Wall of Fame

Since it's not always possible to show volunteers how much their work is truly appreciated, we decided to add a picture and description of some of our more dedicated volunteers to our office walls.

We chose six volunteers that made a special contribution to the Campus Kitchen over the past year (LT members, interns, regular volunteers, coordinators, etc.) to go up in the office. In addition to special events like our volunteer appreciation ice cream social, hopefully this will help show our volunteers exactly how important they are.

(This also helps add more flare to our bland office walls, which is nice.)

By the end of the summer, we should have 4 more volunteers up on the wall. Eventually, the entire office should be covered from top to bottom.

The Truth About Fast Food

The Campus Kitchen Nutrition Education Team found a room full of surprised looks when they presented The Truth About Fast Food, the second in our summer series of lessons. On July 11, 2007 at Meadow Green Courts, the Team discussed nutrition facts about specific menu items at popular fast food chains.

"The children were really surprised at the information we presented them, and were eager to learn more about nutrition in general."
- Brian Larkin, CKGCHS Coordinator

Fat and Sugar Demonstrations

Adding to the lesson were demonstrations that helped the audience visualize what is really in fast food. A plastic bag filled with 52 grams of Crisco, illustrating the approximate amount of fat in a typical fast food meal, and a cup with 13 teaspoons of sugar, the ammount present in a 20 oz bottle of soda, were passed around for everyone to observe (hence the surprised looks!) We also displayed the pennies from our previous experiment, showing the harmful effects of soda.

Following the demonstrations, healthy alternatives to fast food consumption were presented with a healthy “model lunch” that consisted of a sandwich, chips, and an apple. Overall the lesson was successful and the audience see.

Submitted by: Melissa Flores, TFAS/IPVS Intern

Nutrition Lesson Kickoff!

Our efforts to educate youth about nutritional health were prospectively successful, last week, at our first Campus Kitchen Nutrition Lesson of 2007. Volunteers from Campus Kitchen at GCHS joined Brian Larkin in an Introduction Class about the Importance of Eating Healthy at Meadow Green Courts summer program. Our team presented both old and new food pyramids while also revealing the important differences between the two. The lesson included information about the five food groups: starches, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and protein, and how much of each is appropriate to eat.

To increase awareness about the rising obesity problem in America, our team discussed the possible risks and dangers of obesity. At the conclusion of the lesson everyone enjoyed a tasty, but healthy snack made personally by our CKGCHS volunteers. Did someone say Trail Mix!?



The snack is very easy to make and was a big hit for all the students and volunteers. Everything included in the trail mix can be purchased at a super market for around $20.00.

Ingredients:
Cinnamon Life
Unsalted Roasted Peanuts
Sunflower Kernels
Dried Bananas
Milk Chocolate Chips
Raisins

The different groups represented in our trail mix were then identified by the students from Meadow Green Courts. CKGCHS will continue to present lessons throughout the summer addressing important topics about food, exercise and nutritional health. Teach, Reach, Feed Lead!

Submitted by: Melissa Flores TFAS :IPVS Intern.

Coca Cola: to enjoy? Or not to enjoy… that IS the question

Hello to everyone out there! My name is Melissa Flores, and I am the new intern here at Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga College High School. I am totally excited about helping out this summer. As part of our Nutrition Lessons we will be putting on for Meadow Green Courts (they host a summer program for kids), we wanted to share a fun but shocking demonstration with all of you out there reading our blogs! Today, we bring you: “Coca Cola: to enjoy? Or not to enjoy… that IS the question”

Brian Larkin, Coordinator of CKGCHS, will happily drop his penny in a glass of coke…




The next day, Brian retrieves the penny from the depths of the coke... to our surprise, and dismay... the penny was clean and shiny! The acid from the coke removed all the penny's impurities. Imagine what that does to your body!?




So, the moral of the story folks, is, coke: although extra tasty and satisfying, is actually acidic enough to clean grime off hard substances... and therefore is probably not safe for you to drink in excess amounts.. Drink water instead!
Marty reexamines his beverage choices, (as we all should):



This preveiw lesson will appear in our series of Nutritional Education Lessons this summer at the Meadow Green Courts. We will dicuss how eating fast food can affect our bodies, and how eating fast food in excess, can be harmful to one's health. Please stay tuned for more lessons on our blog!

Submitted by: Melissa Flores: TFAS:IPVS Intern

CKGCHS Volunteer Appreciation Day

Since the May 15 post the leadership team at Gonzaga thought it fitting to celebrate the efforts of the noble men here at Gonzaga who have committed at least ten hours of their time to CKGCHS. We had quite a few guys who satisfied the requirement and so an ice cream social was deemed appropriate for such outstanding volunteers. What better way of having an ice cream social than with vanilla and Neapolitan ice cream plus toppings galore and Brian Larkin. And so the leadership team decided May 16 would be the best time to have this afternoon of laughs and ice cream.

