Building Burlington's Community - Planning A Community Dinner

Finding a Proper Site
 

-		You will want a kitchen that is certified and equipped with: oven, pots, serving utensils.
-		Handicap accessible and on the bus line.
-		Familiarize yourself with the kitchen you are using (before you start cooking).
-		You will improve your likelihood of being welcomed back to use the space again if you clean up really well.

Finding Food and Creating a Menu

-		Create a balanced meal with simple foods due to allergies and food preferences.
-		Strategizing how to use the food donations determines the menu.
-		You can ask for food from: farmers, gardeners, grocery stores, restaurants, discount grocery stores, food shelf.
-		Food cooks differently in large quantities, look to get help from those who have experience or do it professionally.
-		Sometimes you can plan a menu if you have money to buy food or a freezer to build a supply of an item. You can also get donations of left-overs from community events and restaurants if you plan ahead of time.

Cooking for 100 Safely and Healthfully

-		Remember people you are cooking for include: elders, babies, and others with compromised immune systems so you need to follow all possible food safety guidelines.
-		It’s not recommend to have lots of people cook in their own kitchens and bring it.  You don’t know the cleanliness of their kitchens, and the logistics of  re-heating lots of small casserole dishes is really tough
-		Consult the Department of Health to take a food safety course.

Old North End Community Dinner

It’s Thursday night and there are nearly 75 people sitting down to dinner together at the Multi-Generational Center. This is the monthly Old North End Community Dinner that has taken place for over 6 years. Tonight’s menu is salad, bread, broccoli, a choice between either home made chicken or veggie split pea soup, hot coco, and ice cream or sorbet for dessert. The tables are filled with diners of all varieties, abilities, ages, and sizes. Back in the kitchen is Janet Hicks, the loyal chef and coordinator of the dinner. She works each month to solicit for food donations, organize a menu, shop for food, and recruit volunteers to help cook, serve, and clean.

Diners line up for food at the ONE Community Dinner. This dinner happens the 2nd Thursday of the month at the Multi-Generational Center.

The free dinner started out in the basement of the Unitarian Church and has since moved into the Old North End. Hicks continues holding the dinner for many reasons. First, to provide healthy food for everyone including people who may go hungry that day. Second, she does it to cultivate neighborhood connection, and finally, “because it’s fun to work hard and see results,” says Hicks. For her, “the community dinner is my own form of local patriotism.” The ONE dinner is followed by the monthly Neighborhood Planning Assembly.

Yes, the dinner is fun. It’s fun to cook large quantities of food, it’s fun to serve others, and see kids grow up and see seniors continue to come to the dinner. It’s fun to sit at a long table with a mix strangers and friends, and some say it’s even fun to rub elbows while cleaning pots.

There are so many reasons to have a dinner, and it still takes a lot of people-power, time, and planning to pull it off. “In restaurants the chef creates the menu, orders the ingredients from a supplier which then gets delivered. In community dinners, food is donated and then you say, ‘what can I make with this?’” recounts Hicks. Hicks works to get food donated from gardens, farms, stores and restaurants. Over the years, she has mastered cooking for large quantities of people on little to no budget. She succeeds in cooking food that is appetizing, simple and healthy. “Every community should have some thing that brings people together,” says Janet Hicks, “If we have nothing else in common, we all have to eat.”

Janet Hicks works with volunteers to organize a monthly community dinner in the Old North End.

 

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