Save Food, Save Money End Hunger.

Cleaning dried red chile pods from last season.
Also in the photo are purslane aka verdolagas
an edible weed

 

        Oxfam founded in 1942. Began as the “Oxford Committee for Famine Relief”.  Groups of people gathered parcels of food and clothing for families whose lives had been devastated by World War II.  Currently Oxfam has programs in over seventy countries. 

    More than 2.5 billion live in poverty and are struggling to survive and go to bed hungry every night.  Small changes in our daily lives can have an enormous impact on global level.  Fighting hunger can start in you kitchen with help from Oxfam’s GROW method. Oxfam’s GROW method offers five simple ways to make a big impact on ending global hunger. The five ways are, don’t waste food save it, eat food that is seasonal, eat local, and skip meat once a week.

Food	Approximate months of storage at 0°F
Fruits and Vegetables	8 - 12
Poultry	6 - 9
Fish	3 - 6
Ground Meat	3 - 4
Cured or Processed Meat	1 - 2

One big yet simple way to impact hunger is to stop wasting food.  Throwing away food negatively impacts the earth and every living being on it.

    According to the United States department of agriculture the average family produces about 1,800 pounds of emissions 'from food waste. Individuals contribute 440 pounds per year.  Typical cars emit 9,000 pounds per year.  The study did not include waste produced from restaurants and energy used in prepackaged foods.

     Throwing away food squanders energy, time and money. According to the National Institute of Health wasted food cost the average household six hundred dollars a year. That adds up to a lot of thrown out bread.  Most people would never dream of reaching in their pockets finding a five dollar bill and putting it in the trash. Yet, they think nothing of throwing out old bread or over ripe bananas.  Those bananas can be made into a smoothie, and the wilted vegetables can be put into soup or stew.  Fresh herbs and mushrooms can be dried stored and used later.  Dried mushrooms and parsley are wonderful in a soup or in omelets.

      Food is a financial investment on many levels.  The economics starts at the farm, goes to transportation, processing, continues with you at the grocery store and ends at your table.

     Many foods can be frozen for several months, even years in a deep freeze. From my own experience the forgotten halibut tasted great and more importantly did not make me ill after three years.

    The National Center for Home Food Preservation has helpful information for storing and freezing food.   The storage times listed below are approximate months of storage for some food products. The food needs to prepared and packaged correctly and stored in the freezer at or below 0°F. After these times, the food will still be safe, just lower in quality and flavor.   The National Center for Home Food Preservation has numerous ideas on properly preserving foods.      

Very ripe tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for sauce.  Eggplant helps thicken the sauce

 

Green chile can last in the freezer for months.  Some say it gets hotter with age.

 

The sauce made from the scratch and dent produce, yummy. Great on pasta, greens, bread, and just about anything.

Barking News Oxfam Day of Action July 8th Big Success.

Meet Guapo.  He is Oxfam Action Corps barking news breaker and noise maker.  On July 8th he became New Mexico Oxfam's Dog of the day.  Oxfam's day of action for the Behind The Brands campaign. On that day all fifteen cities action corps teams from New York to Seattle made noise calling for big food companies to help stop climate change by implementing clean and efficient food production methods. On this particular day we were targeting Kellogg's and General Mills.  Here in Albuquerque Guapo helped us make noise. He smile for the camera being a good sport with boundless energy. Drawing the line only in refusing to were a costume, he prefers to play himself leaving all the dressing up to his humans.  He seems to have truly enjoyed making a big noise to help and climate change. 

Smiling for the camera.

The original caption read "I smell Climate Change"  He was after a treat in my hand you can see me on the left.

We were on our way to a hike when I snapped the one of him in the car.  When he heard the click of the camera he reached of  a treat.  Which made us laugh. At the end of the day he chilled. Speaking of treats, Guapo did not eat any cereal.  It is bad for his teeth.

He is more excited about going for a ride and his pending hike then photos.

 




Digging for treats. No cereal for him.



Guapo chilling after the photo shoot.  He was not harmed in any way.