Cent$ible Nutrition Program Educators Visit |
If your team doesn’t work with your county’s staff at the Cent$ible Nutrition Program (CNP), you should put them on your list of people to call today! And here are just a few reasons why.
Most of the neighbors who use food pantries have an income at or below 185% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. All CNP lessons involve making nutritious choices, are free, and include a CNP cookbook, kitchen tools, a menu planner, and a year-long subscription to the CNP newsletter.
As Wyoming’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), CNP partners with the Department of Family Services and the University of Wyoming Extension office to offer free cooking and nutrition education classes for both children and adults throughout the state. And they work with pantries, soup kitchens, and group homes to share their knowledge and skills around crafting nutritional meals on a budget.
Often when Food Bank of Wyoming receives a food item that might not be familiar to most Wyomingites, CNP provides us with tried and true, delicious recipes. This week they met in Casper and provided some recipes around two amazing food donations that we received: wheat berries and micro greens. To find your nearest Cent$ible Nutrition Program educator visit their website at
Cent$ible Nutrition. |
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What Are Wheat Berries? Wheat berries are the entire edible part of wheat kernels; they are often confused with farro and spelt (which are also varieties of wheat). They are packed with vitamins, minerals, |
| phytochemicals, fiber, protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Wheat berries are chewy and taste a bit like nuts. Either red or white (the color of the wheat), they can be used in the same way as many other grains. They're not trendy like quinoa and other ancient grains, and so generally cost considerably less. Found in most health food stores and available in several varieties, wheat berries are often labeled as hard or soft, winter or spring, indicating the growing season.
Here are some ideas for incorporating wheat berries in your daily meals! - Use them in salads
- Add them to soups
- Mix them with dried fruit
- Make breakfast porridge
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Serve with mushrooms
- Enjoy them plain with olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper
- Throw them in chili
- Use them in bread
- Add them to a burrito or burrito bowl
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| Food Safety & Civil Rights Training |
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The online training site will open with our new fiscal year on July 1st. Food Bank of Wyoming’s HelpDesk will send out reminder emails with instructions on how to login and enroll in the courses in July. All partner agencies can begin annual recertifications at that time. These courses are available online at no charge through NEOGOV.
Completion is required for each active Food Bank of Wyoming Partner annually, for at least one team member. A score of 80% is needed to pass the online test. If you are needing a temporary password, password reset, or to be set up with a new account, please contact us at: helpdesk@wyomingfoodbank.org.
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Dates of Interest June is Food Bank of Wyoming's Inventory Month! June 23 through July 3 is Food Bank of Wyoming's end-of-fiscal-year inventory.*
June 23 Agency Express will close down at 3pm June 28 FFC is open for pick-up orders only June 29 Agency Express will open again at 3:30pm for orders
July 1 Beginning of Fiscal Year 2024 July 3 Back to our normal ordering schedule
July 4 Independence Day; Food Bank of Wyoming is closed July 5 Business as usual
*Please note that none of our truck routes will change during our annual inventory process. If you have any questions, please contact us at: helpdesk@wyomingfoodbank.org. |
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What foods are in the Protein Foods Group? |
Sharing nutritional information with our neighbors is key to what we do in the hunger-relief community. One of the most important conversations we can have with our pantry guests is about protein. Eating a variety of proteins will provide more of the nutrients our bodies need. Protein comes from seafood, meat, poultry, beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, and soy products; as well as from dairy, milk, yogurt, cheese, and eggs. Apart from the importance of protein, we need the right kind of protein. Our meat choices should be lean or low-fat and our seafood options should be higher in nourishing fatty acids (called omega-3s). Vegetarian protein choices include beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, and soy products.
To learn more, visit USDA My Plate Beans, Peas, and Lentils page. |
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Johnson County Friends Feeding Friends
Dr. Brian (DDS) and Becky Cotant are kind enough to donate the extra space in the basement of their building to storage for the Totes of Hope™ and Mini Pantry programs. The Johnson County Friends Feeding Friends (FFF) organization endeavors to fund and distribute nourishing food to Johnson County Children who might otherwise go hungry. They work with schools throughout Johnson County (Meadowlark Elementary, Cloud Peak Elementary, Clear Creek Middle School, New West High School, and Buffalo High School, as well as Kaycee K-12, Buffalo Christian Academy, and a home school), providing 150 totes a week to students (up from 100 last year).
