Every Friday evening throughout the year, Northeast Dutchess Immigrant Services (NEDIS) distributes food and offers caseworker support at Mission Episcopal Santiago Apostol (MESA) in Dover Plains. The program benefits approximately 120 of our immigrant neighbors facing food insecurities. Stonewood Farm has partnered with NEDIS to create a new food recovery program we call Full Heart Kitchen or Cocina de Corazón Lleno in Spanish.
Chef Kristen, Stonewood’s Culinary Director, takes the otherwise unused and discarded food from NEDIS’s weekly distributions and combines it with our farm-fresh produce to create healthy prepared foods - soups, salads, entrees, baked goods - to include in NEDIS’s distribution. Guests at MESA, many of whom don’t have the ability to prepare a wholesome meal, can now enjoy nutritious and delicious eat-in or take-out fare.
And while the Full Heart Kitchen program is only in its first year, we are expanding our food recovery efforts even further. With the generous amount of unused food being given to us by NEDIS, combined with the abundance of the farm, we have been able to increase our production of prepared foods and are now delivering them, along with our fresh produce, to the First Harvest Food Pantry and our Dover Fresh Produce Program in addition to the NEDIS distribution. This has been such a rewarding experience and such a win for our food insecure community.
