March 2013 Archives

Dee McBride (left) and Suzanne Williams (right)

Recipe for Success Foundation is pleased to have Suzanne Williams as April's Volunteer of the Month.  Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, Suzanne has been living in Houston for the last 7 years.  She loves to travel, workout, and eat great healthy food with her husband and son!  After retirement, Suzanne wanted to continue to do meaningful work.  With a little research and a growing interest in the First Lady's, Let's Move campaign, Suzanne was able to find Recipe for Success.  As a mom, she wants to be part of an organization that helps children have healthier eating habits.  Her decision to help RFS was reinforced when speaking with another volunteer.  The volunteer spoke about how he sees continued effects of RFS in our students' lives even after they graduate from the program.  This warmed Suzanne's heart because she knew that Recipe for Success' program is working and having a tremendous impact on the children we educate.   

Suzanne is a very beneficial piece to our office.  She helps Marisol, our Special Projects Coordinator, and other staff members with office projects every Thursday morning.  One thing Suzanne takes from RFS is that a healthy and satisfying meal does not have to always include meat, as long as fresh ingredients packed full of  flavor are used.  We appreciate Suzanne and all of the work she has done for Recipe for Success.  We hope to have her around for many years to come!

If you would to become a volunteer, please fill out our Volunteer Interest Survey.

Last week, Lyons Elementary School, one of our thriving Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program sites, held its annual health fair to showcase different programs and resources to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Students and parents explored different info tables, including the Recipe for Success table, run with the help of some of our cooking-and-gardening savvy program students.

See an event photo gallery here.

Indian cuisine boasts an array of dreamy soups, from creamy lentils to smoky mulligatawny, making it tough to pick just one. Thanks to Kiran, our March Chef Surpríse guests didn't have to. While sipping a beautifully presented tasting trio, accompanied by goat cheese-stuffed naan, guests struggled to pinpoint a favorite, as each offered a uniquely delicious flavor profile. One patron inquired about the contents of Kiran's corn chowder, explaining that she'd love a whole vat of the stuff! Hopefully, she instead saved room for the saffron crème brûlée.

The Chef Surpríse series is held the first Monday of every month at RecipeHouse and features a rotation of Houston's hottest chefs. To learn more and sign up to attend upcoming dinners, visit our website.

Molly Glentzer of Houston Chronicle wrote: "Nothing fancy," said chef Olivier Ciesielski, the owner of L'Olivier Restaurant, standing at the stove in Gracie and Bob Cavnar's Museum District home as guests arrived for Recipe for Success' first Gala in Small Bites of the season.
   I was peeking at what he had going on the stove, including a small pot sizzling with the onion and broth base for an amuse-bouche of Porcini Cappucino - essentially a mushroom soup he planned to pour into the row of sculptural demitasse cups nearby and cap with a creamy froth.

Read the rest of the story and pictures here.  See the 2013 schedule of Gala in Small Bites here.

Act II of Dress for Dinner, Season IV was a roaring success, with high-style ladies flooding the third floor of Neiman Marcus for a runway show of Lafayette 148 NY's Spring Collection, followed by dinner with the designer, Edward Wilkerson. Among the fashion media who showed to cover the event was Joy Sewing of the Houston Chronicle, who provided a lovely review of the soiree.

Read the full story and view the slideshow here.

For our March Chef Surpríse, Chef Kiran Verma (Kiran's) showcased Indian tradition with local flare with her main course: Tandoori Texas Quail stuffed with Mission Figs, Wild Mushrooms and Pine Nuts with Mixed Berry Chutney. The family-style passed sides, which included Bhindi Masala (okra), Baingan Bartha (eggplant), and Mushroom and Apricot Biryani (rice), created a sense of home and togetherness  among guests. 

The Chef Surpríse series is held the first Monday of every month at RecipeHouse and features a rotation of Houston's hottest chefs. To learn more and sign up to attend upcoming dinners, visit our website.

Eat it! Food Adventures with Marco Polo Volume One: Leaving Home was named among the best in family-friendly media, products and services by Mom's Choice Awards. Our children's cookbook-meets-adventure-tale, written by Recipe for Success Founder Gracie Cavnar and illustrated by Anni Matsick, received Silver in the Books: Cooking & Food category for ages 9 to 12.

Read more about the book and purchase a copy for your family here.

For our March Chef Surpríse dinner, we were honored to have Chef Kiran Verma of Kiran's in the RecipeHouse kitchen, where she doled out  plates of comforting yet inspired Indian cuisine, as well as a glimpse of the magic behind it all. In particular, the full house of guests were taken aback by the simplicity of making fresh paneer (Indian cheese).

After bringing milk to a low boil, Kiran stirs in a handful of spices, adds vinegar to make the milk curdle, and pours the mixture into a cheesecloth...

...before bundling and hanging the cheesecloth to drain any excess liquid.

Then, VOILA! Fresh paneer, to simmer in sauce or nibble on its own.

The Chef Surpríse series is held the first Monday of every month at RecipeHouse and features a rotation of Houston's hottest chefs. To learn more and sign up to attend the next dinner with David Cordua of Cordua Restuarants on April 1, visit our website.

Watch Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live having some fun with VegOut!

 PaperCityMagazine featured RecipeHouse in their March 2013 issue with a full-page story by Executive Editor Kate Stukenberg, who detailed the magazine's recent curated dinner party there for a small gathering of glitteratti. PaperCity collaborated with some of Houston's most aesthetically savvy folks, including Found's Aaron Rambo and Ruth Moore Davis, who styled the space with a modern nod to a farmhouse dinner, and graphic designer Meg Barclay, who crafted and calligraphed menus featuring dishes by Recipe for Success Chefs Advisory Board Chair, Monica Pope of Sparrow Bar+Cookshop

Read the full story and view a slideshow of the stylish affair here.

We have been saturated in recent weeks with new books that are filled with insider information and facts illuminating a decades long effort by an industry that reaps billions in profits to create and sustain the American people's lifelong dependency on a high calorie, low nutrition diet of junk food.  That processed food diet may be fast, affordable and easy, but it is now killing us off by the hundreds of thousands while costing taxpayers and employers billions of dollars thanks to the chronic disease it fosters.  So, we are poisoning our children and ourselves and paying for the pleasure, and we can no longer claim we didnt know.

Young children who don't yet have the skills to differentiate between promotion and facts are bombarded by $1.6 billion in junk food advertising every year.   Still efforts to manage access for children, or limit advertising to them, or control portion sizes or labeling, are all stalled--mired in politics and awash in lobbying dollars to prevent them.

Do we sit so idly by and allow our babies unfettered access to tobacco, drugs and alcohol?  Do we offer our toddlers a line of cocaine or a swig of scotch the way we so blithely pass out pop tarts and Cheetos?  It's time we started treating junk food as the controlled substance that it should be.

Fact is that the food companies have learned how to create hyper-palatable cuisine that looks just like the healthier stuff we used to eat.  The change in our diet has crept into our everyday lives slowly over the last forty years while we weren't looking. It's time to start looking, asking questions, reading the labels and demanding a stop to the slow poisoning of an entire generation. It's time to say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" and insist that our policy makers establish controls that help us stay informed and protect our children.

And, we need to take back control in our own homes:  Turn off the ads, close the door on the promotional bribery of our kids, and vote with our wallets.  Simply quit buying the junk.  Cold Turkey.  A profit-driven industry will give us what we demand.  For the sake of our children, it's time we demanded healthier food.