Friday, January 11, 2013

Salvation Army Food Bank's Spice Program

Leilani Williams, Community Service Specialist at the Salvation Army on Pike Street, describes how they add a little spice to the lives of their food bank clients.

We have been making and distributing our own spice blends for the last couple months, with rave reviews! It’s exciting to tell clients the amazing things they can do with the curry blend, a few potatoes, an onion, and a couple carrots - accompany this with a pot of brown rice and you’ve got an amazing healthy meal made entirely with food bank ingredients!

We know the most expensive aisle in the grocery store is the spice aisle, and that many clients have to forego adding a little spice to their meals, relying too much on salt. So we use the power of buying in bulk and make an assortment of spice blends: Italian, Curry and Mexican, all salt free, as well as a Vegetable spice blend that does contain some salt. We have plans to add more spice blends from around the globe and to showcase a blend weekly via a crock pot of beans or lentils - knowing once we add smell to the equation even those people who are a little apprehensive about the spices won’t be able to resist. It’s been great for starting conversations about food with our clients, they love to tell us their favorite ways to use the blends and ask us for recipes.

In a time of overly processed artificially flavored foods we are so excited to be able to make eating whole healthy foods exciting for our clients with such a small and powerful addition to our food bank!

The Spice Rack