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Feeding America says people waste 92 million pounds of food every year. A local organization, most well-known for its work to serve Portland’s most vulnerable, is working to combat that trend.
“I just feel so much better feeding everyone who needs it,” said Shannon Chasteen, executive chef at Blanchet House (310 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR 97209).
She oversees kitchen volunteers and comes up with recipes on the fly, using current inventory and daily food donations.
“You never know what you’re going to get,” she said. “It’s kind of like a kid in a candy store, though.”
The food donations come from a variety of sources.
“This is unexpired food in really good condition from local restaurants, wholesalers, bakeries [and] lots of different food vendors,” said Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House.
Kerman says all food donations are inspected before they even make it to the kitchen.
“We serve to the dignity of the people who need our help, and so it’s very important to us that the food that we serve is high-quality,” he said.
Volunteers serve an average of 1,200 meals a day, six days a week. Cooking that much food can lead to leftovers, but Kerman says Blanchet House has a plan for that as well.
“We also collect our own food waste and leftovers and scraps, and then we take that to Blanchet Farm, where it’s used as feed and slop for our farm animals,” Kerman said.
Every Tuesday, volunteers pick up food scraps and drive them an hour southwest to Blanchet Farm (11750 NE Finn Hill Loop, Carlton, OR 97111).
Out in rural Yamhill County, the farm is a residential program that offers therapeutic work to men in addiction recovery.
“It is a long-term, 9-month or more opportunity for them to live with us and part of their therapy is taking care of our land, and especially taking care of our animals,” Kerman said.
From store to kitchen to farm, this food cycle helped Blanchet House rescue 285 tons of food from ending up in landfills last year. That’s 628,317 pounds of food.
“We want to do our work, but we want to do it in a way that is healthy for our environment, and reduce our carbon footprint and our climate impact as best we can,” Kerman said.
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