According to the USDA, an estimated 16 million children lived in food insecure households in 2008. With the most recent national unemployment rates coming in at 9.5%, I can only image that this number has increased over the last two years. During the school year, these underprivileged children can find at least one free or reduced cost hot meal in the cafeteria of their schools but where do these children find their next meal over the weekends or on holidays?

This is where the “Food 4 Kids” Backpack Program comes in. Every Friday, with the help of the Backpack Program, these eligible kids receive a backpack filled with child-friendly foods such as peanut butter, pop-top canned goods, cereal, raisins, granola bars, shelf stable milk and macaroni and cheese. These backpacks are given directly to the kids themselves without requiring their parents to receive a referral to a local food pantry, pick up the food at a separate location or prepare it at home.

Last winter local food writers Alice Q. Robertson and Caron Golden organized the 1st annual San Diego Food 4 Kids Backpack Program Fundraiser where they were able to collect over $6000 dollars of donations and 1200lbs of food! Pretty amazing and inspirational for a grassroots effort driven by two people! This year the program is back and has gained even more momentum. The monetary drive will last for 6 weeks instead of 3 and, in addition to the donations from individuals, over 30 restaurants in the San Diego area will be contributing a dollar per dish for the month of August to the program. On August 21st there will be a food and backpack drive at the Little Italy Mercato where members of the community will be able bring any donations of appropriate non-perishable food or neutral-color backpacks.

As a little side incentive for those wishing to make a monetary donation – all donors will be eligible for prizes donated by local restaurants, businesses and individuals which will be awarded by random drawing at the end of the event. This year I am delighted to be able to contribute a signed copy of the FoodPornDaily Cookbook as a raffle prize.

The complete information on how you can donate to the 2nd Annual San Diego Food 4 Kids Backpack Program is listed below (cut and pasted from the press release!) Please help us feed those children in need – together, we really can make a difference!

The 2010 “Food 4 Kids” fundraiser has three (3) main components:
• Monetary Fundraiser: A fundraising site has been set up on firstgiving.com/food4kids to allow interested individuals to make monetary donations, add comments and keep track of the fundraiser’s progress. All donors are eligible for prizes donated by local restaurants and businesses which will be awarded by random drawing at the end of the event.

• Backpack and Food Drive on August 21 at Little Italy Mercato: On August 21, a food and backpack drive will be held at the Little Italy Mercato. Members of the community are asked to bring neutral backpacks (as in no logos and preferably black or red) and kid-friendly non-perishable foods (such as applesauce, cereal, fruit cups, mac ‘n cheese, pretzels, etc., and other healthful foods) to the Little Italy Mercato between 9 AM and 1 PM, where Food 4 Kids volunteers and Food Bank personnel will be on hand to collect them.

• Dollar-a-Dish Program: August 1 – August 31: A “Dollar-a-Dish” event is set to run throughout the month of August at participating restaurants. These restaurants will select one of their best selling menu items and will contribute $1 to the Food 4 Kids program for every order of that dish sold during the month of August. At present, 30 restaurants have signed on to participate including: Alchemy, Bencotto, Café Chloe, Cosmopolitan Restaurant, Cowboy Star, Croce’s, Cucina Urbana, Dining Details (Catering,) Gaglione Brothers, George’s at the Cove, Hilton Garden Inn – Del Mar, JRDN, JSix, Kensington Grill, Lotsa Pasta, Nine-Ten, O’Brothers, Pizza Fusion, Playa Grill, Ritual Tavern, Royal India, Sessions Public, Soleluna Café, SoNo Trading Company, Starlite, Stingaree, Terra, The Red Door, Urban Solace and Zenbu.

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“A what-cast?” would surely be my mom’s response! Recently the lovely and talented Leena, from Leena Eats, invited me to be a part of the most recent episode of her highly educational, food-related podcast Chicken n’ Waffles. Like the usual slacker I am, the podcast has been up and available since last Tuesday and it’s only now that I have gotten around to posting a link to it. If you wanna hear me make a fool of myself, head on over to Leena Eats and check it, yo! At the very least go over and read Leena’s hysterical blog and drool over all the good stuff she’s been eating.

