reinvent our roles. As the multi-generational transition has rolled along, certain types of historically gender-specific work have been lost to many families, particular those families in economic distress, in the process of liberating us from our historic, crushing roles of reproduction and child-rearing. Subsequent generations have often not known where to pick up where their parents left off, leaving the problem to persist from generation to generation.

For instance, a friend of mine told me about how her own mother had relied on pre-packaged foods, sans fresh vegetables, in a rotation of brands as regular as clockwork. This friend didn’t learn how to cook from anyone else, and limped through her children’s’ younger years in the same manner. Although she has been expanding her cooking horizons recently, one of her teenaged children still refuses to eat anything but hot pockets.

Just yesterday in a doctor’s office I was struck by the contrast of recipes in two magazines. One was a fancy food publication, featuring a recipe for beef Wellington. If you aren’t familiar with the dish, here’s the simple version: an expensive cut of meat, coated first in fois gras, then in a blend of butter and truffles. Then it is wrapped in crepes, and then in puff pastry. On top of that goes a sauce. It represents an absolutely stunning amount of kitchen labor. I’ve never had the stuff, and I expect if I ever do encounter beef Wellington, it will be in a fancy restaurant with a high price tag and a lot of wine.

The other recipe? Doctored-up Kraft mac-n-cheese. This one was in a magazine for parents.

Somehow I can only imagine the beef Wellington being cooked, on rare special occasions, by childless couples who have taken up cooking with the same intensity as those who do Civil War reenacting, or those who build and fly model airplanes. (And all the power to them! Thank heavens someone out there is perpetuating cooking as an art. Please invite me to dinner!) But for families, strapped for cash and cooking in a hurry, even the professional publications can’t seem to get past the boxed-food cream-of-mushroom shortcuts.

Where are the peasant dishes from around the world that feature cheap whole ingredients? Healthful ingredients? Why are we reluctant to eat a cabbage and beans that cost less, fill more plates, and contain more nutrition than cans of ravioli? Is it because we have forgotten that such an option exists, or are we ashamed, still, of eating “peasant food”?

I am ever grateful to my mother for teaching me how to cook, and even more so, now that I see that the gift of cooking knowledge is not one that was handed to every person who ever intended to raise and feed their own family. I can’t feed the world, but I can write, and I can cook the basics, so maybe I can do some small bit of good by sharing my knowledge with those who could use it.

Now who’s with me? Every little bit counts. Get in touch if you would like to contribute a recipe or an article that could help someone who has little money, time, or experience. All contributions will go to the Franklin Food Pantry website - and from there, who knows where they will end up. There is no compensation involved beyond the joy of helping families in need.

Thank you. And thanks for reading!