Food Forward, Sharing Abundance & Stuffed Cabbage with Rick Nahmias

On this episode of Taste Buds with Deb, host Debra Eckerling speaks with Rick Nahmias, founder and CEO of Food Forward. The nonprofit recovers surplus produce that would go to waste and distributes it to agencies who feed the hungry.   “We're the Robin Hoods of produce,” Nahmias explains. “We recover it, we refrigerate it, and then we redistribute it.”    While Food Forward is based in Los Angeles, their work reaches the entire Southwest. It launched in 2009. Nahmias, who walked his dog around his neighborhood in San Fernando Valley, says that as his dog got older, the walks got slower, and he started to notice all this fruit on trees that was going to waste.   “Maybe a few went to someone's office or the family that had the tree, but for the most part, it was going to squirrels, rats and under car wheels,” he says. Nahmias organized volunteers to harvest the fruit and donated the first few harvests to SOVA.   “They took the produce and said, ‘Great, when's the next delivery?’” Nahmias recalls.    By the end of that first year they rescued and distributed 100,000 pounds of hand picked produce. By the second year, they rescued 250,000 pounds. Today, they move more than 250,000 pounds on a slow day.   What started by rescuing food from local fruit trees has turned into a bounty of abundance. Agencies get produce to give to those who are food insecure; volunteers get to participate in meaningful community service; farmers have less waste, which helps the environment. It’s the ultimate win-win-win situation.    Rick Nahmias talks about Food Forward and its evolution, the joy of sharing abundance, and his grandmother’s stuffed cabbage recipe, which you can get at JewishJournal.com/podcasts.     “I don't talk about a glass half-full or a glass half-empty,” Nahmias said. “When I talk about Food Forward, I come at it from a glass overflowing.”   Learn more at FoodForward.org. For more from Taste Buds, subscribe on iTunes and YouTube, and follow @TheDEBMethod on social media.