Specifically, the Totes of Hope™ Program has volunteers filling totes on Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. and delivering them to schools on Thursday. It is extremely impressive that the town of Buffalo is never short on volunteers. The high school FFA, local organizations, businesses, and citizens of Buffalo want to help out in any way possible. As soon as the posts on social media get up, the word goes out. Before you know it, there is a long list of people wanting to volunteer.
The JC-FFF network collaborates closely with the Bread of Life Food Pantry to fill three mini pantries throughout town. This is a new project that was just started in January 2023 when the local newspaper donated three old newspaper boxes to use for the pantries. Art students at the high school repainted and decorated the boxes. These mini pantries are “up for adoption” by local families, companies, or groups who are willing to pick up the food from the main pantry to restock items and keep them up to date.
Like so many communities around Wyoming, Friends Feeding Friends brings the community together to help their neighbors! |
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| Reading your Truck Route sheet(s)
Your agency should have received an email with a PDF with your FY24 truck routes. The HelpDesk Team recommends that you print these off and post them somewhere visible at your site. We have also posted all the routes on our website. |
| Back-to-School Shopping Many of you have back-to-school food distributions in August. Remember that those orders will need to be placed soon. Take a look at your order deadlines for delivery/pickup and mark your calendars now. This will save you a lot of stress when the calendar begins the fast and frantic pace of August. |
Partner Agency Perks
Food Bank of Wyoming is devoted to our partners; that's you! Just as your team would go the extra mile for your clients, we will go the distance for you. Here are just three of our favorite ways: -
Helping you develop services/programs that meet your community's needs
- Training your team on food safety, inventory, and purchasing
- Providing the highest quality and widest variety of foods available
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| Welcome our Newest Hire: Michelle Forster, Fresh Food Center Warehouse Specialist |
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Born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, Michelle joined Food Bank of Wyoming in April 2023. As a native-born Wyomingite, Michelle has a special bond with the state, the people, and to those special places where childhood memories are born. She can't remember a summer that she and her twin sister didn't spend out at Pathfinder Lake. (But she wouldn’t go into specifics about the kinds of shenanigans they got into!) Michelle comes from one of those families where everyone knew her parents. I guess what I’m saying is that you probably already know her, from 4-H, FFA, camping, fishing, State Fairs, and “all things Wyoming.”
Add in the fact that she is still devoted to 4-H and FFA, and you realize that she’s passionate about serving others. That’s what drew her to apply for Food Bank of Wyoming’s warehouse position. After her last desk job, she couldn’t wait to get on her feet again. Now she spends her day cleaning the warehouse, pulling orders, loading the tug, double-checking pick-up orders before they leave the Fresh Food Center, and helping our partners get the food they need to nourish our neighbors. It is this reward that makes her work days fly by.
When her work day is done, Michelle is very excited to get home to her own little Wyoming homestead with two children and a husband; two cats and a show steer; two dogs; a milk cow; a plethora of chicken; some ducks; and one hidden snake! If you can’t find her here, at the lake, camping, or milking the cow, it’s a good bet that she’s sleeping from pure exhaustion.
https://wyomingfoodbank.org/about/join-our-team/ |
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| Shopper Timeline Reminder |
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Our HelpDesk team’s shared best practice is to check the order deadline for your delivery/pick-up date and make certain to submit your order by 2:00 p.m. the day before that deadline. (This is especially important if you have more than one delivery/pick-up date a month.) Food Bank of Wyoming is focused on what matters most to you — innovation to provide fresher products and fewer zeroed-out items.
If you have any questions, please contact helpdesk@wyomingfoodbank.org |
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TEFAP Fact Sheet
TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) is a federal nutrition program that moves food from farms to food banks to individuals and families facing hunger. TEFAP is a cornerstone of the Feeding America network’s food supply. The program provides over 20% of the food distributed through Feeding America food banks and local hunger-relief programs! Click here to download a fact sheet about TEFAP that is useful for educating yourself, your volunteers, and your community about this great program.
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This institution is an equal opportunity provider. |
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