Off topic – I’m going to Congress!

Posted on May 10, 2014 by floricooks

I’m getting ready to go to Washington DC to advocate Congress with my fellow AJWS Global Justice Fellowship fellows for passage of the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA). It now has bipartisan support in both the House and Senate and resonates deeply with so many of us right now in light of the kidnappings in Nigeria of hundreds of teenage girls from the school where they were hoping for and working toward a different future. Passage of IVAWA is part of AJWS’ current campaign called We Believe. I wrote a bit about the campaign on this blog in November when I traveled to Oaxaca and Mexico City to meet groups there working to end gender-based violence and to improve indigenous land rights. I was deeply moved by the dedication and fearlessness of the women (and the men who support them) that I met on that trip.

But it came home to me in a different way yesterday. Anyone who knows me knows that trip preparations involve getting my brows groomed. That is done at a threading salon where I love watching the Bollywood music videos while I wait for my turn with the beautiful Sapna. As one would expect this week, she asked if I had Mothers Day plans. I told her that I would be missing my usual excursion with my daughter and granddaughter this year and why. Tears welled and she told me that a school friend of hers, now a journalist, works to change the attitude in India and that it is a hard sell. She said that women give their daughters as young as 12 or 13 to marry older men, some with one or more wives already, saying that it happened to them so why not to their daughters. She hugged me and said, “Please ask them in Washington to help.”

8th b-dayI had explained IVAWA to 8-year-old Amanda last week – very simply – she knows that some women are abused here in the US and worldwide, but she was shocked by the concept of child marriage. She said this was a good reason to miss Mothers Day.

 

You can learn more about IVAWA and We Believe at the AJWS website.

We believe that love is not a crime. We believe that women and men deserve to live lives free of violence and intimidation. We believe that it is our responsibility as a nation to do three things to promote human rights in the developing world: Stop violence against women and girls; Stop hate crimes against LGBT people; and Empower girls to end child marriage. IVAWA would give US agencies working overseas tools to accomplish some of this.

You can be part of this too. Urge your representative to get this bill passed and signed in a hurry. Raise your voice. Be part of the change.

OK, now I’m ready to go.

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This VENTURE will be a superb ADventure!

Posted on April 17, 2014 by floricooks

This is news too exciting not to share in every place that I connect with people around food.

OpenBannerSquareKnifeL.A. Kitchen, the great new nonprofit I am part, of is featured in the Wall Street Journal today.

If you are local to LA, please join us on May 1 as we celebrate this major step on the road to a new way of feeding people in need and offering self sufficiency to young people aging out of foster care and older adults returning to society to lead productive, secure lives after incarceration.

I could not be more proud to be part of this! As my tagline for this blog say – I cook; I feed; I eat. L.A. Kitchen covers the first two on that list nicely. I’m so very lucky to get to do the work I do.

 

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Simple things make me happy

Posted on April 13, 2014 by floricooks

Avoiding my big brother’s comments that my matzo balls should be called cannon balls and remarks about how you could tell the ones I made from the ones mom made because mine had big thumb prints in them has been a lifelong pursuit of mine. …and he’s coming for Seder this year…along with a bunch of my guy friends from temple. Let’s just say I REALLY want my matzo balls to be floaters not sinkers in the worst way.

So, I am going to go all the way with a technique that I have used in part – substituting seltzer for the water or stock called for in the recipe (I use the recipe from the Manischewitz box even though I won’t buy their products since this week’s sale to Bain Capital…ugh! That’s another post). Anyway I put seltzer on my shopping list – expecting to buy bottled seltzer, a distant 2nd best to the real thing. Whole Foods – NONE. Trader Joe’s – NONE. So, since it was convenient I made a pass at Galco’s Soda Pop Stop, a great store that sells sodas from all over the world in GLASS, made with SUGAR not high fructose corn syrup. They also used to be the last place that the siphons of my childhood (and my parents’ childhood) could still be purchased, but that stopped several years ago when the son of the man who used to deliver all over Los Angeles became ill. Well, to my great joy, either he has covered and gone back to work or someone else has picked up the reins. So I have seltzer – real deal 2¢ plain (well, probably 50¢ plain).

