Karen Barnaby is well known for the fine food she presents at the Fish House in Stanley Park, where she is executive chef. But she also shares her wide knowledge through her popular cooking classes and in her columns and recipes that appear regularly in The Vancouver Sun. If that agenda doesn’t sound full enough, she’s also been involved in writing and/or editing 10 cookbooks, including Many Hands: Community Kitchens Share Their Best. Each of the 130-plus recipes in Many Hands has been "scaled," so the cooks can choose how many servings they want, then shop and cook accordingly.
Karen says she first read about community kitchens in the 1990s. "I thought: Wow, what a cool idea!" She was intrigued, but it wasn’t until 2002 that an opportunity to get involved came along: she volunteered for the cookbook project. There were many hands that helped to create Many Hands, but hers were crucial. Assembling a cookbook is a finicky business, and she’s a master at it. Beyond that, she’s given classes in the Fresh Choice demonstration kitchen and helped organize an equipment drive that produced great results. (She jokes that it went so well‚ "I wanted some of the stuff.")
She has a more-then-full-time job running a restaurant, so what draws her to the community kitchen movement?
"It’s that people are getting together and feeding themselves and their families, and learning to cook." Anyone who has read Karen’s books or columns will know how important home-cooking is to her.
"And it’s not just about the aspect that the kitchens help low-income families. It’s about the special kitchens like the ones for celiacs … More people should take advantage of these things."
Around 2005, Shona Lam stopped by a CK information booth at a Vancouver farmers’ market, and, like Karen, was taken with the concept. It reflected, she says, aspects of her Chinese heritage, a culture that stresses the importance of good cooking and the sharing of food.
"For me, food and cooking skills, and nutrition – healthy eating – form an important foundation for life. That’s the groundwork for doing other things‚ " she says. By profession, Shona is a librarian, and brought her fine organizational skills to this new version of the CK website. She’s also helped with CK leadership workshops and has been impressed by the ways new friendships are made around food.
"At first everyone doesn’t know each other‚" she recounts of the workshops. "But once everyone starts to cook, the laughter and the energy flow."
Both the social and practical aspects of community kitchens drew her in. "There’s a great attraction [for me] in helping others to learn those skills."
Elena Hack attends Vancouver Community College in a pre-dietetics program. Her goal is to go on to the Food, Nutrition and Health Program at the University of B.C. She confesses that she didn’t know much about community kitchens until she received a UBC email listing volunteer opportunities. Among them was helping with a CK leadership workshop.
"It came up and I thought, ‘I have the day off – I’ll use it.’ Once there, I fell in love with the whole project."
Elena says food and nutrition have always been a passion of hers, and when she was considering education choices, the idea of making the field her career suddenly seemed just right. Her enthusiasm for community kitchens has lead her to be the facilitator of one for students at the B.C. Institute of Technology. It’s a casual affair for students who live both in residence and elsewhere. "We get together once a month and have a lot of fun and do some good cooking."
It was the atmosphere at that first workshop where she volunteered that got her hooked. Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds. "Some were tense at first, a little bit stiff, maybe defensive. But then they loosened up – we cooked together and they started to laugh. There was a real feeling of unity and community.
"It’s so simple, but so amazing to be part of it."
Tenny Bache has an education background in health geography and a long-standing interest in food security issues. She discovered community kitchens through the internet. She has since taken a CK leadership workshop and taken the FoodSafe Level 1 program. Tenny has been working with Vancouver Coastal Health’s Trout Lake/Cedar Cottage Food Security Network. There’s a food bank depot at the Trout Lake Community Centre, and through it, she has come to know a number of its users. Organizing a community kitchen was a logical next step.
"We want to build the community and build their health – and cook delicious and health food together." As this was being written, the project was getting off the ground, but with 10 to 15 interested participants with a range of ethnic backgrounds, she expects it will be a "fun, hands-on way" to help others meet their food and health needs.
