PWCS School Food and Nutrition Services has changed the look and format of its website to feature new and exciting nutrition education tools, bright colors, Café Corner articles, featured monthly recipes, and more. Parents can still access all links that the prior web page had.

The PWCS Annual Food Show will be held at Patriot High School in Nokesville on Tuesday, March 15. The tastings are open to the first 1,000 county students, parents, and staff to sign up in advance. There will be two tastings, one from 6–7 p.m. and a second from 7–8 p.m.

Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) announced Jan. 11 that a federal appropriation of $279,488 for calendar year 2016 will allow 5,000 low-income, senior Virginians to receive a monthly allotment of food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Harris Teeter grocery products will likely travel a shorter distance and get to Prince William County area supermarkets sooner with the opening of a new distribution center in Caroline County, south of Fredericksburg. Harris Teeter plans to invest $95 million to establish a 1.5 million-square-foot food distribution operation, with the first phase at least 650,000 square feet or about 15 acres.

"In the Midst of Plenty" was written by author and journalist Ben Bagdikin almost 50 years ago about poverty in America. The subject is still true today. Even in the affluent Haymarket-Gainesville areas, poverty and hunger still exist in the midst of plenty. David and Joan Gifford, along with two teams of volunteers, formed Crossroads-Connection to assist with poverty in their own backyards.

Governor Terry McAuliffe says he will seek a total of $1,074,000 in his proposed biennial budget in order to meet unmet demand and move the Commonwealth closer to ending childhood hunger. This is up from $537,000 for 244 schools in the last budget.

A community tradition, the Thanksgiving Day Dinner at Old Bridge United Methodist Church in Lake Ridge, is taking a year off, but will return in 2016. Old Bridge has hosted the dinner for some 20 years.

Virginians will be able to feed their families a Thanksgiving meal for less than $4.50 per person this year, according to an informal price survey conducted by the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation.