We came to attend a meeting convened by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to review the progress of the county’s audit of its response to food insecurity.  The audit, which was requested by the Board of County Supervisors in response to Fed Up with Hunger’s ”Blueprint to End Hunger in Los Angeles”, will help the county determine how to apply the Blueprint’s recommendations.  Over a half a dozen county department were in attendance, as well as the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Feeding America’s spoke person David Arquette and the California Food Policy Advocates. 

The meeting was held in a wood-paneled eighth floor conference room with a large table that stood out like a butte in the middle of the room.  Once everyone had gathered, Supervisor Yaroslavsky leaned forward in his chair like Larry King does when he gets serious about an interview.  He thanked everyone for attending and, without much further ado, set us to task.

Food stamp enrollment was the soup d’jour.  Our “Blueprint to End Hunger” makes it clear that food assistance programs like food stamps are some of the most powerful tools we have to address food insecurity.  As it stands, Los Angeles County’s food stamp program is severely underutilized, resulting in a loss of nearly $1 billion dollars of emergency food aid. 

One of the primary reasons for the low enrollment in food stamps is the requirement for applicants to have an in-person interview.  While this may seem minor, for those who are elderly, disabled, lack transportation or who can’t take off during work hours, traveling to the county office and waiting in long lines for a meeting can be logistically impossible.   Many other counties across the nation have addressed this problem by waiving the in-person interview.  In most cases, an in-person interview is actually superfluous: eligibility can be determined electronically by checking whether an applicant is already enrolled in a governement assistance program.

I’m happy to report that our meeting with the County was ultimately productive- the Department of Social Services committed to fully implementing the face-to-face waiver by June.  While it is true that in government deadlines are not hard-and-fast, we are excited that the county is moving towards making food stamps more accessible to the hungry in our community.

I left the meeting with a little skip in my step that I couldn’t help.  It was wonderful to see how the seeds of change planted by the  ”Blueprint to End Hunger in Los Angeles” have taken root.  In the coming months, I’ll be excited to watch them grow!

Thank you County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky for making hunger a priority and helping us to strengthen food security in Los Angeles!

Fed Up with Hunger’s Big Sunday project was a gleaning of the Hollywood, Larchmont, Brentwood and Encino Farmers Markets.  Our cheery volunteers from the Jewish Federation’s young leadership divisions and Birthright Next solicited produce donations from farmers market shoppers and vendors alike.  We mercilessly unleashed our smiles and go get ‘em enthusiasm, inspiring scores of vulnerable, charity prone people  into giving us produce.

I’m happy to report that people gave generously.  Shoppers dropped off a continual stream of full paper bags and, at the end of the day, the vendors let us have their still good, but unsellable fruits and vegetables.  Ultimately, we raised over 1500 pounds of produce!!!  Our gargantuan haul was divied up between JFS-SOVA, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition and Food Finders.  This week, hundreds of hungry people will eat healthful, nutritious meals because of our Big Sunday volunteers’ incredible efforts! 

We were very excited to have Repair the World come out and videotape the goings on as part of their documentary on all the inspiring service projects that Jewish organizations are doing all across the country.  We had to be on our best,
most enthused behavior.    Sometime soon you’ll be able to see us traipsing around the Hollywood Farmers Market and spieling about hunger and food insecurity in live action.

 There’s no two ways about- we had a blast out there.  You can’t help but have a good time when you get to watch a male volunteer in an extra small woman’s Big Sunday shirt waving around a sign in the middle of a crowd or receiving a generous donation from Mr. Billy Zane himself.  I can’t wait to do this again next year!

It’s not as much of an oxymoron as you may think.  Our hunger banquet, an event originally pioneered by Oxfam International, brought college students together from UCLA, USC and Hebrew Union College to examine the full breadth of food security, from those who eat well to those who barely eat at all.  A lucky few did get to partake in the smorgasbord…but most were not so lucky.

The banquet program ran similarly to a Passover Seder: a lengthy scripted conversation and a meal, culminating in a moment of reflection.  The students learned that food insecurity in the developing world and here in the United States is different, but very much the same.  For you folks at home, I’ll boil it down to the elevator speech: the food insecure, both here and abroad, suffer from impaired development and chronic disease that engenders poverty and pushes a happy, healthy life further out of reach for the vulnerable people that live in our community.We were lucky to have Jeanne Smith, Chaplain and Director of UCLA’s Wesley Foundation and Rabbi Noah Farkas from Valley Beth Shalom to help bring the big ideas and abstract numbers of food insecurity down to earth by relating first hand experiences they’ve had of people suffering from hunger.  Rabbi Farkas spoke of a little, starving girl he met while building a school in Ghana.  Jeanne told the story of her humanitarian mission to Haiti, obviously still haunted by the failed state’s desperate, teeming masses.  These were  ”light bulb”  moments that motivated them to make social action and justice central themes of their lives.

As I said before, the banquet was a lot like a Seder- we were all extremely hungry by the time we had finished the scripted portion of the night!  Little did the participants know, however, that they would not all enjoy a satiating meal.  Those lucky enough to number among the rich were served heaping piles of spiced lentils, curried tuna fish and spinach salad.  Those who were among the American food insecure had barely palatable dollar store donuts and soda.  The last and most food insecure group ate only rice and drank water from tiny dixie cups.

As I looked around, I noticed an uneasiness had entered the room.  Those who had been served the wholesome meal ate sheepishly, obviously embarrassed that they were only the ones enjoying a full meal.  The others joked about staging an insurrection and taking some of the better food for themselves.

After people had had their fill, I closed the banquet with a question: “What did you learn tonight?”  I didn’t need the students to respond to know the answer: I  had seen it in their faces as they ate.  Hunger and food insecurity had gone from being remote concepts to something present in their minds, in their hearts, and as a taste that had still not left their tongues.

I can only hope that, for some of them, it was a light bulb moment.

Please help turn yourself and your guests into educated advocates for the ending of hunger by taking a moment to read aloud the Fed Up With Hunger Maggid.  Your Seder is an opportunity to spread awareness of the hunger that exists in our community and what can be done about. 

We’ve included a ready-to-print-and-stamp advocacy letter in support of a strong reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act with our Maggid.   Join Michelle Obama and Scarlett Johansson in their campaign against child hunger and call on Representative George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, to make the Child Nutrition Act a fiscal priority even during this challenging time for the federal budget.  Preventing hunger-associated malnutrition is one of the most cost-effective ways we can ensure that disadvantaged children have the opportunity to grow up into healthy, productive adults. 

This Passover, bring your celebration of freedom out of the past and into the present by taking action against the modern day Mitzrayim of hunger!

On March 24th, we are partnering with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Valley Beth Shalom, and Sinai Temple for the First Annual Los Angeles Hunger Seder. 

During the Passover Seder, we open the doors of our homes and invite all who are hungry to come and eat but are we really ready to feed all those hungry people?

The statistics are staggering: about 1 out of every 8 people in Los Angeles is hungry, making us the Hunger Capital of the US.  The number of people in poverty in Los Angeles County is roughly equal to the population of Philadephia, our nation’s 6th most populous city.  Around the world, over 1 billion people suffer from hunger.

Come to the first every LA Hunger Seder on March 24th at VBS at 7:o0 pm to learn about hunger in LA and worldwide and to learn how you can make a difference.  Register here.

All proceeds from the $18 ticket will be donated to The SOVA Community Food and Resource Program of Jewish Family Service. 

It will also be webcast at www.JewishJournal.com

Join us on the bus with The Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores for a tour of food deserts on Sunday, March 21st.  The bus will leave the Westside JCC at noon and tour the food deserts of Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.  The program includes learning from health experts, text study, a visit to a community garden, talks with residents, and concludes with an Interfaith Observance of Passover. 

From our Blueprint to End Hunger:

…an assessment by the East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC) identified one supermarket for almost 90,000 residents in the Boyle Heights area, or more than four times lower than average for the rest of Los Angeles County…61% of residents of California’s 46th Assembly districtm which includes much of Boyle Heights and some surrounding neighborhoods, are either obese of overweight.   

You can register here or click here for more information.

Invariably, the goldfish would die within the week despite my best intentions, but that only put a small damper on my joy.  It was all for love of the chase rather than for any sort of deep seated interest in the goldfish themselves.  I’m going to be honest: now that I am older and more empathetic for my aquatic compatriots, I feel guilty.  I’ve left a lot of dead goldfish in my wake.  One might argue that depth of empathy for goldfish is not something one would expect a child to have, but that wouldn’t do much to convince a goldfish that I should be let off the hook.

Thankfully, this year, I had a chance to show that I’m a changed man. I earnestly began the long overdue clearing of my besmirched conscience by participating in the tradition of Matanot L’Evyonim (gifts to the poor) this Purim.  I knew I would have to do some serious gift giving if to propitiate the ghostly fish that haunt my Erev Purim dreams, so I put on my Fed Up With Hunger hat and got to work.

In conjunction with Shtibl Minyan, B’nai-David Judea, the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Division, Temple Israel of Hollywood and IKAR, I helped Fed Up With Hunger mount a Los Angeles wide Matanot L’Evyonim campaign for the city’s homeless.  Between the lot of us, we made hundreds of bagged lunches and toiletry kits.  Volunteers then fanned out across the Westside, Hollywood and Downtown to deliver the care packages directly to homeless people.

Hand delivering the meals was a very important part of our Matanot L’Evyonim project.  The homeless are in need of more than good, healthful food- they also are all too often bereft of social companionship, living alone and ignored on busy streets.  As we passed out the bags, we made sure to smile, say hello and make conversation.  Even these little gestures, while perhaps inconsequential to most of us, are rare and precious gems for the homeless.

I personally went with IKAR to the Ocean Park Community Center, a homeless shelter and rehabilitation program in Santa Monica.  It was a beautiful, crisp Sunday morning, it was Purim, and there I was, helping make the world a better place rather than contributing to the deaths of innocent goldfish.  Here’s to you, my fishy friends!

We would like to make this Matanot L’Evyonim project an annual Purim event.  If you or your congregation wants to join us next year, please e-mail me at ebraun@jewishla.org.

On Sunday, as part The Jewish Federation’s Fed Up with Hunger Purim events, Jewish volunteers delivered food, toiletries, and other care essentials to people in need all over Los Angeles in the Purim mitzvah of matanot l’evyonim (giving gifts to the poor).

A group of volunteers from Federation’s Young Entertainment Division (some of whom helped organize the Ghostbusters JFS/SOVA benefit screening at Hollywood Forever during Sukkot) and their friends joined me to cook a meal for 60 residents of Proyecto Pastoral’s Guadalupe Homeless Project, the only men’s shelter in East Los Angeles (recipes below).

Even before the cooking started, the volunteers spent the earlier part of the afternoon buying all of the ingredients for our menu.  Sara Reich, who did the yeoman’s job of coordinating all of the volunteers and the food procurement, bought 35+ pounds of chicken.  Jeannine Hamaoui cleared out the produce departments of Vons and Albertsons to get the 30 bunches of Swiss Chard that we needed.  Rachel Fleischer brought enough chicken stock to fill a large kiddie pool.

With the groceries, the group converged around 3:00 p.m. at the basement kitchen at the Dolores Mission in East L.A. where the meal was to be cooked and served.  They immediately got to work.  One team filled and organized the larder and another team started on kitchen grunt work, otherwise known as prep.  They chopped carrots, celery, cabbage, squeezed limes, picked cilantro, seeded jalapenos, rehydrated guajillo chilis, browned chicken, caramelized onions, fire-roasted red peppers, soaked rice, cleaned and stemmed a forest of chard, and above all else, they diced onions.  Lots of them.  Tearfully.

