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KAYTE YOUNG:  From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I had six different people's donation of basil in my dish yesterday and that's what made it work.

KAYTE YOUNG:  This week on the show, we talk with Heather Craig of the Community Kitchen about cooking for a crowd every day, improvising in the face of uncertainty and sourcing ingredients from the community. Plus, we have a story from Harvest Public Media about indigenous food sovereignty efforts in Midwestern tribes. That's all coming up this hour, stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thanks for listening to Earth Eats, I'm Kayte Young. Native Americans have been growing food to feed their communities and to connect with their spirituality and culture for millennia. But colonization separated many native Americans from their traditional foods. Now the idea of food sovereignty, or people having the right to control where and how they get food, is growing. And as Lauren Hines reports for Harvest Public Media, new formal programs to promote native foods are popping up across the Midwest.

LAUREN HINES:  At the Kansas City Indian Center, there is an indoor garden that holds dozens of potted plants, full of indigenous foods like elderberry seedlings and poppers. Assistant gardener, Jojo Blackwood, is watering the plants and notices the baby sumac trees are going strong.

JOJO BLACKWOOD:  As you can see, some of these have already started growing their own little leaves, their own little stems.

LAUREN HINES:  This is all part of the center's food sovereignty efforts, which focus on providing access to healthy, traditional food. Through the center's two community gardens and foraging classes, Blackwood and a few volunteers connect Kansas Citians to foods they can find right in their backyards.

JOJO BLACKWOOD:  That's another big part of indigenous farming, is that you understand that all these are living things. They're not just like a thing you own, they're your relative. You help them, they help you.

LAUREN HINES:  In a 2019 study from the Food Security Journal, researchers found native Americans make up less than 2% of the US population, but they suffer from some of the highest rates of food insecurity, poverty, diet-related diseases and other socio-economic challenges. Heather Dawn Thompson is the Director of the Office of Tribal Relations at the US Department of Agriculture and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

HEATHER DAWN THOMPSON:  I think we have to be cognizant of the historical role that the Federal Government and the American people have played in displacing the indigenous plants and animals to begin with.

LAUREN HINES:  For instance, Thompson says the US government tried to eliminate bison while settling America, which left native American tribes without a food source and their sovereignty, and that impact is still being felt today. In Colorado, the First Nation's Development Institute is helping indigenous communities find grants and other resources to connect with their own food. Adae Briones is the Director of Programs.

ADAE BRIONES:  I think what we see now in food sovereignty is this attempt to pierce some of the colonial structures.

LAUREN HINES:  Briones, who is Cochiti Puebloan and Kiowa Indian, says it wasn’t until the 1930s that the US government allowed indigenous peoples to participate in the American economy. Now, formal food sovereignty programs are emerging to challenge the entrenched colonial food system.

ADAE BRIONES:  Whether that be like government regulations or economic disparities that prevent indigenous people from really building models of food system or participating in traditional models of food growing.

LAUREN HINES:  And indigenous organizations across the Midwest are taking matters into their own hands. The Quapaw Nation in Oklahoma has been at the forefront of building food sovereignty programs. Michelle Bowden is the agriculture and environment specialist for the Nation, as well as a member. She says they're trying to increase the health of the community, economic resilience and bring back cultural heritage.

MICHELLE BOWDEN:  I think that people really understand the importance of food sovereignty and the fact that we need to be pretty much self-sustainable and be able to take care of the communities that we live in.

LAUREN HINES:  In 2019, she and her team created the Quapaw Farmers Market after finding that people were having trouble accessing fresh food in the region. The market offers local products and traditional foods, like Quapaw red corn and bison. Indigenous foods also help connect native Americans back to a diet that's healthier and more nutritious than the current colonized diet. But to people like Jojo Blackwood, food is about more than just nutrition.

JOJO BLACKWOOD:  It really helps me connect to my culture better, it helps me connect to my people better. I like to think that my ancestors are proud of me for doing this.

