RainyDayChefs
2022 Summer Announcement
In early June of this summer, three of our most involved volunteers- Arnav, Disha, and Ashwika- had the idea to participate in the bake sale of our local elementary school. Since we had chosen to make biscottis, I had the opportunity to organize and help make 12 batches of them - which amounts to 300 servings! During the bake sale, we gave out the biscottis to many kids and their families, and we made around $ 500. We were able to donate this money to the PAWS, an organization that works toward rescuing and rehabilitating local wildlife.
In July/August, my elementary school teacher approached me through IACS (Indian American Community Services) to teach a summer camp for their mom and kids group for three consecutive Thursdays. Most of the kids in this camp were under the age of 6, so I had to come up with something more fun and interactive to keep them engaged. I ended up teaching them about basic nutrition- how they should eat all of the food groups during each meal. I brought in simple foods to help them put together a light, well-balanced meal. For the first week, we made coleslaw sandwiches, chickpea salad, and fruit kebabs. After this day, we realized that the kids needed the food activity to be a little more interesting.
During the second week, we created a theme- which was a “food garden”. We made little “garden pots”, which consisted of a little cup filled with hummus and carrots and celery sticking in it, and we also made little “ladybugs” with a mini mozzarella ball dotted with balsamic glaze on a toothpick with half a grape as the “head”, placed on a lettuce leaf. This was a big hit with the moms and the kids!
This inspired me to create another theme for our last class. We decided on a “food sky”, which was a “sun” made of orange slices, “kites” made with saltine crackers, guacamole, cheese slices, and string cheese for the “kite strings”, halved green grapes for “plants”, and popcorn for the “clouds”. This was my first time interacting with such little kids. It was super fun for me to come up with various ideas to encourage kids to healthy, and it was very heartwarming to be a part of my community.
Last week, before my SAT, I had another invitation to cater a tea party for Kare4Kids fundraiser. While Nitya worked on recruiting our volunteers to make sandwiches and finger foods and biscottis, I made 60 lemon ricotta cupcakes and a lemon ricotta cake for the cake dash. A big shout out to Ashwika who made the sandwiches with her mom, our newest volunteer and a chef in his own rights, Anshul, Amar, who has won a baking championship on a television show, and Arya, our youngest volunteer who baked biscottis for this tea party. Amar and Anshul’s biscottis were put up for a silent auction. We are thrilled to know our tea party helped raise 30,000$ for the Seattle Children’s Cancer Institute. Without our volunteers, this would not be possible.
As I’m now a junior at EHS, I am looking forward to helping out Nitya, Ashwika, Arnav, and Disha to take on more tasks at Rainydaychefs and in a year while helping them learn the ropes of updating recipes, blogging and helping garner more kids to join RainyDayChefs!
