The South Arm Community Center hosted A Taste of Community Kitchen as one of the event for Seniors Week Celebration in June. South Arm Community Center is one of the pioneer to have a community kitchen program for seniors.

This event was opened to all seniors of the community centers in Richmond. There were more than 20 participants who attended this event.

The above was a station which showcased the activities in the South Arm Cooking Club for seniors which included a coverage by Shaw TV on the program called “‘The Express”.

The program for the day included a talk by a dietitian and A Taste of Community Kitchen. The group is divided into two and both activities ran concurrently and the groups switched half way through the program.  Sharon J. Tateishi (standing) was the dietitian who shared with the group.

While a group was attending the nutrition talk, the other group worked in the kitchen. The group was subdivided into smaller groups to work on different recipes.

At the end of the session, the participants got to enjoy the food that they made. The recipes for that day were …Edamame Dip, Lime Spiked Black Bean Dip,  Red Pepper and Almond Dip and a simple dessert. The dips were served with crackers and semi home-made tortilla chips. The tortilla chips were baked from store bought tortilla.

Besides just simply dig into the dip with the tortilla chips, Jorge demonstrated simple way of presentation to make it more interesting. The first presentation was to make pinwheels with tortilla layered with different dips, rolled up and sliced.

The second presentation was stacking different colored tortilla chips with different layers of dips.

Finally, Jorge demonstrated a simple dessert using store bought blue menu oatmeal cookies, ice-cream and a home made baked apples. The apples were simply peeled, cored, cubed and baked with some cinnamon and brown sugar until tender. The oatmeal cookies were processed into crumbs. To prepare this dessert, simply layer alternately with cookie crumbs and baked apples and topped with a scoop of ice-cream.

A Taste of Community Kitchen was a great success owing to the effort of Stella (South Arm Senior program co-ordinator), Minoo and Jorge (kitchen co-ordinators), Sharon J. Tateishi (dietitian) and also June and Linda (kitchen volunteers).