LAUREN HINES:  And Blackwood says now her main concern is helping her community and trying her best to be a good plant mom. For Harvest Public Media, I'm Lauren Hines.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of Public Media Newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains, including KCUR. They report on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

KAYTE YOUNG:  From food banks to food pantries, to soup kitchens serving hot meals, non-profit emergency food centers have become an important thread in our nation's social safety net. Here in Bloomington, the Community Kitchen of Monroe County serves free hot meals, six days a week in their dining room on South Rogers Street and that's just the tip of the iceberg. They have satellite express locations offering meals to go, a summer meals program for kids and they provide meals for 22 Head Start classrooms in the county. The Community Kitchen also prepares food for other organizations, such as shelters; they make meals for home-bound seniors and chronically ill individuals. During the school year, they provide food for a few after school programs and send food home with kids through their Backpack Buddies Program. Suffice to say, there's a lot of food coming out of that kitchen on South Rogers nearly every day of the week.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You might have a picture in your mind of the kind of meals served in a soup kitchen. You might be thinking of institutional cafeteria style food, heavy on the brown gravy and overcooked canned green beans. Prepare for that image to be shattered. I recently spent time with Heather Craig, kitchen supervisor at the Community Kitchen. We talked about the bonds that form around sharing food and the particular struggles they faced during the Covid-19 shutdowns. Heather walks us through a typical day of meal planning and cooking for several hundred folks at a time and shares how she handles uncertainty with improvisation.

HEATHER CRAIG:  My name is Heather Craig and I'm the kitchen supervisor here at the Community Kitchen in Monroe County. I have been working here for about eight years. I took over as kitchen supervisor about two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, from Adam Summer, who had been here for 19 years.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Heather had a roundabout path into this work. She's trained as a musician - a violinist - and found herself working in food service for her day job.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I love food service, I have worked with several chefs in town and helped open places such as the Upland, worked at Lenny's, lots of different places. I had gotten away from food service and said I was never going to do it again. So I was touring with the band, they decided to stop touring and get married. I was looking for a job and I saw this opening at the Community Kitchen and, in the back of my mind, I said I could go back into food service for something like this. So I came and I started working here part-time, cooking and helping with the volunteers which we all take part in doing, and I just stayed, and stayed, and then Adam decided to leave and become a full-time father so I took over as supervisor and I love it. It's a very rewarding job.

HEATHER CRAIG:  We, at the Community Kitchen, have several different programs. One that people are probably most familiar with are the dining room and the express location where we serve dinner from 4-6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. These services are no questions asked, anonymous people don't have to give us any reason for coming in, we'll feed you. We welcome families, we have a nice family section. We have a broad spectrum of people who use our services. Our location here on South Rogers has a sit down dining room where we have our hot meals, and we also offer cold meals to take home. Our West 11th Street location offers hot carry out meals and cold carry out meals only. We also provide meals for Positive Links, Area 10, Agency on Aging. We have Head Start functions out of here. Right now, we're in the midst of our summer lunch programs where we have our truck and a couple of vans that go round to different neighborhoods and park for a certain amount of time and offer food to kids. We also serve breakfasts and snacks to boys and girls club, Girls Inc, and the Rise. And then we do Backpack Buddies as well, but that's no cooking involved, that's just packing groceries that we send bags home with children to help their families get through for meals.

HEATHER CRAIG:  We have in the last couple of years added a hot food service in Elliotsville. We were able to get this amazing food truck. We don't cook on it, we have a way to keep the food hot, so it's more of a transport. We've been utilizing that for the Elliotsville service and we've been using it in the children's lunch program this summer. The truck goes to three different locations. It ends up at the end of the evening at the library and you can find the times and the exact locations on our website, or you can call us and ask if you have questions. We're hoping to expand that service to six nights. Right now, it's just Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in Elliotsville. It may be somewhere else in Bloomington, as we're finding that maybe people can't get here, so we're looking to expand that. But that's been an amazing addition to our fleet. It's going to give us opportunities to get to some places that we have not been able to before. Monroe Country is a big county, it's not just Bloomington, and we're here to serve the county so we're looking at more places we can go. And, hopefully, we'll be able to reach some more people that we haven't.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Combining all of our programs, we probably serve six to seven hundred meals a day. That's with all the programs. Here in the dining room and West 11th, our dinner service, we probably serve two to 250 and the numbers have been going up for many reasons.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You said that it's a no questions asked, can you talk about that and the importance of that?

