The Iowa City Masonic Foundation really came through for the hunger relief network in our community and the 19,000 people that we fed this year. The IC Masonic Foundation match of $12,500 in donations kept the wheels turning on Table to Table’s 2.5 million pound food rescue operation.
In the span of a year, our two oldest food rescue vehicles reached the end of their utility after rescuing several millions of pounds of food during their tenure. Our vehicles are essential to route-based food rescue, daily delivering free food to area hunger relief partners. So, when we lost each vehicle, we used operating funds to purchase a replacement. This match challenge has doubled the impact and enabled us to fully fund the 2019 Ford Transit we’ve been using since July 2019. This food rescue vehicle has transported over 209,000 pounds of food from donor partners to local hunger relief organizations. Route volunteers have driven it over 5,300 miles on approximately 300 routes so far.
With a team of more than 400 volunteers and our fleet of eight food rescue vehicles, we rescued 2.5 million pounds of food in Johnson County last year. Wholesome food from more than 80 donor organizations was delivered to over 50 recipient hunger relief agencies serving 19,000 Johnson County residents struggling with food insecurity. We certainly couldn’t accomplish this feat without our outstanding volunteers and the community’s gracious support. Because of your $25,000 investment we will continue this good work with a vehicle that will deliver food for another 15 years.
You can make more than just alphabet soup from these commonly wasted ingredients!
By: Emily Meister, Former T2T Food Rescue Program Manager
I’ve just been waiting for someone to ask me for my food rescue recommendations. Now that I’ve gotten started, it’s hard to stop! Here, I’ve compiled a list of many of the ingredients I rescue regularly and keep in my freezer.
Flash freezing is the secret to much of my food waste management. You’ll want to do this especially if it’s something you don’t want to use all at once or you don’t want it freezing in a big clump. Just lay the food out, unwrapped, on a cookie sheet. Put it into the freezer for a short time—twenty minutes or so—until it hardens. Once it’s frozen solid, you can store it in a bag or a container, and individual pieces will stay mostly separated. You can then just pull out whatever amount you need.
Apples I don’t know about you, but I find half-eaten apples around my house regularly – apples the kiddos took a few bites of and left. I even rescue these half-eaten fruits. I rinse them, cut off the bitey parts, and cube up for a snack or put in the freezer to add to smoothies. You can do this with slightly mushy yet uneaten apples, too. You don’t have to take a bite of it first, I guess.
Bananas: We all know frozen brown bananas make great banana bread, but how many people keep tossing brown banana after brown banana into the freezer for this purpose and never make that much banana bread?
Bananas are also great in smoothies! Just plop the whole frozen banana in the freezer when it’s past its prime (I have a section of my freezer dedicated to this). Blend it up with fresh or frozen yogurt, a little honey, and any other frozen fruit or veggies you like – either store-bought or fruits and veggies you’ve saved in the freezer.
Mushy bananas that are not great for snacking are great blended into a homemade banana oat pancake mix. Super simple, delicious, and nutritious.
T2T Tip: When you’re ready to peel your frozen bananas, put them in a bowl of really hot water for 30 seconds and the peel will slip right off.
Cauliflower that’s turning brown is great chopped up in curries. You can also mash or rice it, then freeze it for a ready-to-go side dish anytime.
Bell Peppers – A versatile veggie that freezes well! Chop and freeze for soups, stir-fry, curries, or tacos.
Broccoli stems make an excellent addition to a slaw. Throw them in your ramen, on top of a baked potato, even on pizza!
Canned almost anything: There are many times a recipe calls for only part of a can. You can store and freeze almost anything by putting the remainder into small containers.
Coconut Milk is a good example of a canned item I freeze often. You can use an ice cube tray and then store in a bag or container. Add a cube or two to your stir-fry right at the end for a richer flavor.
Cherry Tomatoes: Even cherry tomatoes can make a quick sauce if you have too many. Rinse, dump in a pan and mash slightly. Cook down for 15-20 minutes, season, and then blend, and freeze. I do this when my cherry tomatoes have gone wrinkly, but are not rotted. The active time cooking is under 5 minutes, so even if there’s only enough for a small amount, you can take out a few frozen containers when you’re ready to put it into a meal.
