By Terrie Anderson
NPC Board of Director members serving on the FEED Operations Committee are taking turns doing nightly and weekend inspections of the Kitchens. The Kitchens are open 24/7 (That’s 168 hours a week!), and our awesome Kitchen Manager, Adam Haen, needs us for reinforcement. So we stop in with a checklist of things that need to be turned off and cleaned up for the Kitchens to operate efficiently and safely. Everything is usually shipshape, but it’s important to be sure. It’s been a great experience for all of us — meeting users, seeing what Adam has to manage, and participating in the successful operation of FEED.
I had a shift this past Wednesday that I am still beaming about. The Kitchens were bustling with activity and I felt that I was seeing the fruition of the many years of fundraising and planning that went into making the Food Enterprise and Economic Development Kitchens a reality.
There was an information session going on in the Conference Room. Over 20 people were there to learn whether FEED is the right place for them to turn their dreams into delicious food. It’s exciting that several of them already have appointments with Adam to start the intake process.
In the Training Kitchen people were learning how to save the summer’s bounty in the first of a Dane County Farmers Market Tomato Preservation series. You might still be able to take one of the remaining two … check here for info: http://dcfm.org/tomato-preservation-workshop-series/?utm_source=08-29-15&utm_campaign=DCFM+newsletter&utm_medium=email)
Several food cart vendors were prepping for the next day. A woman was pickling in the Produce Kitchen, a man was baking aronia pies in the Baking Kitchen, barbecue sauce was being bottled in the Deli Kitchen and briskets were smoking in the Meat Kitchen. You can only imagine how great it smelled! There were several ethnicities in the mix of people there that night and every single person was smiling.