Over the course of the afternoon, all of their prep work slowly came together to form the different components of our menu.  By the time the residents of the Guadalupe Homeless Project arrived at 7:00 pm, the carrots, celery, cabbage, and chili paste had turned into Vegetable “Pozole” Soup.  The chicken, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers had become Arroz Con Pollo.  The limes, jalapenos, and cilantro became the Salsa Verde garnish.  The raw chard was wilted and then combined with some beef stock and white bean to become the Braised Swiss Chard.

After serving the meals, a number of our volunteers sat down with the residents of the shelter and ate with them.  This is one of the important differences between cooking a meal at GHP and doing the same at other homeless shelters.  The service doesn’t end at cooking and serving the meal.  It also includes sitting and eating with the men, which provides them with some social interaction, an important piece of feeling cared for.

As I watched the volunteers eating with the GHP residents, it occurred to me why matanot l’evyonim is the lesser known Purim mitzvah brother of mishloach manot (giving gifts to friends).  It’s because they’re both the same.  When you give gifts to people who are poor or needy and you take a moment to interact with them to get to know them and try to see them, you actually transcend the act of giving a gift to someone less fortunate than you.  In the process of matanot l’evyonim, you achieve mishloach manot; by getting to know someone in the process of giving them charity, you’ll end up having given a gift to a friend.

As we were wrapping up, one of the residents came up to us and excitedly told us that he didn’t know what kind of soup we had made but it was the best soup he ever had.  It was so good, he actually came back a few minutes later to tell us once again.  I told him that it was a “pozole” and his eyes lit up.

“Pozole?!  No!” he said.  “To me, it was a vegetable soup but it was the best kind of vegetable soup ever.  It was so good.  I never tasted anything like it before.  When are you guys coming back?  I want to be sure I’m here.”

As a former chef, I’ve kicked around in some fine restaurants and cooked some very fine food and I have never received a compliment like that.  Who knew that of all things I’ve ever cooked, it would be a humble vegetable soup that would elicit the most heartfelt compliment.

The resident was so excited that he told his story to all of the Young Entertainment Division volunteers who smiled and pointed at me telling him that I was the “chef.”  This was nice but the compliment really belongs to the volunteers.  Any chef worth his salt knows that he is only as good as his brigade.  As my brigade on Sunday, the group of volunteers put their hearts and souls into procuring, preparing, and cooking the meal for the residents of GHP.  I saw it as they worked through the afternoon.  Most importantly, the GHP resident could taste the love in the soup.

And here, for your home entertaining pleasure, Sunday’s recipes scaled down for service for 4-6.

The Best Vegetable Soup Ever (Formerly known as “Vegetarian Pozole Soup”)

Olive Oil
1 medium or small onion
1 carrots
1 stalk celery
2 green peppers
2 dried guadjillo peppers
1 chipotle pepper
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoon dried oregano
4 quarts vegetable broth or water and broth cubes
1 29oz can hominy, drained
salt to taste
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 12oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 small cabbage or 1/2 regular cabbage
Herb sash (bay leaf, thyme, oregano)

Prep

Rinse guadjillo peppers, remove stems and seeds, and soak in hot water, when soft blend peppers with soaking water, chipotle pepper, garlic and dried oregano to make chili paste.  Add more soaking water, if too thick.  End product should be a paste.

Chop onions, carrots, celery, green peppers and cabbage into large chunks.

Mince garlic.

Tie rosemary, oregano, and bay leaf with kitchen twine or make a sash with cheese cloth.

Method

In a medium pot, sauté onions on medium heat for about two minutes.  Once onions have sweated down, add carrots, celery, green peppers and sauté for three minutes.  Add cabbage and continue to sweat for two to three minutes. Add chili mixture, herb tie/sash, and remaining 1 teaspoon of oregano.  Cook for a minute to develop the chili paste.  Add broth and tomatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer until cabbage is soft.  Add black beans and hominy.  Season with salt and pepper.  Simmer until ready to serve (be sure to remove the herb tie/sash).

