Chef Calvin Blake holds the huge, deep green, red-veined leaves up to his nose and breathes in their pungent, sassy aroma. “That smells so good—so fresh!” he exclaims, adding the bags of Giant Red Mustard leaves to his cart. “These are going to be great in salads.”

Calvin isn’t shopping for one of San Francisco’s renowned restaurants, but for the Salvation Army Meals Program, which operates meal sites and delivers hot lunches to people who are homebound.

He isn’t shopping at a restaurant wholesaler, either; he’s at the San Francisco Food Bank, which has just started receiving the yield from Slow Food Nation’s Victory Garden.

“It’s great that this was grown right here in San Francisco,” Calvin says when he learns of the produce’s origins.

Leafy greens are harvested on Monday mornings by Victory Garden volunteers, then picked up by a Food Bank truck as it makes its rounds collecting and delivering food. The produce travels to the Food Bank’s warehouse, where it’s made available to more than 600 agencies that rely on Food Bank supplies to serve San Francisco’s 150,000 hungry citizens.

For a city that seems to overflow with good food, hunger is actually a serious problem here—1 in 4 children, 1 in 3 seniors, and 1 in 5 adults are unsure of where their next meal will come from. Every day, the San Francisco Food Bank sources, collects, sorts, inspects and repackages thousands of pounds of food, then distributes it to soup kitchens, senior centers, school programs and nearly 200 grocery pantries throughout the city. Thanks to Chef Calvin’s keen eye for greens, his clients are the lucky ones who get this week’s Victory Garden bounty. He already has plans for the spicy leaves. “I’m going to slice it thin, like for slaw, and mix it with other salad greens,” he says, adding, “I love being able to work with fresh produce.”