RainyDayChefs
June 20th, 2020
We are back! It hasn’t been easy for us to deliver food this year, so we decided to change things up for this month. We really missed donating food to the shelters from February to May of this year. We had to find creative ways to serve our community. First of all, due to Covid-19, we had to take extra precautions while cooking. We wore masks and made sure to wash our hands often while making the food in order to ensure cleanliness and prevent contamination. Secondly, this month it wasn’t just me, Neha, and Ria. Instead, we created a group with multiple families who were interested in helping out during this cookout. We had kid volunteers from 10 families who wanted to be part of this effort. We coordinated it so everyone cooks in their own home to maintain social distancing. Ria experimented making videos of different recipes that we wanted to use for this cookout and the volunteers followed these recipes. These video instructions proved to be very helpful for the young volunteers to follow during the cookout. The meals that we made consisted of pasta salad, chicken salad sandwiches, veggie sandwiches, and red velvet cake for dessert. We initially signed up to serve meals for 35 women at The Sophia Way shelter but with more volunteers interested in contributing, we ended up signing up for meals to serve 70 women! Neha coordinated with all the volunteers to track meals that volunteers signed up for and also coordinating meal drop offs on June 20th. Overall, this experience was different, and I think that we should do cookouts like as an option in the future. It helps us serve more food when the community comes together.
Here are a few words from some of the children that helped make this cookout possible.
Neha (not to be confused with Neha from RDC) said: “It felt really really good to make something for people who don’t have the privileges that many do. I really enjoyed the experience of making these cupcakes and I hope they enjoy it!!”
Arnav and Disha said: “Making the pasta salad, we learned a lot about the ingredients like what happens when mozzarella is stored in herb oil gives the cheese extra flavor or when you cut cherry tomatoes some of them explode when you cut. We really enjoyed the experience and now we have a new dish to make and eat. We made this dish again with extra Mozzarella and no capsicum and it was yummy. While making the dish, we had an amazing feeling that this would feed people in need. We can’t wait to cook again!”
Ashwari said “Thank you for giving an opportunity to help with this noble cause.”
Anya and Arya said: “I loved the experience making the sandwiches. I do not know how they taste. But I hope that they taste good. I love cooking too. I liked when we cooked.
I loved cooking the chicken salad sandwiches because there were so many and it makes me happy. Thank you for the good chance.”
Here are some more pictures from our other wonderful volunteers, thank you all! We couldn't have done this without all of your support. We thank you very much for supporting this cause and hopefully you enjoyed making all the food as well.
