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Community Kitchens by Wenda Reed

On a warm spring evening I’m peeling leaves off boiled cabbages and trying to keep them intact. A woman next to me is cutting up onions, and another is mixing pre-cooked brown rice and ground beef into a big bowl. We’re all in the process of assembling Cathy Duboff’s Ukrainian cabbage rolls. She brings the tomato sauce in from the kitchen and supervises as we roll the filling into the leaves and layer them with the sauce in two huge pans. They’ll go into the institutional oven at the Wallingford Senior Center kitchen.

At two other tables, groups of women and men and a teenage boy assemble potato latkes and a hearty minestrone soup. Rachel Duboff (daughter of Cathy) circulates among the tables. As the organizer of the monthly Wallingford Community Kitchen, she prints out recipes, has people sign up to bring different ingredients, makes sure everything comes together and helps those who are new to cooking. While the dishes are baking, she demonstrates how to make sauerkraut and kimchi. Some participants make their own, while others sip wine or juice and meet their neighbors. We talk about schools, about what we’re planning to plant in our gardens, about sustainable living.

Almost three hours after we arrive, 24 of us, ages 2 to 70, sit down at two long tables spread with folk-art tablecloths and lit with tea-light candles. Conversations fly as we eat our communal dinner. At my end of the table, we talk about how a multigenerational community center would be better than the traditional senior center that isolates older people. We all help clean up and take home some of the extras.

The Wallingford Community Kitchen, part of an emerging movement in the Seattle area, started about two years ago, and Rachel Duboff has been organizing it for the past six months. It’s a natural extension of her work as a personal chef and food educator at her own company, Thyme to Nourish, and as a volunteer teacher of cooking/nutrition skills to at-risk populations through Solid Ground’s Operation Frontline.

“As a chef and huge proponent of food’s role in our wellness and health, I look for opportunities to share my knowledge in whatever way I can,” Duboff says. Based on input from the group, participants at the Wallingford Community Kitchen choose to focus on “cooking and creating community,” rather than learning skills or preparing food to stock home freezers, she adds. The arrangement encourages a wide array of community residents to attend, including seniors and people with small children — whether or not they want to help cook. Presently the kitchen is free, as long as participants bring pre-arranged ingredients, but there may soon be a minimal charge, Duboff says.

The three-year-old Rainier Community Kitchen has a different focus. Leika Suzumura, a nutritionist with PCC who has run the kitchen for the past 18 months, emphasizes learning new skills, trying new foods and preparing healthy meals to take home. Twelve to 15 people meet monthly at the Rainier Community Center in southeast Seattle, mostly coming together through word of mouth.

“It exposes (participants) to different foods from the ones they usually shop for,” Suzumura notes. Although the menu is usually vegetarian, last month the group made chili from grass-fed beef or ground turkey, as well as made-from-scratch macaroni and cheese, marinated mushrooms and “health secret cookies” with oats, flaxseed, pumpkin seeds and walnuts. Suzumura’s chili recipe included sweet potatoes.

“Sweet potatoes: that’s different,” one of the participants said.

“You should know everything here is a little bit different,” another said, laughing.

“Basic skills — not too fancy — easy and delicious,” is my cooking style, Suzumura says. She tries to use local, seasonal foods with high nutritional value. Each month she asks the participants what they’d like to cook at the next session. The cost is $25 per session, paid through the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, with scholarships available. This includes the cost of food and plenty to take home.

Suzumura is passionate about community nutritional education. She first wanted to train as a naturopath, but decided that preventive medicine through nutrition would be more helpful than waiting for people to get sick. “Eating healthy food is the most practical thing we can do,” she says, bemoaning the fact that fewer people than ever know how to cook. “This whole obesity thing — I’m so tired of talking about it; I want to do something.”

She took the initiative to start a family community kitchen in October 2009 for low-income parents who attend WIC (the federal Women, Infants and Children food program) clinics in the Rainier Valley. Thanks to a nine-month Neighbor to Neighbor grant she received through the Seattle Foundation, participants pay $5 a session, which buys all of the food. The same group of parents meets once a month at the Rainier Community Center to learn, cook and eat together and take meals home to freeze.

“At the Family Kitchen we eat together because we’re modeling family meals,” Suzumura explains. Parents come with their babies and children, and Suzumura, a mother of two, organizes an activity for the older kids. Last month it was making energy bars. “Our hope is that the eating habits at home change, that kids will like to cook,” she adds. She’s trying to get a WIC grant to continue the kitchen beyond nine months.

The tireless volunteer also held a one-time community kitchen for diabetics in the Rainier Valley in March, and she plans to start a kitchen for people with sickle-cell anemia through the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in the Central Area.

“I leave the kitchens feeling so good about building community,” she says.

SMALL BEGINNINGS, BIG PLANS

Nine localized, independent community kitchens operate in Queen Anne, Greenwood, Delridge, Rainier Vista, the Central District, Wallingford and Rainier Valley in Seattle; at Salishan in Tacoma; and in the Snoqualmie Valley. A new kitchen for downtown residents met at the Pike Place Market Senior Center for the first time in March.

A new community kitchen will open at the Ballard Community Center May 18. It’s hosted by Sustainable Ballard and Seattle Parks and Recreation, and will emphasize local, sustainable food. Meals will be vegetarian, with options to add meat, and there will be a different theme each month, according to Jennifer Mundee with Sustainable Ballard’s Food & Health Guild. Cost will be $25 through the Parks Department, and participants will bring eight to 10 large containers for taking food home.

