Field Trip 1 "The Family Place"

I took my first field trip with a classmate, Tess, and another friend of mine, to a non-profit I've been volunteering periodically at throughout college.

 The family place is located in down town St. Paul, and focuses on providing services and meals to homeless families. It brands itself as “a day center for families living without permanent housing”. Some of the great things about the Family Place is that it really tries to empower people to change their situations and get to a better place. They offer services like resume, interview, and job search help, washing machines and showers, lockers for families to keep belongings, and one which I find especially unique: a daycare area for parents to have a safe educational space to watch kids. During the week, the organization provides meals for its families through donations of money and food. They do employ a cook who does the cooking during the week. On the weekends, the family place relies on teams of volunteers to provide the food (and cook it). Another great thing about the family place is they serve their meals family style, making it much more similar to a restaurant environment, and not making their guests feel as if they were in a line or uncared for.

 

When I began volunteering here the summer after my sophomore year, me providing a meal meant compromising with my minimal skills and doing something like spaghetti with pre-made sauce, hotdogs and chili. Things that weren’t particularly healthy, really. As I began to cook more in college, I worked on actually cooking with teams to prepare meals that were healthier (and because it was more fun that way). For this most recent fieldtrip, my goal was to prepare a meal that was healthy and fit the USDA myplate guidelines.

I ended up making tangy sautéed chicken cooked in lemon juice and white balsamic vinegar, steamed broccoli, brown rice, and baked apples for the meal. Because of the hustle of cooking for 30ish people in a very short period of time, I forgot to take pictures of the food or the meal time, but I did finally remember once I was able to breathe during cleanup. The apples were baked with cinnamon and a little bit of maple syrup, and one thing that I found interesting was the most of the kids gravitated toward eating whole apples set out for grabbing by the Family Place as opposed to my delicious baked apples. Thinking about that, it shows that often time’s people are much more likely to pick what they are comfortable or familiar with

The pictures help to give an idea of what the family place is like. The space they use is actually rented out from a church, and the cooking and eating area is in the basement. The kitchen is industrial by nature and certified by the state agency which does things like that.

After having discussions in class around the types of things people donate and what shelters and kitchens often time have as their ingredients, I thought it would be relevant to check out their pantry. Needless to say, there were quite a few canned, powdered, and pre-made food items stocked.