Brisket is in the oven, chicken stock is cooked, charoset is done. Sally will peel 18 eggs for my updated version of eggs and onions.

I. AM. HAPPY. 11 or 12 of my favorite people will be here with me Monday night – my big brother and Sally among them.

So – Happy to you – whatever your spring holiday is – may it bring you great joy.

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Pasta for one – now, what went into that sauce…

Posted on March 4, 2014 by floricooks

For 2.5 ounces of pasta…

  • A beaten egg
  • Small minced shallot
  • 3 nice big boqueron fillets
  • 1/4 finely diced preserved lemon
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
  • Some chopped parsley
  • 6 kalamata olives
  • 1/2 cup of frozen peas
  • Lots of black pepper

Carbonara method. Enough said. Make more next time…

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L.A. Kitchen: BUILDING DEMO/CATION

Posted on March 3, 2014 by floricooks

This is a repost of the blog from the fabulous organization that I now work for. We are young and ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work to make our community a better place. I hope you can join us!

BuildingBreakingWe are ELATED to announce that on May 1st at 7pm we’ll be hosting a “Demo-Cation” event at our new home. We chose May Day because we are launching a full-on revolution…dedicated to replacing the traditional “service” model with dynamic, easily replicated solutions built upon equal access to healthy food, economic empowerment, inclusion, social enterprise and community engagement.

Immediately following this event, we will begin demolition, and then the build-out of our 20,000 sq. ft, bi-level kitchen, located just a block from the Lincoln Heights metro. When we open, many of the ideas behind our new model will have already been tested and proven via the pilot programs we are launching this spring with our partner, St. Vincent Meals on Wheels.

From their downtown hub, we will test the programs and theories that are at the core of our new model, the ones we’ve been feverishly developing for the last year:

–       Reclaim L.A.: a fresh produce recovery program (that will recycle millions of pounds of local foods annually)

–       Empower L.A.: an inter-generational, peer mentoring culinary arts/nutrition advocacy training program

–       Nourish L.A.: a meal production program (which will emphasize ethnically diverse, healthy meals that will be free to nonprofit partners)

–       Strong Food: our revenue-generating/profit sharing business that will hire training program graduates, making the same meals available via contracts

–       Engage L.A.: a powerful volunteer program that will engage the entire community

Each of these programs, and the depth of impact they will have, are born of time. Sure…I’m speaking of the 25 years I spent knee deep in sweat and equity at DC Central Kitchen…but I’m really referring to the year our team has been afforded by our founding partners at the AARP Foundation. Their support (the first ever $1M start-up grant ever given by their Foundation) has given us the most precious commodity any team could ask for: the time to be deliberate…to think, listen, and learn a new community; to meet a rich diversity of leaders and locals who shared their ideas as freely as the sun shines in this amazing City of Angels. But perhaps most important thing that this time has provided…is the power to say “NO.”

It takes time to think up ideas, ponder them hard, evaluate them as a team, seek feedback from the community…and have the ability at any juncture to say, “NO, that’s just not bold enough for the times ahead…lets scrap that and start again”…well, that’s the kind of intellectual freedom few are afforded in the nonprofit world, and it’s part of the reason we are so dedicated to showing how key time can be when developing programs that can meet current need AND decrease future demand simultaneously.

So come by on the 1st and see the future of L.A. [Kitchen] first-hand. Offer YOUR ideas (literally, on the walls of our raw space) on how we can partner together to rock routine, bash boring, and elevate our great city.

Meet our partners, and hear about Angel City Food Works – a culinary food business accelerator, which will occupy the rest of our 60,000 sq. ft building. Or just come to be part of history…because from here on out, L.A. Kitchen is gonna get down like James Brown…and you won’t want to miss this show.

 

**Thanks to generous partners and sponsors, (including FoodCentricity) our event is free to the public, however we ask that you please RSVP HERE so we know to expect you!

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