To get the ball rolling Neil, a member of the leadership team, suggested the use of contacting volunteers via the internet. To follow up on his suggestion I decided to set up a Facebook event group inviting all the men who satisfied the requirement for the ice cream social. By setting up the Facebook event I was able to find out relatively quickly those who could attend and those who could not attend. I felt considering all of us are guilty of checking our Facebook accounts multiple times a day setting up this Facebook event would be easy and reliable. Well aside from that great plug-in for Facebook the ice cream social turned out to be a blast with about 12 volunteers showing up and brightening our day at CKGCHS.

An afternoon of hanging out and shooting the breeze was certainly a good choice considering many of the seniors had begun to wrap up their final chapter of school. An event like this turned out to be a great way to thank the volunteers and bond a little more outside the business of cooking and delivering the incredible meals these men help make and deliver to our clients.

The line up.
Not forgetting we are a Kitchen the toppings must get their thank you for being so awesomely sweet. A big thank you goes out to the cherries, chocolate syrup, chocolate and mixed sprinkles, whip cream, and the always incredible waffle bowl. That's right in the leadership team's debate on whether to use waffle cones or plastic bowls we made a compromise and bought waffle bowls. The waffle bowl had several key factors that made it a winner for us at CKGCHS. Among the factors that make the waffle bowl incredible are its sweetness, the cool waffle pattern, and the fact that it is bio-degradable unlike the plastic bowls.

- Michael Christian, CKGCHS intern

Pasta with Bacon & Peas Recipe

This past Monday we had a dilemma in the kitchen. We needed to make 50 meals and the only available protein was a full pan of bacon. Since the only ideas we could come up with involved a breakfast-y sort of meal, we turned to allrecipes.com for advice, and the site gave us the solution to our problem: Pasta with Bacon and Peas.

One of our gracious donors provided us with a slew of already-cooked bow-tie pasta, so we used that instead of the recommended spaghetti. The McKenna Center staff let us use three of their onions and we used canned products for just about everything else.

Ingredients:
2 Full pans of pre-cooked bow-tie pasta
1 Full pan of pre-cooked bacon
3 Large onions, chopped
5 Cans tomato sauce
5 Cans whole tomatoes, drained
12 Cans of peas, drained
Garlic powder
Pepper

(The recipe called for grated Romano cheese, but we didn't have any or a suitable replacement.)

Although we didn't really cook anything, there was a ton of preparing to do. We had to chop the onions, open and drain the cans of peas and tomatoes, as well as cut up the bacon into smaller bite-sized bits.

We added all of the ingredients to the bowl and stirred until there was a nice mixture. We then put the sauce over bow-tie pasta in the meals.

For the other components of the meal, we used donated salad and muffins. The small dressing cups we had leftover from spring break came in handy again because we added a cup of Ranch dressing for our clients. This really helped put the finishing touches on a delicious meal.

Senior Steve Aro shows off the final product.

Summer Season 2007

Planning is well underway for summer 2007! The board outside the Campus Kitchen office has information, sign-up sheets, and applications for interested Leadership Team members.

Our goals for this summer are to:

• Continue regular meal deliveries


• Teach nutritional education lessons


• Coordinate at least one food drive


• Schedule regular training sessions for new volunteers

And as always to have fun in the kitchen!

Spring Break 2007 Slide Show!

Spring Break Delivery # 3

The last step in a very successful mission to keep the Campus Kitchen open during spring break was the final delivery of meals.

Sophomores Marty Ellsworth, James Scheib, and Roger Lalle returning from a delivery route.

Volunteers, such as Marty, James, and Robert, were instrumental in keeping the Campus Kitchen going during spring break. During the 10-day break, 14 volunteers logged just over 60 hours total while preparing 149 meals and delivering them to people in the area!

Spring Break Meals # 3

The Cooking Club came in again and volunteered for the last cooking shift over spring break. The collaboration resulted in yet another fabulous meal!

The contents were sliced ham for the protein, macaroni and cheese for the starch, spinach as the veggie, and pound cake for the dessert. This combination of food has a good variation of color and texture, so I'm positive the clients appreciated the work that went into preparing them.

One new thing we tried during this shift was wrapping the dessert, the pound cake in this case, in small bags. Some times the various food items will shift in the meal container and spill on the dessert. We tried our best to keep that from happening by wrapping the dessert separately.