What's a Community Kitchen?

by Katherine Gustafson · 2010-01-14 06:00:00 UTC
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In a food-production universe where the little guy seems to be frozen out most of the time, American communities have a few great tools with which to retaliate against the agribusiness trend.

One is the Internet. Another is mobile slaughterhouses. And yet one more is community kitchens.

What, you might ask, are those?

Community kitchens are just whey they sound like: food-preparation facilities that can be used by communities. What makes this more than just another coffee klatch at the neighbor's house is that these kitchens are officially open to everyone. And larger ones can be commercially certified, so that cooks who prepare things here can sell their products, according to Come to the Table (pdf).

A community kitchen doesn't have to be a big to-do. It can comprise a single pressure canner available to all. More comprehensive, certified kitchens, however, might offer commercial dehydrators, mixers, ovens, freezers, work tables and sinks.

I'm imagining Kitchen Stadium from "Iron Chef," only my mom and all my neighbors are in the middle of it.

This type of kitchen can be a major boon to a community, especially one without many other resources. People can offer cooking classes at the facility to help others learn how to make best use of local food. Families can use the kitchen to preserve their summer food by canning, pickling, making jams and jellies and drying herbs.

The commercially-certified status of some of these kitchens (like this one in Tennessee or this one in North Carolina or thesein the Northwest) means that entrepreneurs can make a go of a fledgling business and farmers can expand their work with food beyond the fields. The kitchen can also serve as a community food pantry for communal eating or for storage to help during hard times.

As many great purposes as these kitchens can serve, one of the most important, it seems to me, is providing a sense of community and a central place for the food-life of the local population. We are sorely missing that in this country, so these little flickering revitalizations of community life provide a lot of hope for positive change.

Photo credit: stock.xchng

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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