Gold Award Spotlight: Food Pantry Cookbook
Girl Scout Ambassador Ivy earned the Gold Award by completing a service project she titled, “Food Pantry Cookbook.” Ivy partnered with Eastern Shore Chapel Food Pantry director, Kay O’Reilly, to understand the needs of community members who utilize the pantry’s services and developed a cookbook that guides readers through recipes that use common food pantry ingredients.
Ivy said, “Food pantries help solve the issue of people getting more groceries but, what’s next? Families need help making this food last through the whole week and finding recipes that make a lot of food with the limited number of items they have can be hard.”
She volunteered at Eastern Shore Chapel Food Pantry to understand how their system works from processing donations to helping customers shop. By doing so, Ivy was able to research the goods customers most frequently used, what was available to them, and the struggles people were facing in their home kitchens.
She stated, “The food varies each week. Sometimes you get a lot of good meats and vegetables and other weeks it’s mostly shelf-stable food. Families need help making the food that they are given into something that can sustain their family throughout the whole week.”
After research, the Girl Scout went on to develop test recipes at home and print her own cookbook copies using funds from family donations and a bake sale she hosted. The cookbook is designed with the families’ ever-changing needs in mind and offers ways to transform ingredients and add variety to common pantry goods.
Her cookbook has been made available free of charge to patrons of Eastern Shore Chapel Food Pantry and she offers a free online copy as well.
