Silver Award Girl Scout, Abby Fiore

Food Pantry Recipes

Abby likes to cook, try out new recipes, and volunteer at her local food pantry’s garden. She spent a summer volunteering at the garden, which led her to the realization that a lot of the garden produce goes to waste. In talking with the Garden Coordinator, who would eventually become Abby’s Project Advisor, she discovered one reason that the produce was going to waste was that patrons of the cupboard didn’t know how to cook or use the produce. For her Silver Award project, Abby decided to turn her love for cooking and concern about food waste into a creative solution — recipe handouts for food cupboard patrons!

Abby spent hours researching and testing recipes that incorporated the fresh produce grown in the pantry garden and other low-cost pre-packaged food items. Knowing that a lot of the food cupboard patrons didn’t have a lot of time to devote to cooking, Abby made sure the recipes she was testing were relatively quick to prepare. She then created cards for her favorite recipes and gave them to the food pantry, which distributes the recipes with the produce they give away.

Abby says that she developed her work ethic more through this project. “I learned that trying to relate the things that I am doing to something I’m passionate about helps.” Abby advises other girls to pick something you care about and to start early.