Green Chilis or Chipotle in Adobo: Mostly, I think my family is a bunch of weenies when it comes to spicy food. Personally, I’d just add the whole can to any dish, but if that’s too spicy for you or your family, just use what you need and put the rest in the freezer. They’ll last quite a while.
Pumpkin: When you add a small amount – ½ cup or so – of canned pumpkin to soups or stews, the pumpkin flavor won’t take over but adds a nice creamy texture and deep flavor. Whenever I open a can of pumpkin but don’t use it all, I pop the rest in the freezer and add to dishes as needed. Pumpkin pancakes are another great use for canned pumpkin! I always make lots of extra mini pancakes and freeze them. Pull a few out of the freezer, cook them in the oven for a couple minutes and add jam for a quick and tasty breakfast.
Rhubarb: when it’s ready to harvest, you get a lot! Good news is that it’s fairly easy to preserve. Cook down with a tablespoon of water, a pinch of salt, and sugar to taste. It makes a yummy sauce for ice cream or yogurt. You can also mix with other fruits like the soggy strawberries below.
Soggy Strawberries can make some recipes better. Cut them roughly and cook them down into a quick sauce topping. It only takes a couple of minutes on the stove. The overripe fruit is perfect because it will be very sweet and the sauce won’t require any added sugar.
Rinse, flash freeze, add to your stock of smoothie ingredients in your freezer.
Stir strawberries, soggy or not, into plain yogurt. (This way you can buy a large tub of plain yogurt and flavor it any way you like. Crushing up a bit of the lemon biscotti from Paglias would make a tasty topping too!)
Also, a good topping for ice cream or thicken it up a bit by cooking longer and you have a simple homemade jam.
Veg ready for a saucy sauce.
Tomatoes: you can freeze the whole tomato, no prep, if you’re really in a hurry. Really, just place the whole thing in there and when you’re ready to use it, thaw slightly and the skin will come off easily. Then it’s ready for soups or marinara.
Tomato Paste – I like to freeze this flat in a bag or on a cookie sheet. Then just break off however much you need.
Veg Heavy Tomato/Pasta Sauce – I like to make a big batch of pasta sauce with LOTS of veggies to freeze. It’s a good way to utilize lots of tomatoes and other veg in your fridge. Chop up onions, red, yellow, or orange bell peppers (if I use green, I use only a small amount because the flavor can take over), celery, carrots, zucchini, and even a few stray mushrooms. Simmer and cook down until all veggies are tender then blend until smooth in a food processor or blender. For seasonings, I add basil, oregano, parsley, garlic, and salt and pepper. A really small pinch of cinnamon adds a warm flavor to the sauce. Depending on how sweet and flavorful the tomatoes that you use are, you can also add a little sugar or honey as needed.
Wrinkly Grapes: When the grapes get sad and wrinkly, they get neglected in the fridge. Rinse and place in a bag or container in the freezer. They make a great cold, refreshing snack and it doesn’t matter if they were wrinkly or soft once they’re frozen. Also, a good smoothie ingredient!
Yogurt: You should freeze some yogurt, rescued or not! Put into individual containers in the freezer to use later in smoothies. If it’s a large container, spread on a cookie sheet, freeze, then break up and store the chunks in a plastic bag.
Zucchini are the end of summer excess no one knows what to do with. You can only eat so much zucchini bread. I don’t find that zucchini freezes well whole, but if you chop and even partially cook then freeze, you can blend into vegetable soup or cube for a creamy addition to any fruit smoothie!
Now that you’ve been rescuing those leftover ingredients, you’re going to need to eat them at some point or all that effort is wasted!
Smoothies, Soups, Stir-fries, Slaws, Curries, Tacos, ‘Pick your own toppings’ ramen, baked potato, and pizza are all great types of food to add whatever is in your fridge or freezer!
Smoothies are kid-approved
I can’t think of many ingredients I couldn’t add to at least one of those things! We make something from this list at least a few times a week. 1) because they’re all delicious and 2) because they help us use up everything in our fridge and freezer. I’ve made many-a-meal by tossing together small bits of random ingredients in my fridge or freezer.