HEATHER CRAIG:  We don't ask for income, we don't ask why you're here. And one of the things that I'd like to emphasize, a lot of people think of a Community Kitchen as the last resort for food. People will go to a Mother Hubbard's before they'll come here. We'll get into our food, what we cook and what we offer later, but we're here to help feed you if it helps you put gas in your car so you can get to work. If you need help just to get you through a rough time, even if it's just a couple of days a week between paychecks, we are here, it is comfortable, people are pleasant, our volunteers are wonderful. I like to think of it as more of a bridge than a net. I don't want to wait till people have fallen all the way through to help get you what you need. If somebody's having a bad week, or honestly, you live alone, you're retired and you just don't want to cook, you can't cook for yourself, there's so many reasons why people come here. I like the fact that we don't require any proof of need. It just allows people, hopefully, to feel a little more comfortable coming in here and no judgment, this is just a nice place with good food and we're just happy to have you and feed you.

KAYTE YOUNG:  They have a simple sign in sheet to keep track of how many people they serve. But you can use their services anonymously and they don't allow photographs in the dining room.

HEATHER CRAIG:  You can grab food and sit at a table and do your own thing, you're not going to be bothered. We do have Sarah who helps our patrons find services; she's a resource specialist, and she might come and talk to you and just welcome you, or I might welcome you if you look like you want to. But if you don't want to talk to anyone, you don't have to. [LAUGHS] You can just come in and eat.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And there's no limit on how many times a month you can come in?

HEATHER CRAIG:  No, you can come in every day and you can eat as much as you can or want to each evening, and no limits on that. We also have cold carry out meals that are re-heatable or you can eat them cold. Not everybody has access to a microwave or an oven, so it'll be like a protein dish, a vegetable and a starch.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I could imagine some people maybe feeling like they would like to get their food but they're not sure about coming into the environment, they don't want to talk to people, or whatever.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Our location on West 11th Street, you can get a hot meal and cold meal to go. So if you don't want to sit down and eat, you can just go in there and get one and leave. Here we have a family dining area and we've had so many wonderful families, it's such a joy when the kids come in, it makes everyone light up. And it's very comfortable, it's not completely isolated from the dining room, but it's off in its own corner. I think people have ideas of what a community kitchen is like and it's family friendly, we want people to feel welcome here but we do enforce our rules. First and foremost, safety and comfort; people to feel welcome but also to feel safe here. I think some people are surprised when they come in the first time to see that it's a nice, pretty comfortable environment.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Heather says that if someone's having trouble following the guidelines or causing problems for others, they will be asked to leave. Even then, she sends them off with a meal to go. She wants to make sure everyone gets to eat, even if they're having a bad day. We're going to take a short break and when we return we'll hear about how the Community Kitchen adapted to the sudden and long lasting restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. After that, Heather Craig walks us through the preparations of one of her garden fresh vegetarian entrées for their Roger Street dining room. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here, this is Earth Eats. I'm speaking with Heather Craig of the Community Kitchen of Monroe County. In March of 2020, when restaurants and other businesses were closing, and people were asked to stay home as much as possible to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, emergency food services were needed more than ever. I asked Heather to share what things were like at the Community Kitchen.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I know a lot of people were stuck at home. There were a lot of people who weren't stuck at home who were working and doing things and still needed the services, and a lot of people needed those services even more with not having work. We never closed and we had carry out hot meals here during that time. People came in and they got their meals. If they had a place to go, took them; some people just sat outside. It was amazing to see people just keep an eye out for each other. Resilience is not necessarily a positive thing, when I say resilience, but also how resilient a lot of people are, and were. I was amazed because I worked at another place at the time too and human behavior was not at its finest. It still may not be, but people were kind and helping each other, and I just think that's my takeaway. It was very exhausting for everyone and I know it still is, it's not gone. But that period of time when things were closed down and things were a lot more restrictive, I think showed me some of the best things that I've ever seen in this community, to be honest. I was really impressed.

