by Nicole Wines
On April 23, 2016, Raíces EcoCulture hosted the first workshop in the new Common Ground Workshop series, held at the George Street Co-op Café in New Brunswick. Chef Enrique Pérez, volunteer chef instructor from Elijah’s Promise, presented an introduction to the series and a culinary demonstration on salads and dressings. This series is the brainchild of Chef Enrique, and we are pleased to collaborate with him to help bring his idea to the community.
The Common Ground Workshop Series develops partnerships with gardeners and all other community members, in order to procure donations of seasonal, organic produce for Elijah’s Promise. This serves to alleviate hunger through community programs such as the Soup Kitchen and Meals on Wheels. In exchange donors will receive culinary workshops on food preparation, knife skills, canning, nutrition, wine pairing and more from volunteer chef instructors from Elijah’s Promise. For every 100 pounds of fresh organic food donated by workshop participants, Chef Enrique will be able to serve 400 fresh, healthy meals to members of our community who are most in need.
Raíces Cultural Center wishes to thank Chef Enrique Pérez for designing and presenting the workshop series, the George Street Co-op and the George Street Co-op Café for hosting the introductory workshop in their space, and all of the participants who came to learn and donated fresh, organic produce for the Meals-On-Wheels program. Donations from the pilot event contributed to 50 meals served in the New Brunswick area.
Please see below the gallery for more info on upcoming Common Ground events.
Common Ground Workshop Photo Gallery – April 23, 2016
(click any of the photos below to view a show in full size)
NOTE: We hope you will join us for the upcoming workshops in the series. The next workshop on Knife Skills will be held June 18, 4-5:30pm. Starting in July all workshops will be held on the second Saturday of every month unless otherwise indicated on our website calendar. All workshops in the summer of 2016 will be held at Elijah’s Promise Culinary School, 211 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, NJ. For an email update with the details of the workshop topics and detailed info, be sure to subscribe to the blog and/or sign up for the Raíces mailing list in the right hand sidebar of this page.