This year my Halloween has been extra special since I got to take part in throwing down an amazing feast at my work with my awesome coworkers and the participants of my weekly community kitchen in honour of all things creepy and crawly. Well maybe not the usual creepy crawlers around here (aka bed bugs, roaches and other things best left unmentioned.)
Community Kitchen: A Different Kind of Meal
Once a week I run a community kitchen and we make amazing food that we eat together around the table, family style. While community kitchens come in all shapes and forms they generally are reformist by design. They are a form of small scale yet powerful food activism that deliberately operates in stark contrast to the prevailing soup kitchen type arrangement low-income people are expected to feed themselves with.
For my program I purchase all the food that we prepare as opposed to using donations, unless something truly amazing comes in that I would buy if my budget permitted it. I tailor the menus to fit the nutritional needs of the participants present rather than basing my meal planning on what the food bank brings for the week. The group fosters a sense of community by working together, sharing our diverse knowledge (and some laughs--usually at my expense) over the stove and the table.
The meals we make are healthy, tasty, whole, and inspired by dishes from all corners of the world. They are also budget conscious as I only have 25$ each week which typically feeds 12-15 people.
I look forward to sharing many of our fabulous recipes in this blog.
Mega-CK-funtastic!
On the last Monday of every month with the help of my fabulous kitchen coworker Jessica, the group opens its circle to create a meal for the whole drop-in (about 100 people!) that we serve buffet style so that we can engage with everyone in a cheerful, personalised way while giving people the rare opportunity to tell us what they would like on their plate.
We always pick a theme such as Mexican fiesta, spring bounty, or fall harvest (just to name a few). The staff dress up, we select the appropriate music to play and decorate the space. It's kind of like having a Halloween party every month, which is awesome for me and secretly my main motivation to do the theme dinners (I'm half joking). Personally I am looking forward to a space theme, though I don't know yet quite what that would entail.
Its only natural that we would really go all out for the actual All Hallows Eve! For a week we centred the activities of the drop-in around decorating the space, for example by having a hyped-up pumpkin carving contest for the members a few days prior. We even got the pumpkins from a local farm thanks to one of Lookout's outreach workers--how folk activist is that! My coworker Devon who runs a comfort-food based seniors community kitchen ( I like to say mine is west-coast fusion weird) got her group to hand roll 700 meatballs the day before, a rad contribution to the event.
Outside of the kitchen all the staff and many volunteers were abuzz with decorating, testing out creepy music, tinkering with lighting and trying to find costumes from the donations for any one interested in dressing up. In the hours leading up to the actual feast the kitchen was also in full swing working on an our Halloween themed offerings.
The menu consisted of:
- A harvest curried squash and chickpea stew
- Raw coconut date balls (we rolled 100 of those puppies!)
- Brown basmati rice
- Garlicky meat balls which we decorated to look like eyes
- Green salad
The turnout was fabulous and we had so much fun, despite the fact that at one point I thought I might pass out under my mask!
Once again I was reminded of how great the people I work with are and of how fortunate I am to have a job where I am encouraged to let my creativity flow full force!
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| the food was NOT donated, but the costumes were! |
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