HEATHER CRAIG:  There definitely were folks who it was very hard for when we weren't open for a sit down because this is where they get most of their socialization. But people watched out, knew this person, or knew that person and tried to at least have some contact, whether it was outside or keep an eye on them. One of the most amazing things to me is how many people come back here after they don't need our services, just to check-in and tell us how they're doing and how much this place meant to them. We have a handful of seniors that come in and I think it's really important for them for their socialization. It's really neat when people check-in with us and let us know how they're doing. Also it's really exciting when someone comes in and says, "I'm probably not going to see you that much, this job is working out," or different situations, things are improving. It's really great and to know that being able to be here for people and have a safe, comfortable place and to feel comfortable enough to tell us what's going on, it's a good thing.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I feel like during the pandemic, I and several other staff members and volunteers and patrons really had a better and more stronger connection because we did. We could not have done what we did during the pandemic without our patrons being so fantastic and then when we were able to have volunteers because our patrons had to sit and eat outside for a year and a half. We never closed any days, we stayed open and we fed people, but it was tough. Everyone was really gracious. Everybody had a few mask issues, but honestly, I think we had less problems than most other commercial grocery stores and things. People were much more kind and understanding. When we opened up, I told all the patrons thank you because people were emotional, this is a place for a lot of people. I just told them how appreciative that we had done this, made it through together and that we couldn't have done it if everyone hadn't been super, wonderful, I don't even know how to say it, I mean gracious is the word.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Could you tell me a little bit about the kind of food that you make and where you source the ingredients.

HEATHER CRAIG:  We offer a hot, nutritious meal. In general, the components of our meal, every night we have a hot main dish and we have a vegetarian option. We serve a side vegetable, a salad, fruit, beverages and often desert. So that's pretty basic. Now within that, there's a lot; we have wonderful opportunities for ingredients. A lot of canned goods, dried goods are donated, a lot of that's from individuals, I don't think people realize how much just comes from individuals. We get amazing fresh produce now all year round from the market, from Farm to Family, and other growers and other groups. Also Rose Hill Farm Stop has been bringing their stuff to us too, stuff that's still good but they're not selling. In relation to our protein, we do have some government funding and some grants and things like that. Right now the County Fair just happened and this is amazing. People bid on the animals and then they donate them to us, and we have a grant for rices to process the meat. I think we got five cows and six pigs, two sheep and a goat, [LAUGHS] which is a lot of meat. That's amazing, that gets our protein for a good chunk of the year.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That's also animals who are really well cared for.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yes, this is good meat. Again, amazing. I'd say at any given point, there's probably something in the meal that was locally sourced. I don't want to say 100% of the time, but most of the time, whether it's just winter greens, there's usually something in there. Right now there are two of us who cook most of the time. There's another woman here named Heather. [LAUGHS] We're serving a lot of palates, we're also serving people who are maybe getting most of their nutrition in this meal. I can't cater to everybody, but we try not to make anything too salty, try and make it as healthy and balanced as possible. But, that being said, we do have to stretch a lot of things with some starches so there's usually pasta or rice with the main dish. There are sometimes days that I pick that are comfort food days, once in a while I'll have a fun meal, I'm like, "Hey, it's for kids day," and we'll have chili cheese something and everything else healthy but try and make it enjoyable, interesting but not too inaccessible. I want people to be able to enjoy it.

HEATHER CRAIG:  On Fridays, we do all vegetarian. We had a grant last year for it as a side vegetable because up until last year, except in the peak of summer, when we had tons of squash, most of our vegetables were canned. We had a grant that we ended up utilizing to get some frozen vegetables and fresh vegetables for the side. And we have since extended that a little bit on our own so we have a little more variety, because the canned vegetables are peas, corn, carrots, and everybody gets tired of those. Today I'll probably use one of our frozen options in this vegetable medley. Any day now, I expect the doorbell to start ringing and the zucchini, the tomatoes and the cucumbers will be flooding the doors and we'll use them because we love them. Then we'll be able to do some of those things too. We do salad and fruit and, I guess I should say, the other big chunk of our fresh food, beside the Farm to Family and local growers, is through the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. They have trucks that go around to all the grocery stores in town and get things that they can't sell. They're perfectly good so, three times a week, a big truck pulls up, me and my co-worker get on and we basically grocery shop and see what's on there that we can use. That's where we get a lot of our fruit and salad and things to cook with and vegetables to add. It's really fun. We really don't know what we're going to make 90% of the time until we get stuff off.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That's a skill that you have to have is being able to think on the fly and cook with what you've got and not having everything planned meticulously ahead of time.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yes. When we get new staff, especially people who have worked at restaurants for a long time with fixed menus and meals, sometimes it takes an adjustment. The people who stay love it. It's improvisational. [LAUGHS] People think that we have all the spices and seasonings, but that's a huge donation because that makes our food a lot more interesting. But we may not have the basic things that people think you would have in your kitchen. So when people come in from a well stocked, professional kitchen, we do pretty good. I've made chili a lot of times without onions and it's fine. But you just have to break yourself of that, I must have this ingredient to make it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  How do you respond to that? Is that something that you enjoy doing, do you find it fun?

