When Knoll Farms gives you verbena, make verbena ice cream. When ice cream is impossible, carry on the flavour tradition and make verbena cream puffs with candied rosemary and thyme faerie dust. Find out just days before a 300 person fundraiser you are helping to co ordinate that the only other 2 people making dessert are canceling? Call your chef friend who offers his pastry chef to make another of your creations.
Get to an event and there's no one there to organize the kitchen and expedite the five course dinner? Step up, do it yourself and make it happen.
Chefs are more clued into fundraisers than High Society. Chefs and restaurants, approached by hundreds of donation request letters a year choose which ones to participate in for a number of bottom line and compassionate reasons. BALT reaches the place where I live. Brentwood, a primarily agricultural area due east of the Bay Area, and home of the beloved and almost mythical Frog Hollow and Knoll Farm, will be covered by strip malls and cookie cutter tract housing if local awareness does not change.
A second comment in one morning? Well, yes, when somebody is such a hero. There should be a medal struck for chefs like you who manage to save the day for benefits, time after time. Good on ya, Shuna!
Posted by: Kudzu | 28 May 2006 at 12:44 PM
I love your blog, I'll come back.
Have a nice day,
Jacqueline k.
Cuisine et Compagnie
P.S. I make a link with mine (in French)
Posted by: jacqueline k. | 29 May 2006 at 03:38 AM
Take charge! Brava.
Posted by: cookiecrumb | 29 May 2006 at 10:45 AM
Thanks Shuna, for being a good guardian of the land, constantly caring about what your human family eats as well how they raise it, purvey it and get it to the tables of others.
Posted by: Julie | 29 May 2006 at 05:01 PM
Go Shuna! You expedited a five course dinner for 300 people?! Seriously, thank you, I love Frog Hollow.
Posted by: tejal | 29 May 2006 at 08:34 PM
Being a part of this event was a highlight of my 25+ years of chefing. Maybe because it was in Brentwood which for me feels like an unjaded culinary frontier. At any rate it was one of those rare cooking experiences where everything felt like a bit of heaven. Thank you Shuna for organizing the event so brilliantly and thank you Kristie for inviting me.
Posted by: ALISON NEGRIN | 31 May 2006 at 01:14 PM
Shuna,
Thanks for donating your brain and your desserts to the BALT dinner. Those of us who were charged with orgainzing the event breathed a collective sigh of relief when you and Chris Hatfield burst on the scene full of energy and know how to plan the back of the house activities and help insure that our front of the house plans would mesh with them. You along with Chris Hatfield, Kristie Knoll, Gail Wadsworth, and Barbara Houssein and Bruce Ghiselli in my opinion get the MVP awards for tirelessly working to make sure that every detail was planned and executed! You all amazed me by giving countless hours above and beyond the call of duty as volunteers all in the name of supporting Brentwood Agriculture!
Shuna, My daughters were thrilled to meet you. I made away from the dinner with the few cream puffs that were left which they devoured with delight the morning after the dinner.
See you next year!!
Josh Hammack
Bohemian Elegance Catering -Brentwood-
Posted by: Josh Hammack | 31 May 2006 at 02:20 PM