The fall season brings with it wonderful things…recipes that have gathered dust during the summer months, hot homemade soups to warm our hearts, and the holidays bring out our giving spirit, leading many to a fair amount of charity work. The season also brings the temptations of going off our diets, the permission to partake in gluttony, and the guilt of doing so – Add to that family and you have a crazy formula for disaster or glee.

What we discovered when investigating this subject was a surprise. As a community, we use food as a fundraiser, a friend to comfort us when we feel lonely or stressed, and a vehicle for building community. Our relationship with food is complex at times; a good portion of us have issues with self-esteem and body image. Food is used in some many ways in our community, it is amazing what we do with it, even with the unhealthy aspects.

Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), Our House, Cascade AIDS Project (CAP,) and many other non-profits have wielded the power of food to make change in our state a reality. BRO raises a good portion of its funds with two food events: Bites for Rights and its annual Dinner and Auction. Our House has an annual dinner series that has the culinary arts community as the center piece. Dinner at My House for Our House is celebrating another successful year with 66 dinners! CAP does the same with their annual evening of Art and Auction. Thousands upon thousands of dollars raised every year…Food is pretty powerful isn’t it?

Here, you’ll see how important food is in our LGBTIQ community, what role it plays in building the community’s strength, some not so great facts, and we uncover a few resources for you and
your families.

Buy Local & Consciously

On of the major reasons Just Out newspaper has survived for the past 27 years is because of our community’s commitment to buying local and supporting ally and LGBTIQ owned businesses. We have shown great strength in numbers with our buying power and it has helped Just Out, the hundreds of businesses that support it, and members of Portland Area Business Association (PABA,) our LGBTIQ chamber of commerce.
This community commitment is evident with local farmers and locally produced products. You see this at work when you go to a farmers market in Portland. We dare you to go through a farmers market without seeing at least two LGBTIQ couples. We have always had the Buy Local in our shopping DNA. The practice supports many ecosystems, but the main one is money circulating through our community.

For the swath of the higher earning members of our community, Whole Foods and New Seasons is a luxury the rest of the community does not have available. Both stores are a luxury a lot of us can’t afford, the economy making it even more unattainable. Have you seen their prices? Buying organic is already expensive, these stores make it even more so.

Where do you go if these two are supposedly the only alternative? Simple: Coop grocery stores. Some of us haven’t even given this option a chance, thinking they are for straight-up hippies, with their patchouli wafting through the isles. This perception is changing, and we may have the economy to thank for it. Coop grocery stores began in the 60’s and have continued with their same values and mission for years. The Coop grocery stores of today are thriving and getting bigger in Oregon. Best of all? They are community owned!
Like choosing a credit union rather than a commercial bank, coop grocery stores are owned and run by its members. Membership is open to anyone. The commitment to organic and local products makes coops a perfect choice and substitute for the New Seasons and Whole Foods options. You can count on all the groceries you buy have already been through a selection process that specifies: Fair labor practices, organic, and sustainable production practices, and direct from the farm choices when available.
Coops are built and created by the community, many of them started with members own money to get them off the ground. From the start, they are guided by the voices and concerns of the members and their community. Being community centric, they offer more than just groceries. Many offer cooking classes (especially to low income families,) neighborhood clean-up events, and farm tours. How often do you get to see where your produce actually comes from?

Check out our resources page to find the Coop store in your neighborhood.

Share The Abundance

Gardeners know the drill come harvest time…you can only eat so many tomatoes, and your friends an neighbors can only take so much. You don’t want to start going out at night and leaving your excess produce on a stranger’s porch. Those of us who do garden, the bounty can get overwhelming, even if the abundance was unintended. What do you do with all of this left over produce?

There are alternatives, one of the best is to donate your produce to the Oregon Food Bank (OFB). The food bank has a Harvest-Share program where low income families can come to a farmers market-like set up to shop for fresh produce at no charge. The OFB gathers and salvages a good amount of produce from local farmers and wholesale produce companies.

Another opportunity is the Portland Yard Share program or the Growing Gardens organization. With Portland Yard Share, the main function is to share your yard with neighbors, if you have plenty of room for a garden. This program is also helpful if you do have room for a garden, but have either neglected it or you just haven’t had the time to get it going. Their website allows you to post a listing to offer up your yard space, and you can find a garden space to help with. The main mission of this organization is to make it possible for the community to access healthy, local, and organic food. Many people in our communities would love to garden but don’t have the room, this is an almost instant solution! (www.yardsharing.org/where.html)

Growing Gardens is a non-profit that works to build organic, raised-bed vegetable gardens in back yards, front yards, and balconies. The group supports low-income families up to three years with seed, plants, classes, and mentors. One of their most admirable traits is their mission to grow the next generation of healthy veggie eaters, teaching children to garden and respect the environment. Growing Gardens also accepts left over produce, but do check with them to be sure they can accept what you have.

