You Can Help Freddie Prinze Jr. And Libby's With Some 'Mindful Surfing'

Freddie Prinze Jr. and Libby’s Vegetables have joined forces this holiday season to help support Meals on Wheels America, the national organization dedicated to addressing senior hunger and isolation. 

The actor and cookbook author along with Libby’s Vegetables are asking fans to help the organization through its Thanks & Giving program which launched in 2022. And they made it super easy to help out.

Prinze took to Instagram to share three easy recipes using Libby’s Vegetables - sweet truffle corn, green beans and bacon, and sweet beets. He did all the work; all you need to do to help is to like, comment, or share his post with the hashtag #LibbysGivesThanks now through December 31. Each engagement will initiate a donation of a manufacturer coupon redeemable for a free can of Libby’s to Meals on Wheel America. 

“They approached me to do some recipes and I said ‘Yeah, okay I can probably do that.’ And they mentioned a partnership that they had with Meals on Wheels America specifically, and what their goal was and that’s something that I thought was really special,” he told The Blast exclusively.

“So, I did these three recipes, which are real simple, easy side dishes, four ingredients or less, two of the ingredients are salt and pepper, that doesn’t even count. It’s really, really simple and just added one different ingredient to make things a little bit different.”

To help the organization reach the goal of 500,000 coupons to benefit Meals on Wheels America, you just need to engage on Prinze’s Instagram post.

“They made it as easy as humanly possible for people to do. We’re usually mindlessly surfing, this could be mindful surfing, and you can do something good without putting any effort in at all and I think that makes it nice and simple for everybody,” he said.

“If you go to my Instagram page, or if you go to @libbysvegetables [on Instagram], and you like, comment, share the recipe, whatever it is you want to do, or use the hashtag #LibbysGivesThanks, then they’re gonna donate one couple redeemable for one can, up to 500,000 coupons for Meals on Wheels America. This was really awesome to me. If I can be a part of that and we can hit that 500,000 it would mean a lot.” 

One of Prinze's Libby's recipes that you'll find in his Instagram post is green beans with bacon. He said his grandmother used to make a similar version, but he made it a little bit easier.

“So my grandmother used to do it with a big old ham hock and she’d slow cook it and it was so amazing but not everyone has a ham hock laying around in the refrigerator," he said. "So I cheated it with bacon because most people have that.”

Prinze remembers the first time he learned about Meals on Wheels and that has stuck with him his entire life.

“There was an old lady who lived on my street back in New Mexico when I was a kid and Meals on Wheels, I remember, delivered food to her and I asked my mom what is that and she told me what a good organization they were,” he said. “And now I get to work with them all these years later.”

Prinze does all the holiday cooking in his house, and he's okay with that. He said he loves to cook so it's not really work for him.

"I cook three or four nights a week normally and then all the holiday meals I cook those too," he told The Blast. "But I like cooking. It’s not work when you like it.”

For Prinze, his wife Sarah Michelle Gellar and their two kids, a fun Thanksgiving tradition they have is being the home their friends go for the holiday if they have nowhere else to go.

"We call our house the stragglers house and we use it for everyone who can’t get home for the holidays or sometimes, and this is even more important, you don’t want to go home for the holidays and need that space, and people sort of create their own families as they get out of the house," he explained.

"We’ve been everything from four people, just the four of us, up to 22 people depending on the party, so that’s been our main tradition taking in everyone who can’t or does not want to go home and make sure everyone has a chair and a plate of food and a good family environment.”

In addition to acting and cooking, Prinze has a passion for horror films. His podcast, "That Was Pretty Scary" is perfect for any horror film lover to find new films to enjoy. The podcast came to be one day when he was watching a horror flick with his friend John.

"He knows everything about every horror movie ever made and has the same passion that I do for them, and we were watching a movie one day and he said, ‘Dude, we should do a podcast on horror movies,’ and I said, ‘Yes, we should.’ And that was sort of the birth of it and kinda took off from there," Prinze told The Blast.

"We only do movies we love so there’s no bad reviews. It’s only movies that we have tons of passion for and hopefully we have a bunch in our library that you haven’t seen. We even do B movies that a lot of people would never have seen like ‘Chopping Mall,’ things like the ‘The Slumber Party Massacre,’ ‘The Stuff’ starring Michael Moriarty, things like that that we love and have a passion for, and I think there’s a place for them artistically in the world and that’s the podcast world to sort of reintroduce these movies."

They also talk about mainstream films with "just as much love" and have welcomed guests on the podcast.

"Tom Holland, not the actor, but the director who did ‘Child’s Play’ came and spoke, and he did ‘Fright Night’ as well which is such an underrated horror movie. Everybody should watch ‘Fright Night,’ and it’s the best movie posters for a horror movie ever, with this great sort of shark smile in the background, it’s awesome," he said.

"And then smaller ones that didn’t get as much love, like ‘Pumpkin Head,’ Stan Winston’s first directorial debut. By the way, another great poster. Everyone should please google that when you read this, the poster for ‘Pumpkin Head’ is just, really gross, but I was gonna say it’s really beautiful, but this is cause I like horror movies. I have a lot of passion for it and I hope that that comes through in the show, I think it does, and people seem to really like it so far.”

When asked what his favorite films are of all time, you could hear the excitement in his voice. He said he has a long list but named off a few that stand out.

“‘They Live’ is my favorite movie ever, John Carpenter’s ‘They Live.’ I love every single thing about it, but it’s not just horror movies that I like," he said. "I like all the way from that to ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit,’ I think that’s an absolute masterpiece as well. And then all the way back to ‘Godfather 2’ which is the best of all the ‘Godfathers.” Those are a few, but there’s too many. There’s a long list.”