Hello CulinaryCorps Friends and Supporters,

Last Thursday, we wrapped up our 2017 culanthropy trip to Houston, Texas. The week spent together was humbling. Inspiring. Tear-inducing. Laughter-filled. And nourishing on many levels. We could not have wished for a better group of chefs nor a more hospitable line-up of project partners. And we certainly could not have asked for kinder sponsors and supporters…aka YOU!

To give you quick sense of what we accomplished, we wanted to share our trip with minimal words and maximum impact. To that aim, we broke it all down into two categories:

PICTURES
Here’s a curated look at our week of projects via our CulinaryCorps Google photo stream. Click on the info tab in each photo to get a brief description of the project/photo. And leave a comment if you feel so inclined!

NUMBERS
Pictures say a thousand words but data says a whole lot more, 500 times that in fact! Here’s a look at the aggregate numbers from this year’s trip:

9 carefully selected chef-volunteers from across the country…

     Including 1 Hawaiian, Aloha!

     560 collective CulinaryCorps volunteer manpower hours across 5 days of culanthropy.

30 pounds of Plant It Forward Farms produce transformed into…

     12 amazing potluck dishes created by our chef-volunteers.

     20 recipes captured for Plant It Forward Farms to use in their CSA boxes.

     $500 worth of Home Depot gift cards donated to the farmer families.

7,000 meals assembled at the Houston Food Bank for delivery to hungry children living in the city.

     And 1,300 pounds of breaded chicken “trayed up” for the following day’s meal.

4 hands-on cooking classes launched for over 70 Camp PHEver campers from ages 3-21.

     Over 140 PHE-free dishes created by the campers themselves using…

             96-feet of spiralized cucumber

             22 pounds of cauliflower rice for our protein-free Poke Bowls

             70 cocktail umbrellas for our Rainbow Hawaiian Shave Ice (It was a Luau after all.)

Over 2 gallons of hand-spun vanilla ice cream made by…

     30 “ice cream scientists” at the MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Center using just…

     12 pillowcases. (Nope, that’s not a typo. It really works.)

     And topped with 300,000 rainbow sprinkles!

$750 worth of kitchen equipment donated to the Houston Covenant House cooking program.

Thousands of heart-expanding moments of inspiration made possible by…

     5 generous corporate sponsors,

     1 super sweet Bake and Gather for Good fundraiser and

     110 amazing individual donors, like you, who helped us meet our fundraising goal!

For all your kindness, we offer our unquantifiable thanks. And we promise to continue cooking it forward throughout the year.

With our deepest gratitude,

Chris Carroll, Executive Director
Christine Ranieri, 2017 Trip Coordinator
and the 2017 CulinaryCorps Chef-Volunteer Team

We are over-the-moon about all of our sponsors this year! Here they are in no particular order…

Keep an eye out on the Bake and Gather for Good events calendar. It’s a sweet way to support non-profits including ours!

If you need a place to stay in Houston, definitely check out Towneplace Suites, our wonderful housing sponsor.

Or if you’re here and you’re hungry, stop by Underbelly, we promise it’ll be a meal to remember.

All of our shopping will be done at the amazing Central Market, our ingredient sponsor for this trip.

And let’s not forget to give a shout-out to G&B Packing Company for their support too.

Finally, we want to thank our steadfast benefactors, William and Anne Carroll, for contributing our largest single donation this year.

In fact, all of our generous sponsors are rock stars in our book, and we are incredibly thankful for them all.

We’re super excited to introduce the culinary professionals that will be part of our 2017 outreach trip. They are one amazing group! Please read on for pictures and bios after the jump. (more…)

Hello CulinaryCorps Friends, 

Over these past six months we’ve been reminded just how lucky we are to have met people like you, food lovers with big hearts, great talents, and the rare ability to put those things into action. 

Which is why we are so excited to announce the launch of our newly designed outreach trip to Houston, Texas this summer!

Thanks to the careful planning of CulinaryCorps alum and co-leader, Christine Ranieri, we will be bringing a team of 10 chef-volunteers to her new hometown from July 8-13, 2017.

In a return to the original trip concept forged in New Orleans, we will be working with different Houston area project partners each day including…

• A farm for refugees
• The country’s largest food bank
• A summer camp designed for kids with cancer at MD Anderson
• And another one for kids with chronic illness
• We’ll also be exploring Houston’s up and coming food scene
• Plus, we’ll be making time to discuss the future of CulinaryCorps too!

Please read the trip details (including dates, cost, and project responsibilities) HERE.  

If you are interested in filling a slot, please complete the APPLICATION by April 3, 2017. 

So are you ready to be part of our Houston vanguard? We hope so! Your strengths are as needed as they are necessary…perhaps more now than ever before.

In good food and service,
Christine Carroll, Founding Director
www.culinarycorps.org