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How to Grow Your Nonprofit or Charity Food Pantry

Running a nonprofit charity is not easy, one that focuses on helping people get fed is even harder. We all need to do our part to help end hunger, nothing is sadder than thinking of someone in your community who is going hungry. Thinking that “someone else will help” is never a good plan, so we have to support the outreach programs in your area. We’ve proudly partnered with Feeding America for years and they have grown tremendously over the last decade. But even with Feeding America, there’s thousands of local and regional shelters and food banks that help connect the supply chain with those in need. Sadly, most don’t know what programs are in their community, it’s one of those out of sight out of mind problems. If they are doing their jobs, no one notices.

These organizations are very busy, and often scrape to make ends meet, so generating awareness or even trying to raise donations locally becomes an afterthought. Fundraising is a critical part for most of these organizations. Endowments support some, which helps with this side of things, but for the rest of them they rely on the community to pitch in, and outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas it’s often forgotten.

One thing that I learned working with these organizations is that there are two distinct groups of homeless people, the chronic homeless and the situational or temporary homeless. The second group makes the majority of homeless people, they look just like you or me, but due to a bizarre string of events, they ended up homeless for a period of time. It can range from no family in the area or alive, losing a job suddenly then get into a car accident and next thing they know they are on the street with no time to prepare. The scenarios are endless, these people just need a little help to get back on their feet. Fate handed them a bad hand and they just need a few weeks or a few months to get back to a productive life. This could be your cousin, your former roommate, a work colleague…bottom line, anyone can be down on their luck very suddenly. The first group, the chronic homeless, this is who you see on the streets with signs week after week, the “face” of homeless. These people generally have substance abuse problems, abuse throughout their life, and sadly often have mental health problems which cause a lot of their hardships. These people need help too, but the short-term homeless are who your help will impact the most, they just need a little assistance to get back to a normal life.

One trick we’ve found that helps these foodbanks and soup kitchens get food to those in your community is a Google Grant. What’s a Google Grant you ask? It’s a program where Google will give free Google Paid Search credit to nonprofits. In turn the nonprofit can use this to increase awareness of their charity to the community, generating more awareness, donations, volunteers, and supporting events. Google Grants run through Google Ads and require a lot of consideration to maintain compliance you should consider an agency to help with your Google Grant Management we’ve found great agencies that charge as little as $399/month to manage and optimize the $10k/month in free paid search dollars.

Kernel Season’s Popcorn Spritzer – Review

In a previous post John shared his secret to make Perfect Popped Popcorn, it is a very good method to make a healthy, low cost snack. For the longest time I didn’t like popcorn, but lately I’ve been a ravenous popcorn addict, sneaking a small pot here and there just to get me by until I could make a big pot. It has become my favorite snack in a hurry.

I like my popcorn with butter and salt, both of which are not known for being healthy. Well I think I’ve solved the butter problem. Enter Kernel Season’s Popcorn Spritzer! I saw this in the popcorn section of our grocery store when I was gathering kernel’s to feed my addiction but I ignored it, thinking it would taste chemically, artificial or just bad. In a day of weakness I picked up a bottle to try when my craving was at it’s peak. Below is the product you are looking for in all of it’s splendor.

I came home and made a small batch just to test this spritzer out, I didn’t know what to expect. It was FANTASTIC!!! The flavor is very close to real butter without the fat, calories and cholesterol. No chemically, funny or otherwise displeasing taste or smell. It is “lighter” is the best way I can explain it, it doesn’t have the dense feel butter leaves on popcorn.

I really enjoy the aerosol concept of applying it, it just seems like a good idea to me. However that is one drawback, it seems to have too much propellent and comes out almost violently. They suggest doing short bursts, which I agree with but I wish it was a gentler misting style discharge than an aggressive mist. My other complaint would be that it does leave your fingers greasy and I don’t like that. I’m not entirely sure about if this increases or decreases salt/seasoning adhesion or not. They claim it does, however I notice a lot of loose salt on the bottom and sides of the bowl. This could be the seasoning/salt adhering to the overspray on the bowl but it seems fairly loose. Whatever the case it’s not enough of a short coming for me to have it disuade my usage.