Our Relationship with Food

(This issue opened up a massive vat of interest and complexity. We are setting aside an issue to tackle this discussion in full and hopefully have some solutions, ideas and suggestions on the topic.)

Food is an instrumental part of our survival. We either have it or don’t. Except for the portion of us that grow some of our food, we get most of our food from a store. Unless you get your produce from a number of coop grocery stores, choose local only choices at Whole Foods or New Seasons, you get produce shipped from outside of the state or country. Most of the time, we can get anything we want, no matter the time of year. This abundance does not always work in our favor.

Our relationship with food has dramatically changed over generations. Necessity has been overridden with social pressures and emotional reactions. Food is used to comfort us when in need, not just for hunger. Hollywood, the fashion industry and the LGBTIQ community itself have created a homogenized, unrealistic picture of what beauty is, and we fall for it. We choose food to fill voids in our lives, or reject it to attain the perfect body.

Hundreds of studies show that gay men and women have a higher risk of an eating disorder than their heterosexuals. Not surprising when you take into account all of the psychological issues we have to deal with: fear of being outed, having a total distrust and therefore disdain for the opposite sex, traumatizing parental upbringing, being shunned or severed from family, HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drugs.

For gay men, Matthew Brooks, a Seattle therapist, states, “Many people believe, probably correctly, that the grossly idealized images so pervasive in [gay] culture are partly responsible for the skewed, compromised self-esteem that many gay men have. While there is truth to this idea, it’s more likely the case that eating disorders develop when there are many factors at work over time, including family pressures, shame, and mixed messages about food, appearance, and weight. This all leads to bewilderment about one’s sexuality as well as those impossible standards from mass culture.”

Gay men live in an image focused community, where most ads, mainstream movies and T.V. shows reinforce what gay male ideal beauty is. Gay men are more image conscious and most of the time go to the gym frequently, and get the full manicure treatment (waxing, manicures and botox.) Even so, gay men are more prone to eating disorders than straight men or women overall.

For gay men who are overweight you have “The Bears” and so called “Chub Clubs,” (overweight bisexual or gay men and the slim men that are attracted to them,) “Chubby Chasers” and the like. More times than not, overweight gay men get a pass.
This is where men differ from women in society: even in our own community we carry the fat double standard. Gay men get a pass for being overweight, lesbians don’t. Lesbians only get a pass within the their community…it seems our community in tandem with society doesn’t care if your gay. Just being a woman means you shouldn’t be 200 pounds or more.

Lesbians are fortunate in one sense. Women find that their physical form isn’t a big deal amongst their own like-minded sisters. Coming out can be a huge relief, and the shackles of a male dominated society to be thin are thrown aside. Can this go too far? Obesity is higher in lesbians than in straight women. So much higher that many studies have been done to try and figure out why.

As stated earlier, we intend to tackle this issue in a future edition of id Magazine. The body image catastrophe we have in the community is a subject so complex and daunting, we decided to assign an entire issue on the subject. If you have any views on the subject, do feel free to contact us to give your opinion.

Building Community

The Oregon LGBTIQ populace has used food as a way to foster new friendships and build community. There are a number of groups that meet monthly, a gathering of like-minded people, with either an interest in cooking or intended as a social networking function.
Most of these groups are started by a small group of people, feeling a need in the community to come together. The catch here is that they crop up out of genuine community building and strengthening social circles. Rarely are they formed for political agendas or social causes. These groups are a true beauty of Oregon’s LGBTIQ community and its history. Some have been around for decades, others a few years old. Finding them can be a challenge for someone moving into the state, so we’ve hunted them down for you.

Cook Boys event…David Lefitz at far right of Go Outside Landscaping

In Portland, Cook Boys, has been getting together over good food for a number of years. As it was told to id Magazine’s Christian Messer, “Cook Boys started out as a very competitive, serious cooks gathering,” a member recalled. Over the years, it has grown and been relaxed. It now is a large potluck dinner, usually hosted by a member at their home. Every month a theme is picked, whether it be, “Your Grandma’s Kitchen” to “Hawaiian Luau.” Any Oregon gay men are welcome, and most newcomers just show up at the designated host home with a dish appropriate to the theme.

Soy Boys

Soy Boys is a vegan group that was spun off of the Cook Boys model. They can be reached at veggieguys@aol.com

Lavender Womyn Potlucks and More

Lavender Womyn is a lesbian social group created in 2003 with the first chapter in Salem, Oregon. Since then they have had added chapters throughout Oregon and Washington; even chapters in New Hampshire and Kentucky. For Oregon, there are chapters in Salem, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis-Albany, Grants Pass, Tillamook and Yamhill County. If you’d like to start your own chapter, the group encourages it and an e-mail is all you’ll need to start, at salem@lavenderwomyn.com

The group started out as an idea over dinner, a potluck was planned, and the guests expected were about six total. However, the creators extended the invitation out to more Womyn they knew. Before they knew it, the house was filled with lesbians and children, a smashing hit!

