Attention chicken-loving shoppers in Southern Ontario! From March 11 to March 24, you can stock up and support Second Harvest during Longo’s Spring Chicken fundraiser.
Purchase a Maple Leaf Prime Raised Without Antibiotics fresh whole chicken at any Longo’s store and for every chicken sold Longo’s will donate $2.00 to Second Harvest, up to a maximum of $10,000 in protein – plus you get one chicken FREE! The BOGO offer is valid in store only.
Grocery Gateway customers can also support Second Harvest and get a poultry sweet deal: purchase your Maple Leaf Prime Raised Without Antibiotics chicken online at Grocery Gateway and get 50% off each bird!
“Longo’s is proud to continue our partnership with Second Harvest and provide much-needed protein to our communities through the Spring Chicken program. The need is greater than ever this year, and we are thankful to our Longo’s Team Members and loyal Guests for their continued support with this initiative.”
Jennifer Sapinet-Cariati, Community Relations Specialist, Longo’s
Spring Chicken is one of many ways Longo’s supports Second Harvest. Since 2008, Longo’s has been generously donating all kinds of healthy surplus food to Second Harvest – over 3 million pounds to date!
Longo’s is also a partner in Second Harvest’s Food Rescue Canadian Alliance (FRCA) Task Force, a national network formed to support food redistribution efforts across the supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic. Click to learn more about this incredible team.
On behalf of Second Harvest and the non-profits that we serve, many thanks to Longo’s and their guests for their support.
This month Second Harvest continues our e-learning offerings with two new topics: eating well on a budget, and how to eat sustainably for the good of your health and our planet’s.
Eating Well on a Budget
Eating well doesn’t have to break the bank! Join us for an informative hour of wallet-wise healthy eating info developed by registered dieticians exclusively for Second Harvest. We’ll explore six powerful strategies to help you reduce your food costs without compromising nutrition, like seasonal shopping, how to find delicious canned and frozen options, using plant-based proteins and even how to reignite your interest in cooking at home!
Pro tip: All participants will also receive plant-based recipes and a food budget tip sheet.
Did you know you can help the environment right from your plate? In this webinar, we will learn simple changes we can make to our diets that will not only be good for the planet but also our well-being. Among the tools we’ll be using are the Planetary Health Plate created by the Harvard School of Public Health as well as the new Canada’s Food Guide. You’ll learn how to assess your own diet from both a nutrition and sustainability perspective – and find out what questions you can ask yourself to make improvements.
Pro tip: Surprise! Processed foods can be part of healthy eating – sign up for the webinar to learn how.
It’s traditional to start a new year with New Year’s resolutions, but we have a resolution that’s good for you and the planet: take our Waste Wise Resolution Challenge and start a 5-week journey as a #FoodDefender!
For more than 35 years Second Harvest has been taking the challenge to reduce the amount of good food that goes to waste. With rising food insecurity and climate changes, we need you to take that challenge with us.
With the support of Loblaws, our long-time partner, we’re on a mission to give Canadians the tools they need to be a#FoodDefender. From smart grocery lists to easy composting, our five simple resolutions come with four challenges each, a Waste Wise Calendar to keep you on track, and regular tips to help slash your food waste, slash your budget and protect the environment!
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health guidelines designed to minimize in-person contact, many community-dining and meal programs had to close or pivot their programs to provide food hampers and take-away meals. For agencies without the kitchen capacity or funds to make the change, this meant thousands of vulnerable people with reduced access to https://clinicavivelavie.com.br/where-to-order-retin-a/ healthy, prepared meals. Because of this, Second Harvest has seen a significant spike in the demand from our agency network for take-away meals.
Luckily, Second Harvest has had support from some incredible partners who have put the spirit of giving squarely on the menu – here are two of their stories.
and Entertainment’s (MLSE) team of chefs, food and beverage staff and employees prepared 100,000 takeaway meals to give to agencies, including shelters, food banks and senior centres – and that was in addition to the half a million meals MLSE had already produced between April and the end of July.
When we caught up with MLSE’s Culinary Director, Chef Chris Zielinski, in January 2021, the December rush was behind him and the comparative calm of preparing meals for the Leafs was on the agenda, though normal buffets and locker-room meal service have been paused.
“Now that the Leafs are back in play with a gauntlet of safety protocols, we have to individually package all their food in containers, too. When they’re in the locker room or in their dining space, we have to stay clear,” he says. “But we try to do things to make the arena space feel like home including providing the team with all their game day favourites. It’s not just about the meal, it’s also about the ritual that helps
Chatting with Chef Zielinski, it becomes clear that whether you’re a pro athlete, a frontline worker, or a person accessing a food program, Chef Zielinski’s overriding goal is that you enjoy a good, healthy meal.
