Sunday, June 28, 2009

Kitchen(er ) Helpers

Friday Jim and I did food pick up and got no tomatoes again. We were stunned. Lots of other decent looking stuff though.

Sadly we didn't get vegetables we could make sushi with, but maybe next week I will get to do that.

However, we did get a lot of cauliflower, and excited by that I decided to soak a bunch of the dried chickpeas we got last week so that I could make a chickpea-cauliflower curry. There were no potatoes, but what can you do?

So on Saturday I got to FNB fairly early as I had some errands to run before hand (buying wings, etc.). And it was lucky I did! Otherwise poor Sidney would have been there by herself not knowing what to do (and not being able to do anything as she didn't have keysssss).

I was lacking in keys too, but I had one to the back food storage area, so we were able to bring all the food out, set up the tables, and wash a bunch of pears in preparation of actually doing something. Around 1:45 no keyholder had shown up, but I was able to find one of the people that works at DERA who could open the cupboard with all of our stuff in it.

I hauled out the chickpeas and was like "Um, are they supposed to have lots of weird foam stuff on them?" Well, whatever. I rinsed them off and tossed them into a pot to boil and hoped they'd be ready in time for the serving.

In the meantime we got started chopping up pears and soon other people started arriving to help out. Including three people who were visiting Vancouver from Kitchener. They were friends of a friend and it was super awesome that they decided to come help out at FNB while they were here.

We chopped up onions (saving the frozen ones for when we don't get fresh ones) and garlic to act as bases for the two main food things. Then we made a stew thing with broccoli, spinach, and bell peppers (I think that was it?).

In another pot we cooked the cauliflower and put our single carrot and not enough spices into it. Oh well. About half an hour before the serving we drained the chickpeas and added them to the cauliflower stuff and it actually tasted really good! Success!

I don't know how the other one tasted, and the pears weren't the softest (I think we need a better masher), but Jim's banana bread (cooked using the recipe he submitted to the FNB cooking zine as a guide) turned out well, as usual.

Oh, and we made a fruit salad with bananas, pears, and some apples, and ice tea to drink.

I don't know how the serving went (slower than usual I heard), because I was washing dishes inside. I'll have to ask the Kitchener kids what they thought.

Next week is my last week at Vancouver FNB! Oh no!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

FNB Photo!

And oooh, look, one of the photos taken for the Megaphone article is on a different website.

http://awearnessblog.com/2009/06/photo-finish-christopher-bevac.php

Food Not Bombs in Megaphone Magazine

Check it out!

"Have you ever wondered what happened to that bruised apple you passed up at the grocery store? Chances are it was thrown away before it had a chance to even go bad. But thanks to the Vancouver chapter of Food Not Bombs, bruised apples have may end up in a pot or on a cutting board in the Downtown Eastside.

Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a grassroots activist organization started in 1980 by American anti-nuclear activists who recovered and served food that would otherwise be thrown away as a form of non-violent protest."

More at

http://www.megaphonemagazine.com/content/deliver_blows_hunger_food_not_bombs_serves_food_conservation_dtes.html

Megaphone's a cool magazine and you should read it anyway.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Two servings in two days

Saturday I woke up and realized it was already 1:16. Oh no! Food not bombs! I had to cook today too. Rarrrgh.

I hurridly got ready and blasted downtown in like 20 minutes, only to discover that I was the first person there.

Still, at least I was able to start taking out a bunch of the vegetables and bread and stuff that we had, and Jake soon showed up to help me out with that. And then Yifan showed up to get the utensils and stuff out.

I think for some of us, cooking two days in a row led to something of a burnout, as we didn't seem to produce that much food (though apparently not that many people came by to eat, so I guess it worked out okay).

First thing to do was throw out the really gross box of...Chinese green leafy stuff. Ick. We also threw out a gross bag of beetroot, and I hope that box of spiky things was thrown out too. Ew.

We chopped up a million onions, and all cried at least a little bit. We froze a bunch so that hopefully some of them will be okay for next week.

We also cut up the rest of the leeks from the day before and added those to the onions. Then we tossed in some black beans we'd started soaking the day before, some potatoes, some squash, and a bunch of green beans (less gross than usual!).

Oh wait, maybe we didn't put any of the green beans into that. As we cooked those seperately.

We also cooked some rice. Though apparently we don't have any left. Hmm.

And a dessert thing. A pear crumble/crisp. Except that this time we had oats! So it was a million times better than the last ones we made. And either these were less juicy pears, or the oats absorbed all the liquid, because they were as weirdly soaking as previous times when we've cooked it.

Jim and James both showed up to help with the serving, which was awesome, as a bunch of people had left just before then. I didn't feel up to serving today, so I just washed up all the dishes, allowing us to leave by about 5:30, even though we didn't start the serving until really late. For reals!

