Sunday, April 24, 2022 | Special Advertising Section 1 R 36 SPONSORED CONTENT Culturally relevant food: Nourishment for body and soul Zsofia Pasztor arrived in Colorado in 1989 after a few years of living in a refugee camp, an escape fromHungary’s turbulence. At the grocery store, she was perplexed as she wandered the aisles — the bread looked and tasted like white sawdust, and the cheddar cheese came in tasteless orange blocks. Even the butter didn’t taste familiar. Communist Hungary didn’t supply a wide variety of options but even the smallest of villages offered fresh and tasty food. Pasztor resigned herself to the labor of making her own bread with ingredients that still weren’t quite the same as those at home. Several years later, she moved to Seattle and stumbled upon an expensive grocery store with dense, fresh-baked bread with crust and real butter. Overcome with gratitude, she bought a loaf and butter to eat at home. Today, Pasztor is executive co-director of Farmer Frog, a nonprofit organization that’s distributed 40 million pounds of food and PPE to 1.7 million recipients inWashington. Since March of 2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Farmer Frog shifted operations to support Latino, Black, Native, Pacific Islander and Asian communities, along with immigrants, refugees and other historically underrepresented communities. “Providing culturally relevant food is what we do,” she says. “We make sure that each community can pick up foods that are traditional and comforting for them. Sometimes, there’s an attitude that food aid recipients should ‘just be happy you got food, it’s free!’ “ Pasztor says. “Food is a necessity for life, but culturally significant food brings people comfort and makes them feel at home,” she says. What is culturally relevant food? In Colorado, the Food Bank of the Rockies launched the Culturally Responsive Food Initiative in 2020. CRFI’s pilot phase collected food preference information frommore than 700 clients, 111 partners and 12 cultural community organizations. The organization created food lists based on preferences of the seven most common cultures within the food bank’s service area, along with any specific dietary restrictions. For example, top-five desired Ethiopian foods include coffee and black tea, fava beans, pasta, red National Tribal Emergency Management Council picks up food at Farmer Frog. Farmer Frog provides food assistance to hundreds of thousands of people every month. One dollar donated pays for 20 meals right here in Washington! And it’s only possible because of the community’s support. Learn more at farmerfrog.org. or green lentils and teff flour. Russian communities seek out buckwheat and yellow split peas — and would prefer to avoid white bread. Vietnamese food lists include mung beans, jasmine rice, fish sauce, soy sauce and plain pasta. Some foods are important for Eastern Shoshone feasts and ceremonies, such as buffalo, deer, elk, hominy, salmon and squash. Ukrainian immigrant groups are under terrible stress, Pasztor says, as many try to support family members overseas or in refugee camps. “Their need for food and supplies increased overnight as the bombs started falling on their homeland.” The team is finding ways to provide fresh foods commonly used by Ukrainian families — such as root crops, apples, cabbage, onions, potatoes and eggs. This approach is essential —Pasztor notes that communities unfamiliar with saltwater fish could be confounded on what to do with it, leading to food waste or going hungry. She points out that pork isn’t very useful for Muslim neighbors and tries to ensure access to halal or kosher foods for communities requiring it. Last mile, community smiles When Pasztor hears a new shipment’s coming in, she gets on the phone to call around to match food with the best recipients. At maximum, most food is sorted and sent back out within 72 hours; fish is gone within a few hours. Farmer Frog’s sister nonprofit, the National Tribal Emergency Management Council, helps get the fish to the Tribes, as 67% of Tribes inWashington state are food insecure. Farmer Frog teammembers begin preparing for a day of distribution before dawn inWoodinville. The weather doesn’t impact preparations.Without a warehouse, the food is sorted efficiently, often back out within a few hours of receiving it. Volunteers bag loose produce and sort through apples, pears and other fruit. Enormous flats are taken apart and repacked into batches, boxes or bins. Farmer Frog often works with “last-mile distributors”who get the food directly into community hands. They send food to faith-based organizations, community organizations, food banks and pantries, veteran and elderly communities, lowincome housing, schools, government agencies meal programs. Farmer Frog also distributes directly to smaller community groups, leading to one of Pasztor’s most treasured moments. “Different cultural communities sometimes arrive at the same time to pick up something, and I overhear their conversations, how groups share traditions and practices around food,” she says. “They say, ‘You’re getting this food, too? What do you do with it?’ That’s beautiful.” PROVIDED BY FARMER FROG Read story online Volunteers pack food boxes at Farmer Frog.
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