BLUECHIP: Human Issue: Producing healthier food stuff count

Nicole Craig is the chef and manager of nutrition education at Positive Community Kitchen.

Weekly on Thursday, Nicole Craig crafts a menu that features two sorts of soup, a salad, two entrees — 1 vegetarian, one particular not — and a dessert. She spends the weekend procuring for components, viewing nearby growers, this kind of as Transition Gardens in Springfield or Groundwork Organics in Eugene, who deliver her with the seasonal, natural deliver integral to Positive Community Kitchen’s mission to deliver wholesome, nourishing foods to its clients. She also shops in the pantry of partner company Food items for Lane County. Each individual Monday and Tuesday, Craig and her several volunteers cook dinner up a storm in the kitchen area. By Tuesday evening, the “Delivery Angels” arrive to decide on up the packaged foods and provide them.

An thought to get powering. The seeds of Favourable Group Kitchen (PCK) took root in 2011 when a team of parents at South Eugene Substantial Faculty required to make a yard as a spot of therapeutic and coming jointly for the learners after two fellow learners died in Yachats. Inevitably, organizers looked to the California-centered corporation, Ceres Local community Task, as inspiration for PCK’s current charge. “That design is supplying totally free, natural, nutrient-dense foods to patients preventing a lifestyle-threatening disease. And working with youngsters to assistance prepare those meals as a position of neighborhood collecting and supporting one particular an additional,” Craig says. “We started off serving about 10 family members, and now we are serving 100 people today.”