Lincoln County Food Share & OSU Extension Tackle Food Insecurity November 2, 2024 Imagine walking through a farmers market or grocery store when you smell the wondrous scents of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs. The produce, displayed in a colorful array to entice the shopper, is not like anything you have ever seen before! What would you buy and how would you prepare it? This often is the dilemma for Mesoamericans and Latinos living in the Pacific Northwest. Shelves are stocked with items that they don’t recognize. Where are the chayotes and epazotes? Packaging is written in an unfamiliar language, listing ingredients with long, scientific sounding words. And, their Lincoln County residence may have cooking appliances that are different from what they had in their South or Central American home. Samaritan Supports Collaborative Project Through its social accountability funding, Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital and Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital are supporting a program called Guatemalan and Latinx Community Cooking Classes and Farmers Market Tours. The agencies collaborating on the project are Food Share of Lincoln County and Oregon State University Extension Service in Lincoln County. When Samaritan changed its grant funding model to encourage collaborative projects, “it was so awesome,” said Pati D’Eliseo, Food Share’s development coordinator. “We had already been working with OSU for the past several years offering a cooking curriculum. This grant motivated us to expand the project and leverage our resources even more.” Beatriz Botello Salgado is the coordinator of the county’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program unit, known as SNAP‑Ed, in the extension’s Family and Community Health Program. She is also one of the bilingual instructors who leads cooking classes and market tours. Through these activities, she has seen how participants and their families have learned from local dietitians, fellow shoppers, farmers and grocery managers — and vice versa. “The interaction is beautiful,” Botello Salgado said. “I am so happy to see the interchange of ideas going in both directions — people learning from each other.” How the Program Works The two collaborating agencies provide ingredients and teach cooking classes in commercial kitchens located at the OSU Extension office in Newport and at St. James Santiago Episcopal Church in Lincoln City. The focus is on healthy recipes and ingredients. They also teach participants to use unfamiliar appliances. Since many families live together in one apartment or house, an added benefit is that participants can share their learning with others at home. The program also includes market tours. Participants visit a grocery store in Depoe Bay or Newport for hands‑on learning to read labels, compare prices, understand unit pricing, find food appropriate for family members’ health conditions and more. They receive a $25 gift card to buy produce to take home after the tour. Because Chester’s Market in Depoe Bay is a SNAP Double Up Food Bucks site, participants receive an additional $20 match, for a total of $45 to spend on fresh produce. When the farmers market in Newport is open for the season, tours will take place there, too, with $25 tokens provided to purchase farm‑fresh produce. The market is also a Double Up Food Bucks location. Learn more about OSU’s Nutrition Education and Outreach Programs and the program, Cooking Matters.