I’ll stress the technique mentioned in John’s post about using fine salt. We have the Perfex Salt and Pepper Mills which allow the user to control the size of the grind, from powder to whole peppercorns or sea salt crystals falling out as you turn the handle. While these are expensive, I’ll certainly admit that, they are the last salt and pepper mill you will ever buy. If you’re purchasing special salt this will pay for itself quickly and you can use it for other cooking as well and who doesn’t love cool cooking toys! If you have to John’s food processor method is a good substitute, but I prefer sea salt/kosher salt to iodized salt, it has a mellower flavor and is more forgiving.

On the salt/seasoning front I’m going to continue testing the seasonings I find and report back with any findings worth sharing. I’m also looking into salt substitutes, but so far they all taste “off” but I remain optimistic that I’ll find a way to make this a healthy snack!

Any suggestions of toppings I should try? Lets take popcorn to the next level!

Basic Review of Ebelskivers

First of all we want to apologize to all of you for our lack of posting last month, we also want to send a HUGE thank you to John for keeping things going. Tiffany and I got married last month and it had taken a lot of our free time and unfortunately Lukewarm Legumes suffered. The great news is we are happily married and have a lot of great posts just waiting to be composed! Now to your regularly scheduled post about Ebelskivers.

I first heard of Ebelskivers in 2009 from Food Networks “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” series. Celebrity Chef Aaron Sanchez raved about this delectable little stuffed breakfast style pastries from Denmark. I’ve wanted to try them or make them ever since, and recently that dream had become a reality. Tiffany and I were out shopping and stumbled into Williams Sonoma, and picked up their Nordic Ware Ebelskiver Pan while a little pricey it’s a very well constructed pan. My only complaint would be the design is not favorable for glass top ranges, which is what we have. That said, as long as you are careful then I don’t think it’s a huge concern, but don’t come complaining to me if you scratch your glass cooktop. This is more of a stationary pan, bring it up to temperature and leave it there, the only time it is moved is when you are removing the finished ebelskivers and returning it to the stove.

Before we jump too far ahead we want it to be known that we really enjoy ebelskivers and this is the first of a few posts you’ll see on the topic. We’ve only made them 6 or so times now and all have been sweet, we have yet to gravitate towards the savory, but we will eventually!

The basic ebelskiver batter we use is very similar to pancake batter.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon(s) Sugar
1/2 teaspoon(s) Baking powder
1/4 teaspoon(s) Salt
2 whole(s) Eggs Separated
1 cup(s) Milk
2 tablespoon(s) Butter Melted and slightly cooled

Combine the dry ingredients, in separate bowl whisk together egg yolks, milk and butter, then combine with the dry ingredients – the batter will be lumpy.

Here is a picture of batter before folding in the beaten egg whites – please note this is a half batch.

Whip the egg whites until stiff, fold in 1/3 at a time.

That’s it!

We typically add an extract to our batter, we’ve enjoyed coconut extract and vanilla extract but your creativity in balancing the filling to the batter is totally in your hands. If you’re planning on a savory Ebelskiver then don’t use any extracts.

Next comes the cooking part, different people have different techniques but what I’ve found works best is to heat the pan to a med-low heat, have your filling ready, use a nonstick cooking spray or butter in the pan and then spoon in a generous tablespoon of batter into all of the ebelskiver openings. I’ve found it’s much better to under fill with batter than over fill, remember when you add your filling it displaces batter and fills up the rest of the cup. Once the batter is in the pan quickly get your fillings into as close to the center of the batter as you can. If you find you’re rushing too much turn the heat down a little. As I mentioned before it’s much easier to have them a little on the small side than overly huge, however, as you’ll see in the image below the cups do fill up when you add the fillings.