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yeah, most of the time. [LAUGHS] In fact, almost all the time. I remember when I first started cooking, it was a little harder to break myself of the concept if I had an idea of how the integrity of a dish, or I wanted it to be only squash. And sometimes you have to make at least 15 to 18 gallons of the main dish for our hot service. You have to keep making it big enough so sometimes you have to add things that aren't exactly what you intended but still good. So I enjoy it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  You said the zucchini and the tomatoes will start coming in, so can individuals donate food from their garden?

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yes, they can, locally grown food.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Directly?

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And even if it's not enough for the whole meal, it's still okay, you might find a use for it?

HEATHER CRAIG:  Absolutely, small amounts add up. The vegetarian dish that we make is smaller, sometimes it's just a little bit, it adds up. I think people feel like, oh that's not very much but, believe me, it's worth it. I had six different people's donation of basil in my dish yesterday and that's what made it work.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That's really good to know. I think a lot of our listeners grow food in their backyards and sometimes you have more than you need and you might want to know that this would be a great place to bring it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  To demonstrate the improvisational skills required to cook at the Community Kitchen, Heather Craig let me join her in the kitchen to see for myself. We'll get to that after a quick break. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here, this is Earth Eats and I'm talking with Heather Craig at the Community Kitchen of Monroe County here in Bloomington, Indiana. She's walking me through the steps of preparing a hot meal to serve in their dining room. We start off in the pantry which is a good sized room lined with shelving, organized into clearly labeled categories and complete with a flow chart for sorting donations. There are sections for fruit, beans, baking supplies, peanut butter and bins for things like onions and potatoes.

HEATHER CRAIG:  We're getting ready to start, the other Heather just got here. My job today is cooking the main dish and Heather and her volunteers will be in charge of the side dish. I had a rough idea of what I was going to make but, generally, kind of come back, it's like okay, yesterday I made pasta so I know I'm not making pasta today. I made a creamy chicken, basil, egg noodle, summer squash. Today, I have ground beef so we have at least an idea of the protein. I want to do what I call an un-stuffed cabbage. That is just ground beef, some rice and some vegetables and peppers and cabbage. When I'm thinking and I'm getting an idea, do I have... rice? [LAUGHS] And we're not very high on rice, I've got one bag of rice. Let me go ahead and grab that. We're really low on tomato products, but somebody cleaned out their pantry and brought a bunch of tomatoes yesterday. [LAUGHS]

KAYTE YOUNG:  We grabbed the dried goods and moved into the kitchen.

HEATHER CRAIG:  So this is the kitchen. We have the giant tilt skillet which has been amazing. We got that about two years after I started. Before that we used these giant, rectangular metal pans, and we had another stove. The heat was crazy, so this has been wonderful.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Next, Heather led me into the walk-in cooler.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Then this is where we keep our protein. I have 30 lbs of ground beef and our meat allowance is 30 lbs a day. One thing I'll have to do is turn on the hood.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I'm going to throw the meat in to start browning and then we will start on the vegetarian dish. I'm heating up my tilt skillet. It's like a giant square, stainless steel contraption that has hydraulics that lift it up and down so I can dump food in and out and it's like a big skillet. These are big 10 lb what they call chubs of meat. I will brown the ground beef, I will add some onions, some chopped sweet peppers, multi colored peppers that we have. I'll chop up some local cabbage, and some seasoning and then I'll cook rice. It's basically your components of a stuffed cabbage but un-stuffed. [LAUGHS] And then the fun part: get the gloves on and I'm going to break it all up with my hands, which works better than anything else.

KAYTE YOUNG:  While the 30 lbs of ground beef was browning in the tilt skillet, Heather got started on the vegetarian dish for the day.

