Food

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- When public health officials conducted a routine inspection of Quiznos in Urbana last month, they discovered 12 critical health-code violations.

They included a “bag of brown lettuce found soaking in liquid in [the] walk-in cooler;” vegetables, cheese and salad dressings stored at improper temperatures; and employees cleaning cutting boards and knives without a proper sanitizer. When inspection was finished Quiznos had scored a negative 22 on the district’s 100-point grading scale.

As a result, inspectors from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District suspended Quiznos health permit on Sept. 26 and temporarily closed the restaurant at 114 N. Vine St.

See CU-CitizenAccess.org's coverage of the 5th Annual Hunger Symposium in Central Illinois, as reported by Landon Cassman.

Do You Know How Your Favorite Restaurants Fare in Public Health Inspections? from Illinois Public Media on Vimeo.

By Hannah Meisel/For CU-CitizenAccess/ For the past month, the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen at 124 W. White Street in Champaign and other local food pantries have been Katara Raab’s only means of feeding herself and her two-year-old son.

Raab was homeless, bouncing around from place to place every few nights. To make matters worse, she had not received her monthly Link card because the paperwork never came in the mail.  (The Link card makes it possible for her to buy food through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.) Raab may not receive her next Link card for another month.

She recently found housing in Champaign, but she still relies on soup kitchens and food pantries to meet her food needs.

CU-CitizenAccess/There are two places in Champaign County that are considered food deserts according to a new map launched today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The two spots – one located in north Urbana and the second near Rantoul – have nearly 2,000 people with low access to healthy foods.

The Internet-based mapping tool pinpoints the location of "food deserts" around the country and provides data on population characteristics of census tracts where residents have limited access to affordable and nutritious foods.

By Landon Cassman/CU-CitizenAccess — Dozens of shivering men and women lined up Saturday at 6 a.m. outside First United Methodist Church, waiting in the season’s first snow for the doors to open so they could get food from the Eastern Illinois Foodbank Foodmobile.

The food pantry wasn’t scheduled to open until 10, but volunteers from the Foodbank and United Way decided that they’d get an early start distributing more than 8,000 pounds of food, enough to feed 150 families.

Eric Westerlund, AFL-CIO Community Services Liaison for the United Way, said the East Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council paid the $2,000 fee to bring the Foodmobile to Rantoul.

By Julie Wurth/The News-Gazette/CHAMPAIGN — About 30 people lined up for opening day at the new Daily Bread Soup Kitchen a year ago, then strictly a sandwiches-and-chips operation.

Today that number has quadrupled, with an average of 125 people showing up five days a week for a hot meal, conversation and, sometimes, a welcoming hug.

Forced out on its own by the Catholic Worker House in August 2009, the soup kitchen moved down the street and reopened a month later at New Covenant Fellowship, 124 W. White St., C.

By Pam G. Dempsey — Champaign native Miesha Jones spends the $315 a month she receives in federal food assistance benefits at Sam’s Club.

Jones, the single mother of a three-year-old daughter, usually takes her monthly shopping trip to the bulk food club or, on occasion, Wal-Mart.

CHAMPAIGN – There's always a line at the Salt and Light food pantry, where experienced customers know to come early for a good spot in line.