Arroz Con Pollo

1 chicken (three to four pounds) cut up into 8 pieces
3 limes
Spanish olive oil
2 onions
3 red peppers
4 cloves of garlic,
1 quart of tomato sauce
1 teaspoon of ground cumin, plus extra to season chicken Dried bay leaves
1/2 dry white wine (omitted from the GHP recipe)
1/4 cup of sherry vinegar
1.5 cups of long grain rice
4 cups of chicken stock
5 saffron threads
1 bag of frozen sweet peas

Prep List

Roast Red Peppers, peel and dice.

Dice onions.

Mince garlic.

Juice limes into bowl for chicken.

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a mixing bowl, combine chicken with lime juice. Season liberally with salt, pepper and cumin.  In a large dutch oven or high sided pan, heat the olive oil. Brown the chicken over medium high heat – about 3-5 minutes on each side.  Remove the chicken from the pan, and set aside.

Add the onions, roasted red peppers, and garlic to the pan. Cook until the onion starts to caramelize. Add the tomato sauce, cumin, and bay leaf; cook for another 5 minutes.

Add the chicken back into the pan, the white wine, sherry vinegar, and cook for 5 to 8 minutes.  Add the stock, bring to a boil, and add the rice and saffron.

Bring the mixture to a boil, cover, and cook in the oven for 45-60 minutes.

Remove the rice from the oven and add the peas, fluffing the rice and mixing in the peas at the same time. Drizzle with Salsa Verde.

Salsa Verde

1 Jalapeno pepper, seeded
1/2 bunch of cilantro
1/4 cup unsalted, unroasted almonds
2 limes, juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chicken stock

Blend all ingredients together.  The end product should be of a saucey consistency.  If it is too thick, thin with chicken stock.  If too thin, thicken with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.

Braised Swiss Chard and White Bean

2 cloves of garlic
2 bunches of Swiss chard
1 can of white beans
1/2 cup of beef broth (can substitute vegetable broth, if desired)

Prep

Clean the Swiss chard leaves and chop, keeping the stalks.

Open white beans and drain liquid.

Method

Pour the olive oil into a large frying pan and heat.  Saute garlic for 3-4 minutes. Toss in Swiss chard leaves and stir.  Once the chard leaves are wilted, add white beans and broth. Simmer on low for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Yesterday, the First Lady of the United States unveiled her Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity, a problem that affects nearly one in three children in America.  With hunger affecting nearly one in four children in America, the link between food security and obesity is pretty clear.   

The initiative itself is impressive and far reaching, tackling childhood obesity and its causes through physical activity, quality of food, education, access, and affordability.  It’s a good first step in achieving President Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. 

What struck me most about the press conference was the First Lady’s even-handed, compassionate yet stern tone.  While she sympathized with working families that may not have the money, time, or information to make healthier choices for her family, she also put families, food companies, and legislators alike on notice:

…it’s a moment of truth for our country…Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or whether there’s time for gym class or recess. Our kids don’t choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then to have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. And no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately, they are not, and should not, be the ones calling the shots at dinnertime. We’re in charge. We make these decisions.

This year, we can act on some of these responsibilities by advocating our members of Congress to support a strong reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, including the President’s request for an extra $1 billion in funding for the programs. 

 A fully funded package of child nutrition programs would:

• Reduce child hunger by increasing access to programs
• Improve the quality of food served in schools by improving reimbursement rates and establishing better farm to school links
• Bring additional federal funds into the states
• Reduce paperwork and administrative costs for schools
• Reduce the stigma of participating in free school meal programs, all of which will enhance the quality of our children’s learning

By engaging together as a national community on this issue, we can make sure that fewer of our children go needlessly hungry.

Click here to go to the California Food Policy Advocates to learn more about the California implications of the Child Nutrition Act and some of the specific actions that we are asking Congress to support. 

Click here to write a letter to your Senator or Representative to tell them that you want them to support a fully funded Child Nutrition Act.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Local nonprofit RootDownLA (one of The Jewish Federation’s micro-grantees under the Fed Up With Hunger banner) has a similar philosophy. In their words, they “get kids to get kids to eat their veggies.” RootDown works in local schools, empowering young people to make healthy eating choices and to help improve the food system. Check them out at RootDownLA.org.