Being the father of a two year old, I can’t imagine how my life would fall apart if he was faced with a life threatening illness. If we had to spend all our time at the hospital, I could quite simply see a thick layer of dust descending on our kitchen and fast food containers filling up the back seats of our cars. Ronald McDonald’s house charities address this problem by offering up a place to allow families to stay near their loved ones and taking care of the things in life that fall by the wayside when a family is in crisis, such as providing a nutritious meal when you need it. Jessica Miller brought this opportunity to the attention of our Cooking Club and everyone jumped at the opportunity to apply our culinary creativity for charity.
We decided that what we would make should be made in the same spirit as our normal cooking club events; with as many great fresh local ingredients as we can pack into an unprocessed, fresh cooked meal. Here is the menu we decided to serve (recipes incoming):
Caesar Salad (with an option for a build-your-own salad)
Fresh Baked Ciabatta Bread from a local baker
Sauteed Green Beans with Almond Slices
Homemade Baked Ziti
And for dessert, we had vanilla ice cream with homemade peanut butter cookies.
Right around dinner time, the room started to fill up with lots of hungry families who looked happy to eat; I don’t blame them, as I was quite hungry myself, and our food was driving me to distraction. Jason and Paul hit the stove tops with a fury and sauteed stacks of delicious green beans as they were needed while the girls doled out the food cafeteria style. Greg was granted the good fortune of dessert duty, so I’m sure he banked a ton of goodwill that day. Although many of our diners expressed gratitude for the meal, what really made our day was one man who was over the moon for finally getting a chance to eat something green and packed with vegetables and nutrition. He had been at the house for over a month, and indicated that most of the meals tended to be festivals of comfort foods and fried/grilled meats, so he was happy to have something green on his plate. That really made our day!
After we were done serving, we each got to sit down and enjoy our meal before going on an extensive tour of the facilities. It’s amazing what the unassuming facade of this house contained, including: a large exercise room, a small cinema, complete with popcorn and candy counter, 2 game rooms, a full sized gym with basketball court, a playground, laundry facilities, a dozen usable kitchen areas, many rooms and suites for the families, a one room schoolhouse, study areas for teens, computer rooms, even a scrap booking room for those crafty individuals. It’s a labyrinthine tangle of corridors and passageways that seemed to go on forever!
After the tour and a quick cleanup, we hauled off our gear and relaxed with the knowledge that many families and sick children in a stressful situation had a good healthy meal on us. I consider it an evening very well spent.
Special thanks to Greg and Jessica for their excellent pictures, the Brazeltons for allowing us to invade their kitchen to prep the meal and the Barbagallos for their help and support in making this a successful dining experience for the families living at the Ronald McDonald house.
