Every summer, gardeners at the Pickering Demonstration Garden grow a bounty of organic produce and donate it to our local food bank.
With a grant from 4Culture and help from Seattle Tilth, the City of Issaquah set out to offer recipes for delicious, nourishing dishes with vegetables that are common on Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank shelves during the harvest — beets, chard, leeks and parsnips.
To help familiarize customers with more varieties of produce offered at the food bank, and offer advice about how to use those wares to produce tasty dishes, recipes were developed to share with Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank customers. Through the grant, artist Susan Melrath created custom watercolor artwork for the recipe cards.
The complete lineup of recipes is ready to share and pin on Pinterest.
These simple, healthy dishes require few additional ingredients, are easy to prepare and highlight the season’s bounty.
In a reflection of our community’s growing diversity, the recipes are also available in Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. These languages were chosen based on a customer survey.
Our Office of Sustainability, through a partnership with Seattle Tilth, has been seasonally supplying fresh produce to the food bank. In a typical year, more than 2,000 pounds of fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs are donated.
To learn more about growing food in Issaquah, visit issaquahwa.gov/eatlocal.