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Remember school lunches from back in the day? For me, what I remember is pepperoni pizza, chicken nuggets, Salisbury steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy, French fries….. WAAAAAAAAIT a second! I don’t remember any veggies at all from my school lunches! I think there might have been some kind of heinous succotash from a can. Ooooo and I also remember them serving some kind of canned strawberry banana mixture that always used to make me totally t. o.’ed that they would ruin my strawberries with some crappy-ass bananas! Woah, sorry for the tangent. But seriously, thinking back to the food that was served to me in my grade school cafeteria, it all seems somewhat ridiculous. How does anyone expect children to grow up and make smart food choices when they are being taught that a diet high in empty carbs and processed food is acceptable? Really, can you blame them?

I think it’s high time that we demand our school cafeterias get back to basics – basic ingredients that is. In a utopian cafeteria society, kids would only be given choices of fresh foods that were not processed in some plant several states (or countries!) away, but made from real grains, fruits, vegetables and meats. Frankly, I don’t understand why we cannot make this utopia a reality.

I say they stop having snack bars at school where kids can forgo the hot lunches and just dine on bread sticks, or snack crackers and high fructose corn syrup canned drinks. Kids do not need to have that many choices of their own pertaining to food. Do you feel like me and want to change the future of school food and make fresh, healthy meals the norm? Sign the petition from Healthy Schools Campaign.

PS – My hat goes off to the fabulous Leena of Leena Eats for spending her time working with the Healthy Schools Campaign and organizing this much needed petition! You freaking rock, Leena!

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Now, normally I’m not too into blog games and memes, but when I read Dolores’s post on Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity about a week ago I really thought it was a neat idea and I had to be a part of it. This particular “game” involves a concept that I fully stand behind. So what exactly is this game you ask? It’s a little ditty by the name of “Pay it Forward” – blog edition, and it goes a little something like this:

“I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, which is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

So there you have it! I was slightly delayed in getting this post up, but now it’s on. (I’m a great procrastinator, but in the end I get the job done.) If you are reading this, have a blog, and love the concept of giving “strangers” (or un-strangers) a little something you’ve made please hurry up and be one of the first three bloggers to comment! You don’t have to be a food blogger, any blogger will do. I look forward to sending out the goodies. I can’t promise it will happen before the end of 2007 (money is tight around xmas, you know) but it will happen. Ooo also, try to make sure that you leave a valid email address for me to contact you in order to get your physical address or p.o. box to send you your goodies. Happy giving! -Amanda

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On a blog far far away, an extremely delightful and intelligent blogger by the name of Ros tagged me for a meme. Unfortunately, along the journey to posting there were all kinds of crazy obstacles that kept me from reaching the destination, like friends visiting from across the country and finding a new job… Okay, enough cheese, lets get down to it!


Here are 5 things you (probably) don’t know about me:

1. I won’t drink prune juice…but not because I think it’s nasty. I grew up with a grandmother who thought we needed to have a BM everyday. So every time my parents would ditch us with her while they went on vacation, she would force me to drink prune juice till I went.. uh, to the “potty”. Agh! Damn me for being to young during those days to know how to lie!

2. One of my favorite sandwiches as a child was a peanut butter, sharp cheddar, and mayo sandwich. Hey! Don’t wrinkle you’re nose! Peanut butter and cheddar taste awesome together! Seriously guys, if you can get past eating a sandwich made with two layers of fat, I would suggest giving it a whirl….although it’s been quite sometime since i’ve eaten the sandwich with mayo (i don’t really eat too much mayo period), i’m sure it would still be quite tasty.

