Growing up, Kate’s family took in many foster children, sometimes having eight people around the dinner table while both parents worked full time jobs. Her family struggled with finding time to cook nutritious meals. She saw her mother scavenging the fridge for fresh food that she didn’t have time to buy. Kate also worked on a farm and saw first-hand all of the vegetables that end up in the compost pile because of minor imperfections that scare away shoppers. Over a third of food in the US is wasted. At the same time, around a third of foster children face malnutrition.
“It surprised me that these two communities so close to each other have the opposite problem. The disconnect begs for action.” – Kate
The moving parts of the project proved difficult to communicate, but slowly the pieces came together. Kate came up with her own recipe and wanted to complete this project with independence to see how much of an impact one person could make, but soon realized that she was missing out on community connection. She partnered with Cedar Mountain Farm to donate unsold produce, the local Department for Children and Families to distribute the meals to foster families, and the Sharing and Caring Food Pantry to give out extra soups.
Kate picked up produce from the farm, including three extra beef donations. The beef and half of the vegetables cooked all day in the crockpot. Later, Kate spent the whole evening chopping the rest of the vegetables and adding the parts of the stew into a larger pot to cook all together. Butternut squash, carrots, potatoes, beef, onion, and celery amounted to 20lbs of food saved from waste. Soups were distributed to 15 foster families, and the remaining 5 soups to a local food pantry where they were gone within 2 days. Kate could not distribute the soups to foster families personally due to confidentiality in the Department for Children and Families, but one man picking up a meal from the food shelf said, “Thank you for caring about even people like us.”
“The path was always there, I just bought the stone that linked the two communities.” – Kate
Stone Soup Salvage, is inspired by a story of a town where each person contributes one ingredient to the soup, creating something more than just a meal, a community. While this CLP does not have a system to continue forward, Kate hopes that even her small impact moved the needle on food waste, brightened a few family dinners, and inspired others to do something for a cause no matter how big or small. Through this project, she learned about how to find ways to make a difference on issues through local connections. She plans to cultivate her value of community engagement wherever she ends up.
“I believe the remedy for most societal issues does not come from one solution, but rather many smaller acts.” – Kate