Cole Ware

Cole Ware—2015 Fellow

Year: Class of 2017
Major: Psychology
Neighborhood House

In the United States, far to many people go hungry. In 2013, nearly 50 million Americans were “food insecure,” meaning they lacked reliable access to enough nutritious food. Across the country, regional food banks and local food shelves are trying to supplement these individuals’ and families’ access to basic dietary staples. However, research has demonstrated that many food shelf clients do not get the full benefit of the food available to them. Lacking knowledge about how to cook the food on offer, these people either eat less or rely more heavily on high-fat and processed foods than the average food shelf client. In some cases, this lack of knowledge comes from a person’s limited exposure to cooking throughout their life. Another common reason is cultural differences between the food that an individual knows how to cook and the ingredients commonly available in food shelves; with a large recent immigrant population, the latter situation is of particular note in St. Paul.

All of that research and all of those broad statements were best encapsulated in a phrase I commonly heard from food shelf clients at my partner organization, Neighborhood House. They often would decline to take a food item, saying, “I don’t know how to cook that.” Working to create resources to combat that phrase became the goal of my primary project. I created a set of recipe cards which focused on foods generally available in the food shelf, like canned pumpkin and, during the summer, zucchini. Talking with clients and staff members, I incorporated more culturally appropriate dishes into the mix. Balancing the two goals of creating recipes that used available ingredients and also were relevant to the client population proved challenging, and I gained an appreciation for how difficult it could be to make a coherent meal out of whatever might be available. My hope is, as these recipe cards become available in two different food shelves, that they will provide some ideas and clients will instead say, “Alright, I’ll try that.”

I’m appreciative of the opportunity to craft a summer experience like this, as it gave me some latitude with not only my project but in picking up side-projects for the organization. Building new dividers for the food shelf shelving units and coordinating with other Twin Cities organizations to provide resources during our community events kept me busy, contributing, and learning. Along the way, I experienced how a social service agency operates, seeing its many parts and being one of those parts. My thanks go out to both Neighborhood House and those involved with the Chuck Green Fellowship.