No Menu Monday for Haitian Families First (another thing I love about Pittsburgh)

kitchen rock stars

I love food. I love playing pretend. I love Haiti (including one of its products, my beloved hub). I love volunteering- especially for causes specific to women's issues (and by extension, children and family). And I love food (did I already say that?)

In early Spring, shortly after returning from our family trip to Haiti, I ran into the intrepid Vivian Lee Croft at an event honoring the organization for which she works, Haitian Families First. 

I have to back up for one moment to talk about HFF. You may recall (you definitely will if you were in Pittsburgh then) in 2010 when the Earthquake struck Haiti, a small orphanage run by 2 sisters from Pittsburgh (Ali & Jaimie McMutrie) was completely devastated. With the help of local resources and the awesome strength of these 2 girls, the orphans and sisters were evacuated to Pittsburgh. Fast forward 3 years. Instead of rebuilding an orphanage (sadly you could say, another orphanage) in Haiti, the McMutrie's started Haitian Families First- an organization that provides all manner of support to families in need in Haiti in order to keep them together. Here's a sobering fact- there are over 30,000 children in orphanages in Haiti, and many of those children have parents who are simply unable to keep their familiy together because of staggering poverty. 

Ali and Jaimie are international heroes and Im proud to simply be from the same city. They are also inspiring women getting shit done. Not hard to be moved to do something to help.

So, back to that party. I started talking to Vivian about wanting to help with the HFF fundraising efforts. She and I crafted a plan to cook a meal of delicious Haitian food at a local restaurant, Bar Marco, that allows "outsiders" to take over its kitchen on Monday evenings. As luck would have it, one of the owners of Bar Marco happened to be at the same party (Pittsburgh is a small town!), and immediately signed on. I then enlisted the talents of the amazing Highland Park Kitchen Staples CoOperative to join for the cooking (and luckily they all agreed! Wow, would I have been in trouble had they not!). 

We spent the next few months organizing, menu planning, and promoting the event. Oh my gosh it was more work than I expected, but also so fun! 

2 days before the event all of this food (much of it donated by local suppliers like Whole Foods, Paragon, East End Food Coop) was delivered to my house. We cleaned out our fridge (and the fridges of several neighbors) to help with storage: 

The day before the event, the CoOp members came over, Cuisinarts in tow, for a full day of food prep. I wouldn't want to juice 50 limes, or mince 250 garlic cloves with anyone else!

Finally, Monday arrived. Reggie and I both took off from work in order to prep the whole chickens (24 of them) and start frying the twice-fried plantains (100 of them). 

bannann

Around 1pm we headed to Bar Marco to set up and start cooking the chicken. A note about that chicken- typically each batch takes about 1hr to cook. An hour into the dinner rush I was running out of time, had to improvise, and got the cooking time down to about 25min. Hope it was still tasty!

Around 4pm the CoOp members, along with Ali and Jaimie, started rolling in. The dinner guests began showing at 5 sharp.

Me, John, Leah, Kate, Megan, Maya workin it in the kitchen! Standing over 6 gas flames and a 550 degree broiler for 10 hours made for one sweaty chef!

The menu:

salad with twice-fried plantains

choice of chicken in Creole sauce or Vegetarian fritter, served with rice and beans, and a side jolt of spicy pickliz

sweet plantains with rum ice cream

Tilly and Hannah love Haitian food, too! Tilly was excited all day to go to the Haitian dinner party and wore a special party dress for the occasion.

I got home sweaty, exhausted, wobbly on my feet, at about midnight. Then was too excited to fall asleep. over $3,000 was raised for HFF. Im so so proud of our CoOp group, and so grateful for the efforts of my co-organizer Leah Lizarondo, HFF, and Reggie- a more supportive partner there never was!
Also, Bar Marco and, frankly, the city of Pittsburgh- Mesi!!!. Yinz stood in line, outside, in the rain, for the chance to eat our attempts at Haitian cooking in support of a worthy cause. Where else would a kid like me get the exhilerating, totally fatiguing opportunity to play chef in a pro kitchen with some of the best friends and cooks around, all in the name of family? We rocked it.

Check out the write-up of the event by fellow organizer and co-op member, Leah Liz, in her Pgh magazine blog:
http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Best-of-the-Burgh-Blogs/Brazen-Kitchen/July-2013/The-First-Rule-of-Food-Fight-Club/

More press from HFF:
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=13f0a3450667b3dffc5d20ad8&id=9212a6a232&e=6533842220