The New York Times is reporting barren food banks in NYC this Thanksgiving season, so if you were planning on donating some food to the hungry, now would be a good time to do it. Don’t live in NYC? There are hungry people everywhere.

The Times also profiled an interesting charity that rescues unused food from being discarded by restaurants and stores, even farms.

Until Jennifer McLean and two drivers from City Harvest showed up at Joe Sidoti’s farm last Friday, the radishes still growing in his field were goners.

The radishes would probably have been plowed under, and they certainly would not have wound up in salads in the South Bronx. But as soon as Ms. McLean saw them, big as apples and red as Christmas ornaments, she started working Mr. Sidoti over.

What would it take, she wanted to know, to get those radishes into City Harvest trucks and on their way to food pantries and soup kitchens in some of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods? She offered to provide transportation, she offered to round up volunteers to do the picking, and, most persuasively, she offered cash.

Off City Turf, Haggling for Food [NYT via Gothamist]
(Photo:Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

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