At this point, I’ve learned it’s actually cheaper to shop and cook for a community than it is for an individual or even a family unit to do so.
This last year learning how to batch cook massive amounts of food for the communities I’m a part of has shown me how aggressively cheap it is both to eat plant-based and feed a large sum of people.
One of my favorite stories is a recipe I kinda winged with my mutual aid group in Tx. We served 75 bowls of lentil soup over rice and it only cost us $4 to make that quantity of food. Literally, the cost per bowl was like $.06 to make and so much of the produce was donated.
Like, let that sink in. We fed 75 people for $4. How much do we spend on groceries for ourselves or families on a monthly basis?
All of yesterday, a comrade and I cooked 60 hearty bowls of a Spicy Split Pea Soup and Pinto-Potato Chili. We wanted to meal prep together but fucked around and made enough to feed 8 other comrades and have a ton to distribute to the unhoused community in our city. In each container is 2 cups of soup/chili over 2 cups cooked rice. That means one box is gonna be 2 meals cuz leftovers.
Currently, the project I’m trying to make a reality is a Plant Based Community Kitchen. The vision is to build a small menu of recipes, no more than 10, that all incorporate 2 base grains/legumes/starchy vegetables.
To bulk-buy ingredients that are paid for by donation to batch cook in a meal-prep style so that there is a variety of dishes that can be made in batches that can feed a comrade, college student, family of 4 up to a week’s worth of meals for dirty cheap.
We’d have volunteers come cook and help deliver and distribute, hoping to save comrades money, battle food insecurity, help feed more consistently the unhoused, and build the communal structures that allows us less reliance on money/capitalism to meet our collective needs.
For instance in my city, these are some numbers/costs from a restaurant supply store nearby and template recipe I made to estimate yield and price.
This basic ass template recipe at these prices would allow me to make 900 meals for under $100.
If 10 comrades threw in $20 once, this kitchen would be funded for months, and cook enough to food to feed people consistently for long periods of time, and have a variety of flavors and meals all combating food insecurity, food deserts, and food swamps.
