News & Views

This is the fifth post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out posts on shopping bulk, the Wedge Co-op vs. Cub Foods, Eastside Food Co-op vs.

It’s hard to believe that four months ago, I traded I-9’s and benefits enrollment packets for recipes and knives. Last fall, I left my full time job to be a full-time culinary student at Minnesota State Technical and Community College in the sleepy town of Moorhead, MN. The culinary program takes approximately four semesters to complete and I just began my second semester in January. I hope to graduate in Spring of 2014.

This is the fouth post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out the first post, on shopping bulk, the second post, on the Wedge Co-op vs. Cub Foods, and the third post, on Eastside Food Co-op vs. Rainbow.

This is the third post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out the first post, on shopping bulk and the second post, on the Wedge Co-op vs. Cub Foods.

This is the second post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out the first post, on shopping bulk.

About three years ago our young family went through a financial crunch, which I’m sure most Americans shared. My employer was on a two-year wage freeze and hiring-freeze. Rumors of layoffs were the smaller waves of a larger fear that the company might fail altogether. As a relatively new employee, I was confident that layoffs would affect my position. My wife, pregnant with our second child, had recently quit her job to stay home with our 3-year-old daughter and the expected baby, so my income was solely driving our household, and, to be honest, we were scared shitless.

When I told my friends and family that I had been chosen as a delegate for Terra Madre, the International Slow Food Conference in Turin, Italy many of them replied by asking, “What is Slow Food?”

This is the first post in a new SGT series exploring the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Check out or other posts in this series here.

The first time I went to the supermarket as a newly minted Metro Manila resident, I threw items into the shopping cart as if our old SUV was in the parking lot, waiting to haul two weeks' worth of groceries home. Only after I had paid and was staring at eight bags with the combined weight of a full-grown man did I remember having walked to the store.

Later, as I glared at modestly sized cupboards that refused to hold any more jars and cans, it was easy to blame our compact space for being too small. But the truth was that my old buying habits were simply too big for our new home.

If you are on any type of local food listserv in Minnesota, you’ve received an invitation, or two, or ten to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Food + Justice = Democracy national meeting, convening September 24 -26 in downtown Minneapolis.

IATP’s goals for the convergence are lofty; the conference is billed as a national meeting to change the food justice narrative, where “participants will co-create a national food justice platform to push our government and our political leaders to prioritize a fair, just and healthy food system.”

In my life, I have access to everything I need and want and more. I often go through my day without thinking about this privilege, easily fulfilling my daily desires: moving from the food coop or farmer’s market to the drugstore to the gas station to the post office, all within minutes of my home. Having just spent a year living in South America, away from all of these conveniences, I have gained a renewed and humbling appreciation for all that I have in America. As a middle class, white American, I experience an access and abundance that is quite extraordinary. In Minneapolis, I also have the good fortune of working as a public health nutrition educator and cooking instructor. Much of my work aims to improve the access and ultimately the health of other Americans who, for a variety of reasons have less ease within the system.