Kindness Cafe Cooks Up Connections
By Jade Fisher, Communications Specialist
Ballard Food Bank believes in connection - the connection to resources, and the connection through food that happens every single day in our community hub. Recently, our innovative and talented Kindness Café staff launched our first ever cooking class. The pilot class brought together community members to prepare and enjoy a dish side by side.
Led by the café team of Bri Sherman, Nat Schwartz, and Cavan Sperry, the class featured recipes for a European-style lemon and herb whole roasted chicken, garlic broccoli, and creamy mashed potatoes.
We invited Ballard Food Bank guests living in local permanent supportive housing to practice our values in centering equity and relationships with one another and our community. These particular supportive housing units exist for community members who have previously experienced homelessness. The café’s goals for this class were to increase food safety knowledge and build confidence in our client’s home cooking with the tools they already have. The lesson included food safety tips, hand washing protocol, mitigating cross contamination, and technical cooking skills like preparing mis en place and active cook time.
Self-sufficiency and community truly are at the heart of this event. Bri, Nat, and Cavan thoughtfully picked this menu because it can be stretched into many meals when made at home. But it also serves as a perfect meal to eat in communion!
One guest, Javier, is quite comfortable in his kitchen skills. He often cooks just for himself but finds that he is usually preparing only about a day’s worth of food at a time.
“This is a helpful recipe to have! Learning to roast a chicken is at least a few days’ worth of food. I can even feed another person when I do have a guest over.”
I sat next to Javier as he carefully followed Bri’s demonstration and spatchcocked a whole chicken for the first time! Bri Sherman led the class and explained each step in great detail so everyone could understand the processes that would make them successful home cooks.
Raul Daniel, a guest visiting once or twice a week because he says the café menu is always good, mentioned “I am so excited to take the opportunity to learn from your talented and kind staff.” Raul Daniel said, “I am just a grateful guy, and I cannot say enough how wonderful it is to do this alongside you and share the meal afterwards. It is truly special.”
Martha, in a mix of Spanish and English, explained her appreciation in being able to learn and share space as a group while having a beautiful time. Though she cooks chicken often at home, today’s recipe is a new addition to her repertoire. “I am eager to learn and master a new recipe and I am just so happy that we are here together doing that.”
With plates and cutlery set up, excited conversations were shared across the table: ways to use the chicken throughout multiple meals, herbs to add in future iterations, and lists of guests they will invite over when they recreate the meal at home.
The camaraderie present in the room was unmistakable after cooking alongside each other and eating the fruits of their collective labor. Smiles, laughter, and plates were passed around the room as we dined. We were all greatly fulfilled by the act of simply sitting down, connecting, and sharing a homemade meal with each other.
With the success of the pilot class, the team plans to offer cooking classes once per month and will have interpreters or translation services for participants who RSVP with their preferred language. I’m looking forward to seeing what the team and our talented community members cook up next!