“This is not waste, this is beautiful produce,” says Estes. “We only deliver delicious food we would eat ourselves.” She acknowledges the criticism of short-term solutions to food security or that solving hunger and food waste together is an easy fix. But Estes sees this as a win-win for farmers and growers who want to feed people in the immediate term. “This work is critical,” she says. “This is a safe way to give back in the time of the pandemic.”
This year, Estes and her team harvested 200,000 pounds of produce, serving more than 800,000 servings of fruits and vegetables.
It’s not the first time Estes has focused on feeding people. She has spent a long career as a well-known celebrity chef, appearing on the Food Network, writing award-winning cookbooks, and running acclaimed restaurants. Earlier in her career, Estes worked in a variety of mission-driven roles, including positions at Share Our Strength, where she organized and led a direct service program for chefs in hunger relief, now known as Cooking Matters; humanitarian chef José Andrés was one of the first volunteers in her program. She also ran the kitchen at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, serving up to 3,000 people a day.
On this day, Civil Eats traveled with Estes to deliver the freshly harvested food to Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, where a small kiosk has been set up in the lobby, showcasing the free food for everyone in need. A young, pregnant couple stops by to pick up a bag of tomatoes.
“Beautiful food! It smells delicious,” another young woman says, as she packs her grocery bag high, saying she’ll share the goods with her family. Catholic Charities normally serves around 1,000 people per month with food. Since the economy has crashed, that number is up to 1,700.
“The food is out there, and no one should be left behind. We just have to go get it.”
Later in the day, Estes delivered the freshly picked produce to Elisah’s Pantry, a food pantry built by a partnership of three congregations, Congregation Shomrei Torah, Christ Church United Methodist, and Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Twenty cars are already lined up ahead of the pick-up time at 4 p.m.—some days the parking lot is full an hour before the distribution begins. That day, around 90 households will receive some of Farm to Pantry’s produce.
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December 21, 2020 at 09:26PM
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Civil Eats TV: Duskie Estes Is Gleaning with Meaning - Civil Eats
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