Curries
Carrots, peppers, sweet potatoes, potatoes (one of the most wasted veggies), cauliflower that’s starting to brown, leftover proteins, leftover chickpeas, or frozen beans. One piece of chicken may not be enough for a meal on its own. A curry is a great way to stretch leftover protein.
Baked Potatoes
A baked potato is merely a vector for toppings! Baked potatoes are a good way to use small amounts of lots of different ingredients. Add any of these things and more as toppings for a pretty filling meal: broccoli, cauliflower, shredded chicken, taco meat, shredded cheese.
Emily and her sister when they were kids – healthy and strong from “magic soup”
‘Magic Soup’
When I was a kid, my sister and I used to swear that Lipton Noodle soup in a box was the instant cure when we were sick. We called it magic soup. I still believe in its power, but I now have a homemade version as well that is super quick to throw together if you have some of the ingredients in the freezer.
Sauté a fresh or frozen mirepoix (carrots, celery, onion), fresh/frozen chopped bell peppers or sliced mushrooms. Add your frozen stock and let it boil (I just dump the whole chunk of frozen stock in the saucepan and leave the lid on – it will thaw in a few minutes). Once it’s boiling, add a handful of pretty much any noodle (I like to use broken bits of spaghetti, but will use whatever I have), and some salt and pepper. Ten minutes later you have a brothy, homemade noodle soup full of flavor and nutrients. I make this for my kids whenever they are homesick. And now my 9 & 10 year old boys know how to make it, too, so they can make magic soup for me and my husband if we’re sick!
Mirepoix
“A rescued mirepoix ready for the freezer!”
While not a meal on its own, a frozen mirepoix from rescued onion, carrot, and celery that you’ve made ahead is a great start to many meals. Pretty much any soup, stir-fry, or slow-cooked meal that I make starts with a rescued frozen mirepoix. On top of the traditional ingredients, when I have extra veggies that won’t be used up before they turn, I’ll chop ’em up and throw’ em in the freezer. You can do each veggie separately to use as needed, or just a big bag of all 3 mixed together. This combo adds a lot of flavor to dishes, and having them prepped in advance saves time when you want a homemade meal fast!
‘Pick your own toppings’ ramen
You can keep a “ramen bag of goodies” in your freezer. This quick and easy lunch is so much better when you add some fresh/frozen veggies. Celery, cabbage, julienne carrots, bell pepper, radish — if you have it, you should try it!
Pizza
I like to think outside the pizza box. Not every pizza has to be a standard tomato sauce and cheese. I like to roast any leftover veggies and put them over a flatbread crust with a little garlic and olive oil. Add a few slices of fresh mozzarella and that’s-a-pizza! Pizza is a great way to use up leftover specialty cheeses. Stronger flavored cheese on pizza allows you to add just a little bit and still get a lot of flavor.
Smoothies
We mix up a smoothie of some sort nearly every day in my house. I guarantee you probably have a narrow view of what a smoothie can be. You can throw literally any fruit, compressed and wilted spinach, zucchini, kale, and more. Freeze all of it ahead of time and pull it out when you need it. You can also package up the dregs of yogurt at the bottom of the container and freeze it for use in a future smoothie.
A healthy stir fry
Stir-fries
Stir fry is a no-brainer for all kinds of veggies past their prime. Not only can you cook up any and all veggies, but you can also add a different sauce each time. The possibilities are endless!
Slaw
‘Slaw’ doesn’t have to be just your basic green cabbage and carrot coleslaw. You can use lots of veggie or fruit ‘scraps’ to make various slaws. Don’t throw away those broccoli stems! Just cut the really woody part off the bottom, peel the tough parts, and use a mandoline to julienne the stem. You can also cut them into matchsticks by hand, but it will take some time. Combine with onion, carrot, cabbage, peppers, or all of the above! Add a sweet creamy sauce, a tangy vinegary sauce (or some combo of the two) depending on your tastes. You’ll have an easy side for burgers, grilled chicken, and a great topping for your food rescue tacos.
Now about those TACOS!
At least once a week we eat something taco-y. Because they’re amazing. And also because you can turn anything into a taco. Have a piece of protein left from dinner? Heat it up, fry a corn tortilla, and make a quick slaw.
Route volunteer Claire drops food of at the Salvation Army.
