Miracle Of Rice And Beans Group Puts On Weekly Meal With Food That Otherwise Would Go To Waste

The dinner guests were as seasoned as the stir-fry: a teenage runaway gushing over raspberries; an angry punk with a padlock around her neck; a tall, reserved man with pockmarked arms and tattered clothing.

About 40 in all, they slowly filled the basement of Spokane’s Westminster Congregational United Church of Christ last Saturday afternoon.

They come every week for a free vegan meal - no meat, no fish, no dairy products. Not even bread baked with eggs.

Dinner is served by the Spokane chapter of Food Not Bombs, a grass-roots organization that fights poverty by serving vegetarian food to the hungry.

“It’s food and it’s free,” said 16-year-old Darby Decker as he ate a mix of beans, rice and stir-fry from a yellow plastic bowl. “I don’t have a job and I don’t have money.”

Food Not Bombs began with the efforts of a Boston-area activist in 1980. Now an international organization with thousands of members, the group shares many ideals with the politically liberal Green Party such as nonviolence and consensus decision-making.

The Spokane chapter is relatively quiet compared to its sister groups in other cities, where Food Not Bombs members have been arrested for handing out free food in public places.

Formed in 1995 by three teens who were “sick of waste,” the local group focuses more on feeding the hungry instead of politics.

“There’s so much food being thrown out that’s perfectly good,” said Andrew Krehbiel, one of the local founding members.

For the past year, the 20-year-old Spokane Falls Community College student has spent his Saturday afternoons driving around town to pick up food that would otherwise be thrown away.

Last Saturday, he and other Food Not Bombs members returned to the Westminster kitchen with at least 300 pounds of food: six large garbage sacks of organic lettuce, radishes and other produce; dozens of bagels; several gallons of refried beans.

They were mostly unsalable items or leftovers from Huckleberry’s, Big Mamu Burrito and Ultimate Bagel in Spokane.

It was anarchy in the church kitchen as young people with tattoos and dyed hair chopped produce and mixed them in restaurant-size pots and pans.

“Raspberries! We have raspberries!” squealed Charlotte Merrill, a talkative 16-year-old with a pierced tongue, nose ring and several hemp necklaces around her neck.

They scrutinized the mountains of food in front of them - from the fresh produce to the bagged salad greens with pine nuts. They usually make soup, they said, but they’re always experimenting.

Last Saturday, they settled on a menu of stir-fry seasoned with yellow curry. For starters, they served a mayonnaise-free coleslaw made of radish. For dessert, they brought out whipped raspberries and bagels. And of course, there’s were the usual refried beans.

“This is cool for us punk kids,” one dinner guest said. “It’s cool that they feed people who can’t afford groceries.”

Nearly all the Food Not Bombs members in Spokane are under 21. While most are in high school or attend community college, a few are dropouts working part-time jobs.

Except for the handful of elderly people and several mothers with children, those who come to dinner are a lot like the servers - they’re young with the usual tattoos and piercings. A few ran away from home and are living with friends. Some have jobs but don’t have enough money to buy groceries. Others receive food stamps. The majority have been homeless at some point in their lives.

While the Food Not Bombs members generally come from middle-class backgrounds and have a higher education level than many of the people they serve, the differences disappear at the dinner table. They all sit together and talk about Spokane, music, starting their own bands. They discuss panhandling, where to sleep at night, fights they’ve had with friends or parents.

“I think it’s wonderful they’re getting involved in the community at such a young age,” said Billy Heim of Huckleberry’s, a Spokane grocery store that donates blemished produce and other unsalable goods to Food Not Bombs. “The fact that they’re getting organic food is a bonus.”

Vegetarianism is nothing new to most of the Food Not Bombs members.

Krehbiel went cold turkey three years ago. After working as a dishwasher for a Boy Scout camp, he was disgusted with the meat and grease that stuck to the plates he washed.

“It made me sick,” said the SFCC student, whose thick-rimmed glasses and mutton-chop sideburns make him look twice his age. “It made me switch to a much better diet.”

Along with the health aspects of vegetarianism, Krehbiel became more aware of mass food production, he said. It made him decide to switch to organic foods.

Anna Davis, who joined Food Not Bombs a month ago, never liked the taste of meat, she said. The Mead Alternative School student has been a vegan for nearly eight years.

In her ripped blue jeans and tennis shoes kept intact with duct tape, the 18-year-old chopped heads of lettuce last Saturday while munching on organic potato chips.

“My parents are carnivores,” Davis said. “I can’t stand meat. I don’t like the texture. I don’t like fat.”

Although the food usually appears as a strange, brownish mush, even non-vegetarians find the meals tasty, said Betty McCormick, Westminster’s administrative assistant who gave the group permission to use the church basement.

In addition to hot meals, the weekly gathering also serves as a food bank. After cleanup, dinner guests wander over to boxes of whole grain cereal, organic pretzels and vegan cookies. They disappear quickly, stuffed into plastic bags or backpacks, to be eaten during the week.

“(The Food Not Bombs members) want to improve the world and use food that’s going to be thrown away,” McCormick said. “They don’t just do a service, they also have a real rapport with the people who come.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. TO DONATE To donate vegan food to Food Not Bombs, call Andrew Krehbiel at 467-9246.

2. SATURDAY MEALS Food Not Bombs serves free vegetarian meals every Saturday at Westminster Congregational United Church of Christ, Fourth and Washington in downtown Spokane. Dinner is served from 5 to 6 p.m.