The umbrella organization, Community Kitchens Northwest, holds monthly meetings to share ideas and recipes.

“A community kitchen is a place where people get together to cook, learn and support one another in the name of saving money, having fun and promoting good health,” reads the Community Kitchens Northwest Web site. Each kitchen is individually run by volunteers to meet the needs of the local participants. Some cater to seniors or people with health or dietary issues.

“It’s wonderful how the community kitchens are all different,” Suzumura says. “I think their flexibility is their success. There’s no cookie-cutter way to have to do it.”

The movement in Seattle owes much to Diana Vergis Vinh, a public health nurse and community organizer with Public Health – Seattle & King County. In her fieldwork, she noticed that people weren’t cooking as much as they used to because of lack of time or skills or pure exhaustion. “I’m a mom with three kids myself,” she says. “I know it’s hard.”

She heard about Fresh Choice Kitchens in Vancouver, British Columbia. It began in the mid-1990s and is now run by the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society, with 36 kitchens in Vancouver itself and 145 in the province. In addition to helping kitchens begin and thrive, the organization holds workshops, cooking classes, food safety programs and events throughout the community. It’s produced a cookbook and runs a clearinghouse for donated kitchen equipment.

In 2007, Vinh took training sessions from Fresh Choice Kitchens, and came home fired up to open kitchens in Seattle. She and other community members met in June of that year to try to replicate the Vancouver model as Community Kitchens Northwest. Vinh organized the Rainier Community Kitchen that summer and ran it for 18 months before Suzumura took over. She still attends because it is close to her home. She also helped the Wallingford kitchen begin two years ago, and is always looking for new opportunities. She does most of the work on her own time.

“Seattle Parks and Recreation has been a great partner on community kitchens,” Vinh says. “Being able to use their kitchens, advertise in their brochures and use their registration system is huge.”

She’s excited about the possibilities of opening new kitchens. “We’re negotiating with several churches for new places to meet,” she says. “We don’t have a steady funding source, so we hope to find larger kitchens we can use for free.”

Duboff says Community Kitchens Northwest is working to become an official nonprofit organization. Members hope to raise funds to purchase equipment, increase the number of locations, set up a means to communicate with and register participants, and pay organizers a stipend.

“It’s not rocket science,” Vinh says. “You get a group together to get them cooking, interacting and packing a freezer full of nutritious food. The real goal is to increase healthy food in people’s bellies and to have them connect over food — to chat while they’re chopping carrots.”

Wenda Reed is a Seattle-area writer. She usually cooks alone or with one or two helpers in her own kitchen, but found the community experience fun.

ACTIVE COMMUNITY KITCHENS

COMMUNITY KITCHENS NORTHWEST is a loose coalition of ten local community kitchens. The Web site, www.communitykitchensnw.org, contains locations, times and contact information as well as recipes, resources and some news articles. Here are a few of the ones listed on the “Cook with Us” page.

QUEEN ANNE COMMUNITY CENTER LIFELONG RECREATION COMMUNITY KITCHEN is for seniors (defined as 50+) who live in one- or two-person households. The emphasis is on lean proteins and grains. Participants take home 12 individual servings ready for the freezer — two of each recipe plus a recipe folder. The kitchen meets on the third Tuesday of the month from 1:30 to 4 p.m. and the cost is $25 per session. Prior registration is required. To register, call 206-684-4240. Space is limited to 6.

WALLINGFORD COMMUNITY KITCHEN meets at the Wallingford Community Senior Center, located at the Good Shepherd Center, as well as other locations. For more information, connect with them on Facebook or through their Sustainable Wallingford’s Web site at www.greenwallingford.ning.com/group/communitykitchenswallingford

BALLARD COMMUNITY KITCHEN meets on the third Tuesday of each month at the Ballard Community Center and is organized by Sustainable Ballard and Seattle Parks and Recreation. Cost is $25 per person, and advance registration is required either by phone at 684-4093, through the Web site at www.seattle.gov/parks by clicking on the SPARC logo, or in person at any local community center. Space is limited to 12.

RAINIER COMMUNITY KITCHEN meets on the second Thursday of the month and usually involves making a fresh salad, a casserole to freeze, a soup and a baked item like cookies. Meat is included on the menu, but vegetarian options are the main focus as is fresh, organic produce. The cost is $25 per person. Register through the Seattle Parks and Recreation SPARC system or at Rainier Community Center at least a day before.

Also check out Vancouver, British Columbia-based FRESH CHOICE KITCHENS at www.communitykitchens.ca. The Web site contains a wealth of information on starting and running a community kitchen, along with resources, tips and recipes. Click on “Many Hands” at the top of the home page to order the Many Hands Cookbook with 130 recipes scaled for groups.

“COOKING UP COMMUNITY” DINNER

Chefs from local community kitchens will prepare main meal salads from local produce at a Cooking Up Community dinner June 4, at 6:30 p.m. in the downstairs room at the Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. in Wallingford. The dinner is open to the public as a fund-raiser for Community Kitchens Northwest and the Wallingford Community Senior Center.

Tickets are $20 through www.brownpapertickets.com.
For more information, visit www.communitykitchensnw.org.

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