Friday, April 29, 2011

April Cafe Community Bulletin

It's been a busy month here at the cafe. Many, many treats for Passover and Easter were baked and consumed.

We've been dreaming of new exciting fruits and vegetables that will be grown for us this season in the Elijah's Promise kitchen garden and by volunteers at Rutgers Gardens, First Field and by home gardeners who want to donate produce to the cafe.

This month, we were happy to host presentations by nutritional counselor, Csilla Bischoff and psychotherapist, Donna DiStefano. We thank them for giving their time to come educate our customers.

Chef Nancy Kluberspies of Lovely Buns has been setting up shop every other Thursday in the dining room sampling and selling her artisan breads.

Our breads and desserts are always made by the baking and pastry students at our culinary school. The culinary students have joined us, doing production weekly of delicious special savory items, including the amazing chicken pot pies we started serving last week. Yum! Look for more delicious creations coming out of our culinary school.

We welcome a new addition to the cafe, a gorgeous new napkin dispenser for your mouth dabbing needs.



Volunteer news:
Long time volunteer, Dolores, has decided to move back to New York City. We are sad to see her go but excited for her as she turns the page on her new chapter in life.

Cafe volunteers, Lara Arp and Jacquelyn Juricic, will be acting in a Oh, Ah, Noah! A new musical by The Reformed Church of Highland Park. The play was written by Jean Stockdale, executive director of Who Is My Neighbor, which is one of the nonprofit partners at A Better World Cafe. Performances will be held on Saturday May 7 at 3:30 pm and 8 pm. The suggested ticket price is $12. All proceeds benefit Heifer International.

Our Tuesday afternoon cookie club volunteered to dye Easter eggs for us this month. They did a great job. People really too delight in selecting the egg that was just right for them to accompany their salads.

Rutgers student, Lauren K., helped us with our social media on Facebook and this blog

Tuesday afternoon volunteer, Koby H., distributed cafe flyers around town for us

Monday morning volunteer, Susan K. provided the table decor for the month of April.

Frequent volunteer, Shalini, decided to join us as regular on Tuesday mornings. When she is not here, she runs an Indian catering company.

From the Rolling Pin provided sensational vegan delights every Wednesday, including an olive oil polenta cake and key lime coconut muffins. Thursday volunteer, Agatha whipped up some vegan chocolate peanut butter and jelly sandwich cookies that we are still talking about.

Many of our regular volunteers enjoyed spring break vacations and we had new faces at the cafe with people coming in on breaks from school and work.

Birthdays Shout Outs Go To: Holly S, a Friday kitchen volunteer, Jacquelyn J. , our volunteer coordinator, and
Chef Chrissy, the director of the baking and pastry culinary school program.




An ode to soup

April is National Poetry Month.

With lentil soup in the soup kettle and poetry on our mind, we thought we'd share a favorite soup inspired poem.
If you feel inclined to drink a lake of lentil soup, we can arrange that for. Or more sensible sizes such as a cup, bowl, or a quart to take home to enjoy at home.

Sky Seasoning

A piece of sky
Broke off and fell
Through the crack in the ceiling
Right into my soup,
KERPLOP!
I really must state
That I usually hate
Lentil soup, but I ate
Every drop!
Delicious delicious
(A bit like plaster),
But so delicious, goodness sake--
I could have eaten a lentil-soup lake.
It's amazing the difference
A bit of sky can make.

Sheldon Allan Silverstein