Community Kitchens Northwest

When the room was empty at 2:40pm, I was already coming up with a revised recruitment plan, but sure enough……they started to trickle in with hunger in their eyes! It was our first day back for the new school year, continuing from a very successful club last year! The after school cooking club at Rainier Beach HS is part of CKNW’s newest program of community kitchen style cooking at schools. Our goal – simple…….cook and eat good food with us, then go home and cook and eat good food with your family and friends! Yes, the agenda is broader than that, but as long as the focus of our class is good food, we are guaranteed to have student interest!

Growing at RBUFW

The menu for our first class was veggie quesadillas. I harvested fresh kale and chard from the Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetland literally an hour before students chopped and ate it! One student’s thoughts on the veggie quesadillas……”this is bomb!” I interpret that as explosion of flavor……indeed bomb! I also wanted to talk about “culture” as it relates to our food traditions. Did you know that the quesadilla as we know it today was a mix of native Mexican foods (mostly corn, beans, chili peppers….) and Spanish influence bringing in cheese. Throwing in the concept of local and seasonal foods brought in the fresh kale and chard and created the “bomb” veggie quesadillas.

I see culture as sprouting from a place of survival. Based on our beliefs and what we have available to us, we begin to form traditions and daily practices. On the food theme, this may flower into a tradition like Thanksgiving or a fast like Ramadan, or Kosher foods. In a broader sense of culture, it may blossom into an art form like Capoeira Angola, or a pop song like Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”- reflections of our beliefs, ideas, and way of survival.

What’s your culture? How does it affect the way you live, or the food you eat?

Next week we’ll be making individual pizzas. Stay tuned to see how we make our pizzas explode with flavor and use fresh produce from the farm!

By Rebecca Pearson

Here’s an update on Central Washington University’s community kitchen program! 

Student health assessment data in Spring 2011 showed that  CWU students would like to cook and eat healthy meals together with friends in a way that is socially supportive and builds skills. We hosted focus groups to get student input as to how such an activity should be structured and, with the help of student co-planners, implemented a pilot series of three evenings titled “Campus Dine & Tote” during winter and spring 2012 quarters using campus food lab facilities. We received very positive feedback; most students attended two or more of the evenings, and all said they’d love to see it happen again in future.

July 10, 2012 5:30-8:30pm

• Reviewed goal of coalition – networking, skill sharing/building, shared resources where it works and makes sense.
• Seattle Tilth is in the process of clarifying what membership of this coalition entails: benefits, roles, commitments
• Cristina from FEEST announced an exciting grant they recently received which will support them to offer a training in Seattle on the FEEST model. Stay tuned for more details on when and where that will be.
• The hands-on workshop on fermentation with Julie and Richard was very well received and everyone went home with a quart of fresh made sauerkraut. Feedback was that having more hands on kitchen type skill building is very desired. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for skill building that would benefit your work in food and the community.
• Each kitchen drew out a resource map of their kitchen, including where there kitchen is run out of, population served, goal of kitchen, leadership, funding/food sources, partners, and what model they use, ie. Cook and eat together.
• Next meeting Sept 25, final confirmation with location will be sent in early September.

We discussed challenges for kitchens and skill building ideas:

Have you been looking to volunteer with CKNW?  Here’s a message from Leika with a lot of great opportunities!

A Sunny Hello to Everyone!

Many of you have expressed interest in volunteering for Community Kitchens Northwest, some are already involved, and for some of you, this may be the first time that you’ve heard from me.  Thank you for offering your time and skills to our program and I hope that each of you will have an opportunity to get involved.

There are several opportunities that have opened up that I want to let everyone know about, please respond to me with your specific interest and from there I will be connecting you with the appropriate person.

Ongoing cooking clubs:   these clubs meet every week for the remainder of the school year, anywhere from 8-25 students participate

• Rainier Beach High School – Thursdays 2:45-4:30pm
• Ballard High School – Mondays afterschool 
• Seattle World School (Miller Community Center on Capitol Hill) – Fridays afterschool
• Nathan Hale High school (Meadowbrook Community Center in north Seattle)  Wednesdays 3-5pm

One time events:

• May 12 – tabling at a church event promoting community kitchens/good food bags – south Seattle
• May 24 – catering 600 appetizers for Multicultural School Event
• June 15 – BBQ at Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetland (RBUFW) – this is part of our community dinner series
• July 14 – cooking for the Community Alliance for Global justice (CAGJ) fundraising dinner – Supporting Local Economies Everywhere (SLEE)

Please let me know if you have any specific questions. Thanks you again for being willing to volunteer with our organization!

Leika Suzumura
Community Kitchen Program Manager, Seattle Tilth

leikasuzumura@seattletilth.org
www.seattletilth.org

Lots of well chopped nuts make the granola bars taste great.

From Martha Baskin and Green Acre Radio here is a lovely piece on the after-school cooking program at Aki Kurose Middle school.  Thanks Martha! 

Come into the kitchen, the community kitchen, the smells are irresistible. Community Kitchens Northwest are part of a growing trend to make “scratch” cooking fun while improving food security in vulnerable communities. So, we visit a kitchen at a middle school where the chefs are 6th and 7th graders.  More courtesy of Crosscut…

• Feb 16, 2012:  Healthy kale chips, ’super hero salad’ and ranch dressing
• Feb 15, 2012:  Cooking healthy meals with Community Kitchens Northwest,  Community Kitchens NW is a free program through Seattle Tilth that gathers people in the community together in a common kitchen to learn how to cook nutritious meals and then build community by eating together.
• Feb 23, 2012:  Community Kitchens See what’s cookin’ when a whole community hits the kitchen at the same time.