HEATHER CRAIG:  One of the things our volunteers help us do is get things chopped up. We have from 11 to 1.30 to cook all our food, so anything that can be chopped up ahead of time is really helpful.

HEATHER CRAIG:  One of the things Farm to Family brings us are these amazing mushrooms which I'm sure people have seen at the farmers market. While the meat is browning for the main dish, I'm going to work on my vegetarian side dish which in my mind is going to be some sort of creole vegetarian thing since I've got mushrooms, okra, onions, peppers, I'll add tomatoes, serve that with rice or I'll make some cheesy grits which is super fun. It is nice that I have some of my things prepped. I have a large skillet, get some oil in there. And I believe I have some chopped garlic. I'm going to see if I can find some celery. This is where you go, maybe I have celery, maybe I don't.

KAYTE YOUNG:  She didn't have celery but she found some Swiss chard from a farmers market.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Not necessarily the same profile flavor-wise, but I'll get some nice crunchy stems off of that. And this is how it is; it's like what have we got? And it's very fun, especially when we have things around like this.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I guess this time of year is good.

HEATHER CRAIG:  So I take some of these onions - look at this nice chopping job one of our volunteers did; pretty good.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I love that, just pouring it in.

HEATHER CRAIG:  When I go to make the rice, I will actually measure. It's like cooking by feel for sure. You could really approach this differently. All of us who cook approach cooking a little differently. I cook like this at home anyway; just wing it. We compost here; we have a local company that comes and gets all the compost. Some of it goes to pigs that eat it. I'm just going to chop up some of these rainbow chard stems, lovely pink and yellow and orange, and save the leaves over here. Oh my gosh, it looks like a peppermint steak. This is already beautiful. Some garlic scapes which I think would be fun, add a little more flavor, because we have so many. I'm going to chop them up pretty small. It's so fun but they're very unruly. [LAUGHS] It's like wrestling a squid or something. You can see how it can be very enjoyable to come in and see some of this produce and figure out how to utilize it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Are you somebody who tastes as you go or as you get towards the end to find out if this is flavorful enough? How's this doing?

HEATHER CRAIG:  I definitely taste. The two things that I really have to watch out for here is we can't make anything too spicy and we don't go too salty. So I'm actually a low salter. The heat is pretty easy to avoid but it's hard, if I'm making something that I might want to make spicy. One of the most appreciated donations by the patrons is bottles of hot sauce and, usually, a bottle of hot sauce goes in a day. I like to taste things. Usually I have a co-worker taste it as well. I'm going to dump these in here.

HEATHER CRAIG:  It'd be better if I had a load of fresh tomatoes right now instead of canned for that, that would be super cool. Work on these mushrooms, cut these up rough. And this is my question, do I keep it vegan? I said maybe making cheesy grits so we're already kind of veering away from vegan. So I'm thinking a little butter because I've got these gorgeous mushrooms, so I think I'll go get a little butter, if I have it. Throw the rest of these in here and then stir this up.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And she found one pound of butter in the cooler.

HEATHER CRAIG:  It's mine. [LAUGHS]

KAYTE YOUNG:  I think that's going to take it to the next level.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I think so too. Who doesn't want butter in there? Even though I said we do make vegan, we really don't have that many people who really are restricted. We have a few allergies. I try to pay attention when people tell me what they're allergic to so I can tell them not to eat something. Now, I'll start adding a little seasoning. I have the garlic scapes, now I'm torn with that nice garlic flavor being overpowered by this soft garlic.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It smells amazing. Just with all those vegetables it smells incredible.

HEATHER CRAIG:  If had fresh corn on the cob right now this would be perfect. It can add garlic, it's very nice right now. With something this fresh, I usually wait to salt it. I like to taste the true flavor of the vegetables before. I know some things it's nice to salt them right off the bat, but now is a good time to add a little layer. So this is one of those days, we don't have any ground pepper. For this dish it seems okay, but for the big dish it's going to be a lot of grinding. At least I have some, but not very much. But I do have some white pepper which will go with this as well. Some paprika.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The smell is so good already.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I did have a little bit of celery seed, just for that little bit of celery taste, not too much. I am a big fan of a little bit of nutmeg or All Spice or whatever in the food. I think that in most dishes adds a nice depth, not enough to necessarily taste it. I'm a cinnamon in my chili kind of person. Alright, that is looking good.

KAYTE YOUNG:  With the vegetables and seasoning simmering, Heather ducked into the pantry for some cans of tomatoes and beans to round off this vegetarian main dish. Unlike in a restaurant where they use large number 10 cans, most of what's donated to the Community Kitchen is in the small household sized cans. Luckily they have an industrialized motorized can opener for the 50 to 100 cans that they often need to open to complete a meal.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I'm so glad to see that because I was worried about all those cans.

HEATHER CRAIG:  [LAUGHS] These are crazy motorized can openers. This is some volunteers' favorite tool, some volunteers' least favorite tool. We don't use a lot of meat substitutes. Given that, yesterday I had a whole bunch of vegan meat balls from the Hoosier Room and I made a terriyaki meatball thing but, really, it's a lot of beans. We don't get a lot of the meat substitutes, but also I think it's just healthier and that's what I prefer to eat.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It was time to give the dish another taste.

HEATHER CRAIG:  There's enough vegetables. I think maybe some garlic.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I don't think it would hurt to add some garlic. I was afraid it wasn't going to be salty enough. It could use a little salt but it's not completely bland.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I'll do a little more garlic. I think I'd probably go a little bit more on everything to be honest.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Look how saucy it's already got just from all of those veggies.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I was thinking about adding some veggie broth but I think I might just let it be with its own.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's making its own veggie broth.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Yeah, it is, and that's way better. I think I'm going to do the cheesy grits.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The mushrooms and the okra. I love okra so much.

HEATHER CRAIG:  I do that like farmers market stir fry all the time with the okra and the black beans, green beans and corn off the cob and fresh tomatoes. Next time I go to the market, I'll be buy some of those mushrooms so I can do that at home. So that's that.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So you made a vegetarian dish in five minutes.

HEATHER CRAIG:  [LAUGHS] It was a little longer than that but, honestly it helped that I had some stuff cut up. But thank you and thank you for helping me taste it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thank you so much for letting me tag along while you did all this.

HEATHER CRAIG:  Oh my goodness, it was a pleasure.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That was Heather Craig, kitchen supervisor at the Community Kitchen in Monroe County. For more information on their programs and to see some photos of Heather in action, go to our website, eartheats.org. The Community Kitchen has an interesting annual fund-raiser called The Chef's Challenge. I spoke with Assistant Director, Tim Clougher, for the details on this year's event.

TIM CLOUGHER:  We're bringing back the Chef's Challenge after a couple of years of hiatus due to the pandemic and, basically, as it's worked in the past, we'll have three chefs that will be competing. They'll have an hour to create a dish from a pantry of ingredients and they are judged on not only what they create but their incorporation of a local secret ingredient, which will be announced right before they begin. The three chefs this year are Bueno from Feast Market, Alan Booze from Meadow Wood Retirement Community and Bob Adkins from Truffles restaurant. In addition to the competition, we'll have a bunch of appetizers from local restaurants. As well as the BCT, we'll be serving beverages throughout the event, and we're looking at this event as a celebration of the local food industry and the restaurants. Along with us, every place has really struggled over the past few years and we're actually reaching out to them to purchase and support them by getting appetizers and including them in this event as a celebration. So a little bit different twist this year. Normally we've had bistro seating for folks to sit and enjoy what the chefs create. In this case, we're just going to have the food created for the judges, we won't have the bistro seating. So that part will be slightly scaled down, but the competition and the food and the fun will all be back once again this year.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Do they know ahead of time what they're going to be making or are they cooking on the fly?

TIM CLOUGHER:  They know what they mostly will have to choose from to incorporate into their dish. That is helpful to have a game plan because it's going to be a fruit or a vegetable, it could be a protein, perhaps.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So you're talking about the secret ingredient.

TIM CLOUGHER:  Yes. There will be a pantry of, I think it's over 200 different items. A lot of stuff we'll get at the local farmers markets as well as things that get donated through some of our food distributors. But we basically try to outfit the pantry with everything from a variety of broths and oils and spices, cheeses, all those types of things. The one thing that they don't know is what the secret ingredient will be. Over the years I've seen chefs prepare and think for sure they know it's going to be peaches and then they bring dry ice and they're going to make some crazy desert and then boom, it's garlic. So it's good for them to have a game plan for a variety of different things. We've done this 13 times so I don't plan to duplicate any of the secret ingredients that we've used. They've all been local things that you can get at the market and we try to highlight a particular farmer. We've done corn, sweet potatoes, eggs, peppers, mushrooms, apples, garlic.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Do they have to just use it in the dish or does it need to be highlighted?