They continued the potlucks gatherings every month, for four months. It was then decided to give the group an official name, “Wild Lavender Women” won the vote. After taking in some considerations about “Wild” being in the name and the misinterpretations that may create, the name was then changed to “Lavender Woymen.”

Since then, this network has done amazing things for its members, even if that is just a friend to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. If you go their website and read the testimonials, you’ll get a taste of how extraordinary this spontaneously formed network is and why you should check it out.

To expand the network further, they have a personals section and database. As it says on their site, “This is another way of connecting singles, couples and families. You can search the database for friendships, relationships, and find singles, couples or families of similar interests. You can create you own profile, upload photos, chat, IM, blog, and much more. We have reached over a thousand members, and have members from other countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, and more!!”
http://www.lavenderwomyn.com/chapters.html

The Adventure Group

Founded in 1986, The Adventure Group has a long history of planning kayaking, skiing, hiking and numerous other outdoor activities for the Portland, Oregon LGBTIQ community. There are minimal annual membership dues to pay for the group to continue running. Dues are affordable, and they can guarantee they are less than your gym membership!

The food part comes in at The Adventure Group’s monthly potluck, meet at Hobo’s if you’re a hockey fan in November, and a Holiday party in December. All of these events are members or member guests only. One interesting event they host is the PDeXchange, where they host an extravaganza of events for the weekend and invite members of fellow LGBTIQ adventure groups in the Northwest to come and participate. The Adventure Group members open their homes to provide lodging for their out of town guests.

Mix and Make Your Own

We’ve heard from you, the community, about other groups or gatherings, but to be honest, there is no true place to go for all of this information. If you have a group that has food at its center as a means to socially gather, we’d love to add you to our list. In the future there will be a single website that can serve as a portal or one-stop-shop for all community social groups.

Many of you have T.V. show viewing parties, “Sex and The City” and “Queer As Folk” were some mentioned to us in conversation. Others we’ve heard of involve any number of aspects that shape the LGBTIQ community. Why not start a group yourself? Your life and social circle could expand beyond anything you imagined.

Is There Community Hunger?

In our research and our experience, we found the Oregon Food Bank (OFB) does a great job feeding the hungry in the state of Oregon. Even as terrific as the OFB is, there are times when it cannot always match the demand and is put under a lot of strain. In our community, if we are to “look after our own,” where is our LGBTIQ community food bank?

Is it not a good idea? Would you have to prove you were LGBTIQ? Would it be abused? Surely there are many, many lesbian mothers with children who are having a rough time in this economy. One could also bet there are hundreds of LGBTIQ members who’ve been laid off or worse, fired. Where do these people, our people, go other than the Oregon Food Bank?

We do have here in Portland Esther’s Pantry and Todd’s Closet, but these are specifically for those living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately we as a community came together in that time of need, when our friends and family were dying and had no resource of clothing and food. Many of those affected had no income because their illness kept them from working.

With or without the current economy, there must be a need in our community for something like this. The Oregon Food Bank served 897,000 people in 2008/2009. If we use the 10% formula*, then last year alone, there were 89,700 LGBTIQ residents using the Oregon Food Bank (purely a guesstimate.) Why have we not done anything about it? Are we too exhausted by all the other things that we do for our numerous non-profits? Have we assumed that most LGBTIQ Oregonians are more likely to have adequate income or can rely on friends and family during unemployment? Has it even been tried, and if so, why hasn’t it worked? We searched high and low and found nothing.

One thing is certain: the OFB is completely LGBTIQ friendly and doesn’t stand for discrimination. This may be why the OFB has always had a great relationship with our community. Many of us volunteer individually or as a team. Every year around Pride, a LGBTIQ volunteer day is set aside for all of the community to come and participate. There are numerous tasks to be done, packing bulk dry goods into containers for a family of four, making buttons for the Waterfront Jazz festival, and other important tasks to complete.

Volunteering isn’t the only option. You could hold your own food drive! These are called independent food drives and anyone can do it. The OFB website has a Food and Fund Drive Kit for anyone download. This is great option for companies or any groups that have plenty of people to make it a success. However, they encourage everyone to do so…no matter how small or large your group or donation is. During the summer and fall months, if you have a garden and have a ton of tomatoes or any usable produce, you can drop them off at the food bank or at a number of nurseries. (See our online resource page for locations)

*The unscientific formula that 10% of the population is LGBTIQ