Table to Table has kept 22 million pounds of food from going to waste since April 1996. As Iowa’s original food rescue organization, our unique food rescue model maximizes the amount of food we can rescue and gets it to people who can use it quickly. Route-based rescue allows us to ensure maximum amounts of food are used by our partners before it goes to waste. In fact, our partners report that most of the perishable food we collect each day is distributed to a family who can use it within six hours of our delivery. But what do we mean when we say “route-based rescue”?
Well, it looks like this!
Just a normal Thursday route diagram.
It’s nearly as complicated to implement as it looks. The good news is, our program staff are experts and our partners are committed and that’s what it takes to make this work.
A Single Route
To put it simply, this is what a single route looks like on any given day. We do this 8-10 times per day!
Each day, volunteers hop in a Table to Table van and drive to a few of our food donor partners. They load the van with produce, dairy products, meat, bread, pizzas, pre-made chicken wraps — you name it! They then drive to a few of our recipient partners, who select what foods they’ll need that day from the T2T van.
The benefits of route-based rescue:
T2T Route Volunteer Ben picks up food donations at one of our food donor partner sites.
More food from donors. Volunteers follow a specific route at the same time each day to ensure that our donor partners know when they’re coming and have food donations ready for them. They can easily determine whether the food they have will still be good by the time Table to Table will arrive.
Recipients can plan for food deliveries. Our recipient partners know when to expect their food deliveries for that day and have some consistency in what we’ll deliver. When the Coralville Pantry knows we’ll deliver 50 gallons of milk from the Kalona Creamery on Thursday afternoon, they know they won’t have to buy any to meet the need of their pantry members.
Maximum matching of donations to recipient partners. T2T volunteers can become experts at their route. They serve as daily ambassadors to collect feedback about what donors will give and what recipients can take. Our program staff uses this information to make adjustments.
T2T volunteers drop food off at IC Compassion, one of our food recipient partner organizations.
Rapid delivery of short-dated foods.We don’t bring food back to T2T for storage. Volunteers are transporting food directly from the donor to the recipient using a temperature-controlled van in a matter of hours. The produce that’s picked up this morning will be in a family’s refrigerator by this afternoon. Each month on average we collect 100,000 pounds of fresh produce, meat, and dairy products.
Valuable food free to our partners! Many recipient agencies have no other source for these fresh foods, and certainly not another free source. Good food. Free food. It’s a win-win.
Thanks to our route-based model, we are able to rescue more than 2 million pounds of food annually in Johnson County, and our partners make sure it gets to those who need it. Without our route-based rescue, much more of this food would go to waste, never making it to the community and to family tables.
Just because the best by date is coming up doesn’t mean you need to toss that milk that’s two days past or bin the chunk of cheese that’s been on the bottom shelf for a couple of weeks. These items and many others can still be used up to a week or more past the sell-by/best-by/use-by date. What many people don’t know is that the best by or use by date isn’t the definitive food safety date for a product (except for baby formula). Most dairy is good up to seven days past the printed date on the carton, eggs can last up to a month in your refrigerator, and most cheeses are good two weeks or more beyond the best by. In addition to refrigerated goods, many canned and dry storage foods can last weeks, if not up to a year beyond their printed date. And if you can’t eat it now, freeze it!
5 Tips for Food Rescue At Home
Forty percent of all food produced in the US doesn’t ever get eaten. Nearly half of that food waste happens at the consumer level.[1] That’s right, almost half of all food waste happens at home, but you can change that statistic! With these five easy tips, you can cut down your food waste by up to 200lbs and save money while saving your food:
Plan your meals ahead of time: Before leaving for the store, make a rough plan of what you want to cook before your next grocery run and buy only what you need to make those meals.
Make a grocery list and stick to it: While it is tempting to buy bulk or jump on a sale for obscure produce, make sure it is something that you can incorporate into your usual meal plan.
Store your food properly: Oftentimes, we find ourselves peering into the depths of a refrigerator at a tupperware long-forgotten on the bottom shelf and wondering, “what was that?” By checking your fridge daily and making sure produce isn’t kept in the coldest spots and leftovers are properly sealed, you can stop playing “what was that,” and fully enjoy the meals you create.
What’s for lunch? Leftovers!