Come help us next week, when we're back to just one serving a week. 1pm (or so) Saturday, 12 E Hastings. Knock on the door and someone should let you in.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Cooking the book(fair)s

Aaaaaah. So much cooking. (No update last week as I was barely at FNB and I didn't remember what happened. I was crashing the anime convention.)

Thursday Yifan, Jim, and I did food pick up and got some aaaaaweeeesome stuff from the supermarket. Two shoping carts full of it. Fantastic.

Friday I went and photocopied a bunch of cooking zines (these ones are not as nice as the originals). Then went down to DERA to start cooking.

Yifan and Jim went to Quest and got us some papaya (which we never used? hm....), broccoli, leaks, and a huge pile of spices/herbs. Stellar.

Jake, Sasha, Soairse, and their friend whose name I don't remember, showed up and we started chopping vegetables and stuff. Jim had to take off after not too long, but we managed fine without him.

We made a big soup thing, with leeks, broccoli, onions, and... um. I don't know, some other things. Oh! It had lentils in it, because someone just donated us a massive amount of dried lentils/beans. Fantastic!

Then we made an apple sauce thing (shocking), and I put too much cinanmon in, but we were able to put more pears in to make it edible.

We also roasted a bunch of zucchini and yams, both of which came out really well and were super delicious. Yum Yum.

Was that it? I don't think we made anything else.

We put everything into a van that belonged to...someone. And headed over to where the Anarchist bookfair was happening.

Oh yeah! And apparently the anarchist bookfair forgot to put us on their schedule after inviting us to come. Way to go guys. (edit: apparently we were on some info?)

A guy called Miles (Myles?) who knew the girls brought us some sushi to serve. Wikkid.

We served through one of those weird serving windows from a small room off their kitchen. What was super awesome was that we were mostly able to use dishes that were already there, and not have to use any lame styrofoam ones. Yes! And because the sink was right there (and because people at the bookfair offered to wash dishes) we were able to just use and reuse the same plates. Even better.

Oh! And for once we didn't have too much bread. We didn't have enough! This was amazing.

Anyway, people seemed to really appreciate that we were there and some guy even cleaned the really big pot for us (!!!).

Yifan and I hung around until all the food was gone (and we thought we'd made too much), then put everything back into the van and went back to DERA to finish cleaning (which didn't take too long). We even got some donation money! And some people bought zines and maybe patches. Solid.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Anarchist Bookfair Serving!

So we are do a special serving for the anarchist bookfair happening this weekend! We decided that the serving should take place at 6:00 so we should assemble to cook at 4pm. (AT DERA,as per usual)

The bookfair is happening at the Russian hall and so the decision was to cook at DERA and deliver it already cooked to the hall- we have a vehicle lined up, I believe (thanks Yifan!)

Food pick up is going down on thursday, - hopefully Quest & DERA. If you can help with pick up you can shout it out here or get in touch with Yifan/Jim/Matthew.

We will still do regular Pickup/Serving on saturday!

Monday, June 8, 2009

Portland!

I came to Portland for the anarchist bookfair armed with the FNB cooking zine.

Or almost, I hadn't finished putting it together (not even close to be honest), and it still needed covers. And space filling drawings.

I drew some stick men and stuff on the train down, and drew the covers to both sides (or "drew" as it is just sorta fancy lettering).

On the second day here, my friend and I went off to find a photocopying place. While he photocopied his anti-olympics stuff, I drew the last cover, and tried to put things in order.

Oh wait, I forgot the part where I crashed my bicycle after slipping on wet tram tracks and cut my thumb and my knee. Rargh.

I spent a couple of hours there getting everything done, but I think in the end they came out pretty well.

I traded some to some people, and gave some others away. Hopefully people like them.

In regards to FNB down here, I tried and failed to find out when/where a group cooked. Considering they seem to serve six times a week this was impressive!

I did manage to find the very end of a serving in a park on Sunday and talked to a couple of the people who had cooked the food. It seems that there's actually a bunch of different FNB groups in town, and they serve in different areas and sometimes don't know each other at all! I thought that was kind of cool. They had lots of bread, and I ate some lentils, and talked to a homeless guy who had given out fake/informative "you can not sleep outside" tickets to people who had camped out waiting for a parade. (Sleeping outside in Portland is illegal, except for people waiting for this parade. Strange.)

Today I tried to find another serving (after getting the info from a flyer), and I went to the right place at the right time, but it didn't seem to be happening. I asked a woman in the park, and she said I was the second person to ask her about it.

I went back to the place I was staying and discovered that it didn't happen on Mondays any more (out of date flyer!). Boourns.

How was Vancouver?