Fresh for a cause

Beneath the nodding sunflowers in the late summer heat, a group of volunteers uses its lunch break to pick vegetables for dinner. Someone else’s dinner.

By the time the hour is over, the dedicated group of employees has harvested the week’s bounty from the Avista Employees’ Community Garden and delivered it to the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant: Donations that will be stirred into the dinners or lunch served there, sent home in bags so women can prepare their own meals and even pureed and frozen in small batches so it can be served to the babies who come for food their families can’t afford.

As the volunteers pick, a buffet of garden-fresh vegetables spreads out on a picnic table near the garden’s entrance. There are bags of green beans and bunches of freshly dug carrots and beets. Gardeners from the nearby Riverview Retirement Community, who share the garden space with the Avista volunteers, add their offerings to the pile: shiny green chili peppers and plump tomatoes. There are fresh-cut cosmos and sunflowers on the table, as well.

Avista volunteer Jean Bohr has brought a cooler full of extra vegetables from her own garden, including cucumbers, patty pan squash and basil, which heightens the heady harvest fragrance.

“When you go deliver the food, it’s just an amazing response. That’s worth it right there,” says Bohr, who works in information technology for Avista and volunteers in the company’s community garden. Dubbed the Green Thumbs, the employees reclaimed the site on the Avista campus after some homes were moved. They’ve been donating the product to the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant for the past two summers.

The weekly delivery from the Avista garden is essential to the mission of the “restaurant,” says director Marlene Alford. “We know that the most nutritious food is also the most expensive food to buy.” The meals served to women and their children on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, along with the lunch and take-out meals given away on Friday, focus on fresh. Two vegetables are on the menu of every meal, Alford said.

The Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant serves 3,000 meals each month from the basement of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 1620 N. Monroe St., in the heart of one of Spokane’s poorest neighborhoods. At nearby Holmes Elementary, 95 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

Goods from the Avista garden are one of the few things the restaurant has come to expect each week. Funding for the program is pieced together from small grants, donations from local businesses, church and service groups and community members. It is not affiliated with a faith group, nor does it receive state or federal funding. It’s hoping to find more local partners like the Avista gardeners because, honestly, it’s difficult to keep up with the demand, Alford says.

Most of the increase has come because of the “Friday Take-out Program” started last year. On Friday afternoons, women and their children can eat lunch, and they choose take-out meals they can heat and eat at home over the weekend. The restaurant also gives away fresh produce and dairy. During one recent Friday, 83 families came in for meals and groceries in the first hour. By the time the day was over 103 families had come for help – a record day for the 15-year-old program. Since 2000, demand for meals and groceries at the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant has increased 538 percent. Think of it this way: In 2000, it was serving 350 meals each month. Now, it serves 3,000. It’s adding 40 to 42 new families to the rolls each month.

“We didn’t realize it would grow this fast,” says Alford. “So many of our families simply can’t afford to buy groceries.” Only a small percentage of clients are homeless, she adds. “The majority are working poor.”

For many of the women – the restaurant serves only women and their children – the produce is a luxury. And, for most, it’s the only balanced meals they eat at all. During dinner, volunteer waitresses bring meals out to the women, who eat at round tables. The dining hall has recently been painted with murals of flowers, fountains and happy families, a donation of the Inland Northwest Decorative Artisans.

“When all of your money goes toward rent and utilities.… It just makes a huge difference to me to have fresh fruits and vegetables instead of convenience and high-calorie foods,” says Nancy Sonduck. She recently lost 150 pounds, but has had trouble keeping it off because she can’t afford to buy many fresh foods on her income from Social Security.

“It just warms your heart that the people here are so kind. They don’t make you feel like you are less than human because you had to have that little extra help,” says Sonduck. During better times, she’s donated food to the program that now supports her.

“This is the best restaurant in town,” Sonduck adds. “They’re right up there with Clinkerdagger.”

With the help of Sacred Heart registered dietitian Vivienne Dutzar, the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant has been making changes to the food it serves, Alford says. Casseroles, once the mainstay of the program, are rarely on the menu. Ditto for cream soups. “We find that kids eat their dinner better when it’s just a slice of ham or a slice of meat and then side dishes of vegetables, rather than it being all mixed together.”

Serving more fresh foods also means they can accommodate people who have health problems such as diabetes and high-blood pressure. Interns from the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing recently began working at the restaurant to help answer the diners’ health questions about their shopping and eating habits and teach them how to incorporate more healthy foods at home. Volunteers also offer advice to women and their families about how to use fruits and vegetables they’re unfamiliar with at home.

In addition to the Avista garden, the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant receives food and fresh produce from local food brokers, the Second Harvest food bank and even neighbors and volunteers. It relies on about 80 regular volunteers who serve as waitresses, prep cooks and greeters and in other roles. There are only two paid staff members: Alford and kitchen manager/chef Marcia Geer.

Because they never know what to expect, they’ve had to learn to be innovative. Geer has thrown nasturtiums into the salad. Sometimes, she sneaks basil into the greens. Mint dresses up the iced tea. A pastry chef, Geer’s also made beautiful desserts with fresh raspberries donated this summer.

Nicki Lockwood, a volunteer prep cook, is leading the effort to cook and puree fruits and vegetables for homemade baby food. A licensed dietitian and young mother herself, she started with carrots and greens and plans to make combinations using green beans, squash, spinach, apples, and other fruits.

“Even if we have a just small amount, it can be cooked and pureed and labeled and frozen,” Alford says. They’ll begin offering it on the menu in September. Alford says they also purchased a few food mills so their families can make baby foods at home, or even grind the family’s spaghetti dinner for the baby. “Hopefully, it teaches the young moms that they don’t have to go out and buy a jar of baby food.”

In the end, it’s about more than just feeding a good, healthy meal to those who need it. Alford says she hopes it means the families they serve can afford child care or medication or help them pay for school supplies and clothing.

For Bohr and the other Avista garden volunteers, it can be hard work to keep up with Mother Nature. Soon, there will be squash and plums to harvest, and perhaps a few pears and apples from the fruit trees in the garden they’ve been working to rehabilitate. They recently got some help with the work from Gonzaga students, and Bohr says her sons have been to the garden to help some weekends. “There’s always work to do.”

But, she says, knowing where the food is bound makes it all worthwhile.