TIM CLOUGHER:  They get judged on that and it's a pretty big part of the judging so, the more they incorporate that secret ingredient the better. There are some things, like, if it was onions, for example, that are in a lot of different dishes, but the skill comes from really highlighting that particular item and building around it. It'll be interesting.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That sounds like a really fun event.

TIM CLOUGHER:  It should be a lot of fun. Besides the brunches that we do as fund-raisers, it's one of the big events for us and it's always been a celebration for industry folks. We are offering discounted tickets for folks that work in restaurants. The event is on a Saturday so, understandably, a lot of them will be working, but we are trying to give a little boost back to them. They've always been - and by 'they' I mean folks in the industry - very supportive of us. Often, we have had industry folks here volunteering on the one day a week that they have off, just a very giving group of individuals. So it's a way for us to give back and also put the focus on them a little bit

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thank you so much, I appreciate it. That was Tim Clougher, Assistant Director of the Community Kitchen of Monroe County. Find more information on our website, eartheats.org. I'm Kayte Young and that's it for our show. Thanks for listening, we'll see you next time.

RENEE REED:  Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young, with help from Eoban Binder, Alex Chambers, Mark Chilla, Abraham Hill, Daniella Richardson, Payton Whaley, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Special thanks this week to Heather Craig, Tim Clougher and everyone at the Community Kitchen.

RENEE REED:  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artists at Universal Production Music. Our executive Producer is John Bailey.

Heather Craig in apron and surgical mask chopping green vegetables in a commercial kitchen with bins of yellow mushrooms, leafy greens and chopped red and yellow peppers on the countertop

Kitchen Supervisor Heather Craig chops curly garlic scapes for a Creole-style vegetarian dish to be served over cheesy grits for dining room service at the Community Kitchen on South Rogers (Kayte Young/WFIU)

“I had six different people’s donation of basil in my dish yesterday, and that’s what made it work.” 

This week on the show, we talk with Heather Craig of the Community Kitchen of Monroe County about cooking for a crowd everyday, improvising in the face of uncertainty, and sourcing ingredients from the community. 

Plus, a story from Harvest Public Media about Indigenous food sovereignty efforts in midwestern tribes. Hear these stories on this week's eipsode of Earth Eats.

Cooking-By-Feel, With Community Sourced Ingredients

You might have a picture in your mind of the kinds of meals served in a soup kitchen. Maybe you're thinking of institutional, cafeteria-style food--heavy on the brown gravy and over cooked canned green beans. 

Prepare for that image to be shattered!

I recently spent time with Heather Craig, Kitchen Supervisor at the Community Kitchen. We talked about the bonds that form around sharing food and the particular struggles they faced during the COVID 19 shutdowns. 

Heather Craig standing in room lined with shelves full of dry goods, with labels at top of shelves and a big diagram near where she is standing.
When she starts preparing a meal, Heather Craig heads into the pantry room at the Community Kitchen to gather ingredients from the dry goods that have been donated (Kayte Young/WFIU)

Heather walks us through a typical day of meal planning and cooking for several hundred folks at a time, and shares how she handles uncertainty with improvisation. 

Tim Clougher, the Assistant Director at the Community Kitchen, talks about the return of their annual fundraiser, Chef's Challenge--where chefs compete live on stage using a "secret ingredient," revealed on the night of the event. This year is a special celebration of folks in the restaurant industry. Tim talks about the struggles the industry has faced during the pandemic and honors the generosity of those who have volunteered with the community kitchen, often on their only day off from restaurant work. 

Music on this Episode

The Earth Eats theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey.

Additional music on this episode from Universal Production Music.

Stories On This Episode

Native Americans across Midwest embrace traditional foods rejected by centuries of colonization

Jojo Blackwood standing at a table with many potted plants, and greenery in the foreground

Native American tribes and communities are creating formal programs that focus on their traditional foods to not only combat systemic food insecurity, but also connect people to their culture.

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