Another little trick I’ve been using since our first batch is that once the fillings are in I use my finger and kind of push the filling down and make sure it’s covered with batter. The reason I do this is it typically produces an ebelskiver that is less likely to leak. The image above is a cherry and chocolate sauce in coconut extract infused batter.

You’ll notice some bubbles when they are cooking, unlike with regular pancakes this is not an indication that they are ready to turn, even when the bubbles remain. This just takes a little practice but after your first pan full you’ll have it down.

They sell a pair of sticks to flip/turn ebelskivers at Williams Sonoma for $13, we opted to just use wood skewers, the kind you use for grilling. We also tried a high temperature slim silicon spatula and it didn’t work at all! To flip them all you do is gently poke along one side and they should sort of start turning on their own, carefully help it make the complete flip and if you’ve over filled them gently, and carefully squish them into the pan. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you do it, if you over fill them this is where it will become a problem. When you try to flip an over filled ebelskiver it doesn’t fit back into the pan, the baking soda reacts and they grow when cooked. If you do this and don’t squish them into the pan you end up with a most likely leaking ebelskiver that resembles a mushroom – they still taste great but it’s not a great demonstration of the technique used create what should be a uniform and sealed ebelskiver.

I typically plan for a single turn, that’s not to say you can’t flip them back over if you think they need more cooking but it shouldn’t be necessary if you are patient enough. The finished product looks like what you see below.

You’ll notice some of these leaked and there is some uneven cooking, this was 100% my fault, this batch is one of our very first batches and we’ve gotten a lot better. You can dip them in syrup, eat them as is, dust them with powdered sugar, whatever you feel is appropriate.

As I mentioned earlier we have become a big fan of these and we will follow up with additional posts on our success and failures (there have been a few), in the mean time we strongly suggest giving these tasty little stuffed pancakes a shot!

Blk Water – Review

If you haven’t seen Blk Water yet you owe it to yourself to check it out. Here’s a link to the BLK’s website you’ll notice their slogan “The Dark Side of Water.” They have a very different take on bottled water than most conventional bottled water. To give you an idea, the bottles on their home page, they are clear bottles. There is also a hidden message written in black on the bottle, can you see it?

You’ll have to find a bottle to find the hidden message! (truth be told I forgot to snap a picture of it and I don’t want to steal someone else’s) The water looks similar to a cola in color, though this is not carbonated. They claim there are no colorings or artificial ingredients added to create this opaque water, it’s done by minerals left in the water by mother nature. Sounds kind of gimmicky to me, but it’s not everyday you can drink black water that you literally can’t see through.

A friend brought this to a party we were having so we decided that everyone should try it, as reluctant as some were! It tastes confusing, you’d expect it to have a strong taste or smell and it does not. I think it smells faintly metallic but it could be my senses playing tricks on me. The statements made about it’s taste ranged from, it tastes like regular water, to it tastes like a swamp smells. I personally thought it had a taste, slightly metallic, slightly like lawn clippings smell with a unique mouth feel. Though it was far from in your face and pronounced, these were very subtle flavors. Overall I thought it was an enjoyable water to drink and I’ll probably try it again and do further testing with it.

I’m curious how it is at various temperature extremes, as ice and heated to make tea or coffee with. If you wanted to go all out you could cook with it, can you image using it in rice or with pasta? I think they would make great ice cubes, in particular at a cocktail party.

I certainly wasn’t turned off by my experience with it and I would try it again, it’s a great topic of conversation, in particular if you have it on hand to share with people. The uses as a gag prop are nearly limitless, I think it could be a lot of fun to use as a prank.

Here’s another image of it in a clear glass

I don’t think I’d drink it every day, not only would it get a little expensive but part of me thinks consuming abnormally high amounts of any mineral is probably not wise. That said the company claims it is entirely healthy and they are probably right I am just a little weirded out by black water! I say that in a good way, it’s a very different take on bottle water and if your curious I’d strongly recommend trying it.

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