3. I have never had foie gras!… There! I said it! I’ve eaten plenty of liver, just never the delightful fatty liver that is so highly acclaimed. I really really really want to but for most of my life I haven’t lived in areas where it was easily accessible (or worked in restaurants that served it). Since we moved to San Diego I haven’t been working in kitchens and have been extremely poor (due to working in the non-profit mental health field until recently) but I SWEAR I’m gonna get some soon! *06/26/2007 update: i’ve been back working in a kitchen since february! woo hoo. i still do some desk work, and i still haven’t eaten any foie.*
Update 3/03/07: I’m still working as a personal chef and I HAVE now eaten foie gras. I like it a lot, but there is only so much fat I can take in one setting!

4. (This one I’ll steal from aria because it’s oh-so true!) I’ve been known to just toss out really nasty dishes that have things growing on it rather than deal with the funk. Fortunately, I don’t really let things get to this state anymore, but when I was in college… wooooaaah.

5. I’ve got a terribly dirty mouth that would shock 99.9% of all humans on earth. Fortunately for all humans, I know how to restrain myself, and tend to keep my fowlness for those near and dear to me, like T(ea)-cakes… aka pepita brittle.

While I’m not going to tag anyone else for this meme (mostly because you’ve all done it already… several times!), if anybody wants to do it, go for it!

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Ilva from Lucullian delights came up with a wonderful idea for a post, which happened to inspire us, so we’ve decided to show you guys where it all goes down… here are a few pictures of our kitchen area. Lovely isn’t it?

The itsy bitsy oven…circa 1950A: well here it is. this is where all the magic happens for WWE…. not particularly exciting, eh? but hey, we’re in our twenties and living two blocks from the pacific ocean!
T: yes it’s certainly wonderful when you consider the living conditions of so many people in the world. We’re doing aaaallright.
A: giggity giggity. definately true. as my dad would say, “folks have done a lot worse than this”. while this kitchen could be improved upon, what couldn’t?
T: it’s true. we always bitch about how small that oven is… how it’s the size of a large microwave..
A: which it is…
T: how it is too small to fit even your pizza stone in it… how… it’s ugly. How about the stove? 2 functional burners, 2 disfunctional burners.
A: yeah… not optimal, but we seem to make it work. we’ve even cooked holiday meals in this microwave sized oven and two burner stove…and just so you know, it’s the two small right burners that actually work. I would give anything for a large burner! or for a gas stove!… well… maybe not anything!
T: well it’s a good thing you caught yourself there, because I was thinking of all kinds of things that you could offer me in exchange for a new range.
A: heheh like what? i’m still open to suggestions!
T: let’s talk about it after the blog is over, k sweetie?
A: you’re one dirty dog, pepita. One other thing i would also change about our kitchen if given a chance would be the lack of dishwasher. i haven’t really lived with a dishwasher (other than, you, Tyler) since i moved out of my parents house when i was 18.
T: dishwashers are nice. People who have never had them tend to be naysayers, but once you’ve had one… it’s easy to become adjusted. Hmmm… what would you rate our kitchen?
A: always a rating! i dunno, i guess i would give our kitchen a… hmmm…. a 2.5/5. Oooooh it’s half way there..ooooh oooh living on a prayeeer….
T: I wish I knew the next line to sing along, but that’s all I know. God I love Bon Jovi. I give our kitchen a 2.1. It does the job, but it’s tiny and the range doesn’t work too well. And the damn oven is too small for your pizza stone which I got you for your damn birthday.
Da sink
A: two years in a row! it’s a shame we forgot to pack the one you gave me in louisiana, which is now sitting in your dad’s garage. the one thing i do like about our kitchen is the counter space. even though it’s not particularly deep, we’ve got lots of it. and generally when cooking, i use almost all of it! woo hoo… go kitchen with counter space.
T: our next kitchen will have: an island, a double oven, a gas stove, a mondo fridge, lots of natural light, a dishwasher, and a doggy at your feet.
A: our next kitchen?!?! i guess it’s good to think big! gotta keep those positive vibes flowing in, you know. i will be happy if our next kitchen has a dishwasher, a full sized oven, and all four burners on the stove working. all the rest is lagniappe.

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T:Ok so maybe that’s a bit over-dramatic. We are feeling better, though.

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