Good News for women, children and maybe food deserts

Somewhere in my travels last week, I heard on NPR's Marketplace about how the changes in WIC allowed foods were affecting small retailers. It's now possible to buy many more things with WIC coupons, including fresh fruits and vegetables - not just canned and juiced - and soy products. The theory is that this may cause small retailers in some neighborhoods, where access to food shopping is limited and where poor young women shop, to stock more of these things. Imagine. Tofu at the 7-11.

But looking through the new food lists and the related FAQs, here's what I think:
Any young woman who can care for children and navigate the details of these guidelines (like why you can't buy canned black eyed peas with your veg coupons, but you can buy frozen - or why only GMO soybean derived soy milks are on the list, but you can get McCann's steel cut irish oats - or why you can pay extra if your fresh fruit goes over the dollar value, but if your pound of bulk oats or lentils turns out to weigh 18 oz. the clerk has to dump out the extra - and on and on and on) should be given a college degree.

A guide for policy makers

is the subtitle of the item I've just added to the sites list on the right.

It's a report from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, short and attractive, but full of the kind of ideas we need to put in the hands of our elected officials, because it encourages systemic thinking about food access.

I'm struck by the note about providing food processing/kitchen space in economically distressed areas. I know there are a million health code issues, but it does seem there ought to be something we could do communally to enable folks to process gleaned and community garden produce for their home use.

I am now mulling over the possibility of having a tomato canning night in the church kitchen adjacent to our community garden. Why not share equipment and make a party out of it? Some equipment is costly, and home kitchens in affordable housing get smaller and smaller - assuming, I guess, that folks only use the microwave and coffee maker. And canning alone is no fun. I can invoke my parents and grandparents - communion of saints canning parties? - but it would be much better to have useful company. And it would also be a way of handing on skills - which are in short supply among younger folks.

Is this something other congregations could consider? Newer church buildings often have pretty lame kitchens (microwaves and coffee makers again), but older ones often have sizable ones that are underused. My thoughts are running away with me: what about the big kitchen at St. John's, Lakeport and all those Lake County pears?