Plan to over-prepare or avoid it altogether:The Cornell Food and Brand lab found that since 2006, serving sizes in the classic cookbook The Joy of Cooking has increased by 36 percent.[2] This increased portion size also contributes to an increase in wasted leftovers. Preparing more food at once certainly has its place. It can be good for the budget AND good for reducing food waste to make more at once. But you have to plan to store it and eat it. Freeze your leftovers to give you a little more time to eat them.
Don’t neglect leftovers: Just like Mom and Dad told you growing up, clean your plate. Instead of ordering in, make sure your fridge isn’t cluttered with the fajitas you made on Tuesday, or the soup you had last Friday.
Read More About Food Safety and Food Waste
Looking for more detailed information on food safety and date guidelines? See these foodsafety.gov safe cold food storage guidelines.
Want to know more about the problem of food waste and how it happens across the entire food system? Check out this great summary by Foodprint.org.
Recipes to the Rescue is a reimagining of our traditional annual dinner, an opportunity to come together and support Table to Table while staying at home. Our restaurant partners, who have graciously donated food for our annual dinner year after year, are instead offering their favorite recipes for you to try at home. Don’t miss out on this unique compilation of delicious recipes. You can order here.
While their dining rooms may be closed, several of our restaurant sponsors are still cooking! If you’ve been jonesing for a hot pizza pie from Pagliai’s or maybe your favorite BBQ sandwich from Mosley’s, these and several other restaurant partners are open and would be happy to whip something up for you. Check out their info below and visit their websites for current hours. Order take out now and then join us in a couple of weeks to try your hand at recipes from home.
Big Grove Brewery
We’re thankful that Big Grove has multiple locations, in Solon and Iowa City, because everybody should be able to savor their brews, tasty meals and cookies right now. Usher in the warm weather with a cool Summer Jam. Ahh…
Soups, sandwiches, salads just taste better when you let NoDo make it for you. If you ask our program manager Emily, she would eat a bowl full of the haba-aoli – so you should definitely try that!
We’ve collected 70,000 pounds of food so far in April.
Jill, a staff member from Aero Rental and Party Shoppe, joins us multiple times a week to sanitize and do last minute food rescue.
We want to express our gratitude for the incredible community response during this time of need. After restarting our operation on March 26, through the week of April 3 we successfully rescued more than 36,000 pounds of food, and during the week of April 6 we rescued 34,000 pounds. This is 80% of what we normally rescue in a week, a tremendous accomplishment given that we rescued this food in fewer than half the number of regular food rescue routes. This has been made possible thanks to numerous new volunteer applications and the support of local organizations and businesses.
We’ve onboarded many new community volunteers. City, County, and local business volunteers have helped see us through the most challenging weeks of food rescue in recent memory.
The City of Iowa City Housing Inspection Department dedicated two staff to routes each weekday.
Johnson County SEATS drivers are on call to fill in on routes if we are unable at the last minute to fill a shift.
Aero Rental and Party Shoppe is keeping four of their staff employed by lending them to us as food rescue and facility volunteers.
Bur Oak Land Trust has loaned two AmeriCorps members each day for food rescue routes until at least the end of April.
Bur Oak AmeriCorps members get ready for one of their first routes.
We want to thank all of you for adapting with us as we respond to the ever-changing world crisis right here in our community. Your outreach and support through this time are ensuring Table to Table runs full steam ahead and keeps our neighbors fed.
In addition to our regular food rescue operation, Table to Table has joined a partnership to assist with Food with Love, a community initiative to provide meals for area hunger relief organizations while supporting local restaurants and their staff. Food with Love ensures relief organizations such as Shelter House, The Salvation Army, and Domestic Violence Intervention Program can continue providing hot meals.
The program currently serves the community Tuesday through Friday. Table to Table provides lunch deliveries and CommonTable covers dinner deliveries. Restaurant partners DeLuxe Cakes & Pastries, Big Grove Brewery, Pullman Bar & Diner, and St. Burch Tavern have been quick to respond to feedback for ease of no-contact pickups and labeling meals so recipient locations can efficiently receive the food they need and drivers do not need to enter any of the sites.
Table to Table rescues and delivers half the food distributed to hungry people in Johnson County.
