As evidenced by my last post… I really
like food. Like a lot. Like a lot lot.
For our second service event, WAIP,
along with other OSU alumni, volunteered at DC Central Kitchen, a non-profit
organization dedicated to "reducing hunger with recycled food, training
unemployed adults for culinary careers, serving healthy school meals, and
rebuilding urban food systems through social enterprise." At the kitchen,
we were first trained on basic food safety handling tips. We then were split
off into three groups- one which de-boned fish, one that chopped potatoes, and
my group that was supposed to shred and descale fish. As I descaled chunk after
chunk of salmon, I was able to truly lose myself in the task.
It wasn't until I got home that I
really thought about how amazing and important that organization was. I looked online, and learned that the group
started in 1989, when a young nightclub manager named Robert Egger began by
picking up leftovers from President George H. W. Bush's inauguration and delivered
it to area shelters. Today, DCCK distributes 5,000 meals a day at little to no
cost to local homeless shelters, transitional homes, and other nonprofits
dedicated to feeding the homeless. More impressively, DCCK has a Culinary Job
Program for people fighting homelessness, addiction, and incarceration.
Like many others, this experience
in DC has given me more questions about what I want to do with my life than it
has answered. But two things have become clear to me. The first is simply that meal
preparation and cooking has truly become a hobby of mine. It's strange that it
took me going to DC, where I have tiny, often times troublesome, stove and oven
to realize this. The second is to always carry forward the spirit of DCCK in my
future endeavors- that no matter what I do and where I go, it is important to
be plugged in and supportive of my local community Despite the cynicism, the polarization, the fear in today's world food- yes something as simple food- is part of a common language that binds humanity together.
Photo Credits: @
-Farhad Choksy
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