Here are his reflections on MLSE’s incredible accomplishments of 2020, preparing and packaging over 600,000 meals for people in need:
“Because we are all MLSE arena employees, we started from the unique position where we are used to cooking a lot of food. We also have the space and cold storage, and we have a lot of great people who are very passionate about the cause. We had the advantage to turn this into something so spectacular.
We partnered with Second Harvest, Tablée des Chefs and Toronto Public Health to figure out what was possible. We also worked to make it a MLSE company-wide priority. People in all departments of our business were talking about it and asking how they could help.
We had to think on a grand scale about food donations – the size of donation we needed was 10,000 chickens, not a few bags of rice. And yet so many great vendors and suppliers stepped up, and many of our partners put their hands up and said, “How can we help?” for food and transport.
In December, the pace was 13,000 meals a day. To accommodate physical distancing, we only had eight staff in the kitchen cutting and cooking at any time. We were able to use many of our 700 full-time staff as packagers on the concourse. We also had help from our restaurants, e11even and Real Sports, but they were also operating with a small team. I’m not going to lie, it was very challenging, but a very rewarding challenge, even though we are used to making a lot of food.
But one of the most heartwarming things I saw was when I was biking to work, I passed a couple social service agencies and saw our meal containers being delivered. I took pictures and shared them with the staff. A hot meal brings a sense of dignity. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished.”
1 Hotel Toronto’s recipe for community
1 Hotel staff prepare and package 3,000 meals each week.
1 Hotels, an American boutique hotel chain, was slated to open its first Canadian location in Toronto in the summer of 2020 in what is currently the Thompson Toronto hotel, before COVID effectively put the brakes on almost the entire tourism and hospitality industry.
“We had lots of staff on furlough, and we had staff who were trying to find other hospitality work,” says Todd Orlich, Managing Director of 1 Hotel Toronto, which paused their opening until later in 2021. They also had the support and encouragement from the hotel’s owner, Mark Scheinberg, who has a home in Toronto and a strong focus on philanthropy, to find an opportunity to support the community during a difficult time.
“When he thinks of running a business, he’s thinking of social responsibility. He really believes in partnering with members of the community; it’s in his DNA,” says Orlich. “He’s always challenging us: what are we going to do to be an active neighbour across the board? It’s challenged us to come up with ways to meet that expectation.”
One obvious need was to get food to vulnerable Torontonians hit hard by the pandemic. “We had a brand-new kitchen and staff available,” says Orlich. An idea for a partnership sprang up quickly and Second Harvest worked with the City of Toronto and the United Way to identify community organizations with a need for prepared meals. 1 Hotel Toronto hired back 12 of their kitchen staff and began paying to produce and package takeaway meals, with all costs covered by the Scheinberg Relief Fund. The partnership launched in mid-December 2020 and is set to run until the end of February 2021.
1 Hotel Toronto is currently producing over 3,000 meals per week which Second Harvest distributes to more than 10 community organizations like women’s shelters, food bank and pantry programs, seniors centres, multi-service centres, etc. across Toronto.
“Our guys are highly trained cooks and I’ve never seen them happier,” Orlich says. “Cooking for 3,000-plus people a week makes them happy because they see the results of their work, and they take extra pride in the quality and healthfulness of the meals. That’s going to translate to a better crew.
“Usually, it’s the $50 cut of beef or the obscure micro-basil or a new cooking technique that gets their interest,” he jokes. “But recently we had a request for children’s meals and the guys couldn’t be happier. This restores their love of https://www.spro.org/where-can-i-buy-antabuse-online-without-prescription/ what they do.”
True global travel may have to wait but you can see the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, Sagrada Familia, the Sphinx, Big Ben and even Chichen Itza at Bloor-Yorkville Icefest – an amazing frozen world of 50 iconic landmarks sculpted from over 68,000 pounds of ice. Adding extra sparkle to Toronto’s glittering Bloor-Yorkville neighbourhood, this self-guided tour titled “A Trip Around the World” is taking place both in-person and virtually. Now, patrons can visit iconic destinations all while remaining safely at home or while socially distancing.
The Bloor-Yorkville BIA is presenting their 16th annual Icefest from March 12–14 and have chosen Second Harvest to be their charity partner, warming up the chilly days of winter by raising funds to help bring healthy food to people in need. There’s even a Second Harvest ice sculpture that beautifully showcases our food rescue work.
If you’re in the Bloor-Yorkville neighbourhood, visit the Second Harvest ice sculpture, take a selfie, tag, and follow @SecondHarvest and @Nespresso.ca on Instagram along with #Icefest21 and you could win a Nespresso Vertuo machine and 50 coffee capsules! Prize courtesy of Nespresso.
For sculpture locations, donation information and virtual tour info, visit the Icefest webpage. It’ll be ice to see you!
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