We are requesting financial donations and seeking temporary volunteers not in high-risk groups for Covid-19 to continue our local food rescue operations. As of Monday, March 23, we have temporarily paused operations for the first time in 24 years to restructure and respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. We must adjust to account for a temporary critical reduction in volunteers that transport the food to agencies throughout Johnson County that feed the hungry. We plan to re-initiate food rescue operations on Thursday, March 26, 2020.
As a volunteer-based operation, we are experiencing a critical shortage of volunteers, which contribute the hours that would otherwise have to be done by nine full-time staff. This current crisis has hit our volunteer force hard. On Friday, March 20, volunteers at high risk for hospitalization or death as a result of Covid-19 infection were asked to temporarily suspend their volunteer service. Due to the vast majority of our volunteers being older individuals and college students, 80% of our volunteers are no longer available to transport food to the hungry in Johnson County.
Our volunteers collect and redistribute 40,000 pounds of food each week, and this food is needed now more than ever. The food insecurity landscape in Johnson County is changing rapidly, with neighbors needing access to basic necessities as they experience unpaid time off or closures of other social services. As our partner organizations’ resources become scarce and the need continues to grow, they will need these 40,000 pounds of food per week more than ever.
We need community support to bring operations back up to full capacity. Financial donations are critical at this time, as we will likely need to hire a temporary staff driver to make up for the significant volunteer force deficit. To donate, please visit www.table2table.org/donateonline.
Community members who do not fall into high-risk groups for Covid-19, have not traveled recently or come into contact with individuals infected with the virus, and who are feeling well and Covid-19 symptom-free are encouraged to lend a hand with food rescue route volunteering. To volunteer, contact us at volunteer@table2table.org or call (319) 337-3400.
For the past several summers, Table to Table has hosted volunteers from the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a program of the Young African Leaders Initiative providing outstanding young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa opportunities for professional development at US universities. Jean Pierre Sibomana was one such Fellow who volunteered with Table to Table during his visit to the University of Iowa. He was so inspired by what he learned about food rescue and distribution, he decided to bring the idea to his own community.
At home in Rwanda, Jean Pierre serves at an NGO called Self-Advocacy Initiatives for People with Disabilities (S.A.I.D.), which he founded in 2014. The organization serves and supports vulnerable children with disabilities from low-income families. “These families are stigmatized and isolated because of having children born with disabilities, and our goal is to help to reduce these cultural practices and empower these families, financially and economically, to advocate for themselves,” Jean Pierre says. “We are aware that when a family is empowered, they can…give educational rights to their children with disabilities.”
Families that S.A.I.D. serves are lacking basic health support, proper food, and treatment for their health conditions. Jean Pierre has taken what he learned at Table to Table and developed a program called Smile Plate Project, which will help “families with children who have severe disabilities and other groups of people that are lacking basic needs, including food and house materials that are essential,” he says. The Smile Plate Project will work closely with local grocery stores and other partners, and hopes to start by providing food and other household items, especially relating to children’s needs. Smile Plate will be focusing on remote areas of a low resources community, and volunteers from S.A.I.D. will collect and distribute food to these people “in the collaboration of caring people who really understand the issue,” Jean Pierre says.
Jean Pierre Sibomana at the University of Iowa
The Smile Plate Project will “help to show love to those who have been isolated and lost hope of the future resulting from their disabilities,” he adds. “[It will] help to empower and share the culture of sharing.”
Spending time in Iowa during his time in the Mandela Washington Fellowship program, Jean Pierre says, empowered him “to think deeply and expand my community involvement in supporting vulnerable groups of people born with mental disabilities and other groups of people that are left behind in the community.” He was fascinated with the programs he witnessed in Iowa that target vulnerable populations in the community, including Table to Table.
“We will always work as volunteers until our community mindset changes,” Jean Pierre says, “[until] all children hidden in houses are known and given their rights and free education, food, clothing, and medication…[until these families] will no longer be ashamed and be empowered economically and financially.”
The Iowa City Masonic Foundation really came through for the hunger relief network in our community and the 19,000 people that we fed this year. The IC Masonic Foundation match of $12,500 in donations kept the wheels turning on Table to Table’s 2.5 million pound food rescue operation. 
Food rescue starts at home! Before you start you have to understand 
