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Food Table

Take a look at what Food Table blogger had to say about our upcoming 10th Annual Dessert First Event on August 15 at the InterContinental Hotel….

“Like many people, I get my share of mail/junk mail. And like many, I really don’t have time to look through everything. I give each piece exactly 2 seconds before it goes to the recycle bin. 1 second to actually decide whether it’s a bill (most likely not as I don’t like getting stuff in the mail unless it’s presents); and 2 second to decide whether it’s worth my time.

The Project Open Hand invite fell into the latter group.

First, I have a few pet causes, and this org falls into that group. Secondly, the envelope was pretty enough to get me to open it. A beautiful bronze color envelope with a big fat monarch butterfly (64 cents) stamp. On the front, it says, “a Decade of Delicious.”

Hmmm… apparently this is the 10th Annual Dessert First event, so it’s a biggie.

So here’s what the invite said,

“Please join us to pay tribute to some of the finest pastry chefs in the Bay Area as they prepare decadent dessert creations for your indulgence:

Patti Dellamonica-Bauler (One Market Restaurant)

Luis Villavelazquez (Absinthe Brasserie & Bar)

Devin Alper (American Cupcake)

James Choplin (Bisou French Bistro)

Jessica Sullivan (Boulevard)

Elizabeth Falkner (Citizen Cake and Orson)

Terri Wu (Farallon)

Inter Continental San Francisco and (Luce Restaurant)

Adrienne Garcia (Marche)

Josh Thomsen (Meritage at the Claremont)

Ethan Howard (Murray Circle)

Carlos Sanchez (Parcel 104)

Suzanne LaFleur (Perbacco)

Michelle Polzine (Range)

Tim Nugent (Scala’s Bistro)

Sunday, August 15, 2010 – 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

VIP Reception: 4 p.m. – 5 p.m.

InterContinental San Francisco | 888 Howard Street | San Francisco”

The VIP reception costs $100 if you buy it online, and $125 if you reserve it the old fashion way. And the general admission is $65 online and $75 if you reserve it by mail.

The bummer is that I can’t go, so while I will contribute to the cause, I won’t be able to blog about this actual event. Argh! I am sure it will be fabulous!

However, I am blogging about it now, so that if you don’t already know about this event, you are now informed.

To read more about Project Open Hand, an organization that helps people living with HIV/AIDS, homebound or critically ill, and seniors, please visit www.openhand.org

This is truly a wonderful organization that helps the needy in the Bay Area. Many of my coworkers have volunteered at this org helping to prepare meals for delivery, and some of us also donate funds on our own.”

For more words of wisdom from Food Table, check out her blog at http://foodtable.wordpress.com/

World Premiere of “Sugar”

Project Open Hand is happy to present the video “Sugar” – a grand little introduction to YAY! Sprinkles and a reminder to join us at Project Open Hand’s decadent fundraiser, A Decade of Delicious – Project Open Hand’s 10th Annual Dessert First!, on August 15th at the InterContinental San Francisco.  This will be the closing event of the 2010 SF Chefs Week where 16 of the Bay Area’s best pastry chefs will provide samples of their decadent desserts. There will also be cocktails, music, and a fabulous silent auction. Buy your tickets while they are still available! Call 415-447-2316 or visit www.openhand.org to purchase your tickets today.

Check out this amazing video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFBln-v2mgk and you’ll be sure to get excited about Dessert First!

Posted by Hannah and Ilana

The Generosity of Restaurateurs!

“Few professions are as warm and giving as chefs and restaurateurs. I’d almost swear they headline more charity events than there are restaurants in San Francisco,” says Inside Scoop SF in their article “The Generosity of Chefs and Restaurateurs” on July 6, 2010. The staff at Project Open Hand couldn’t agree more. Our organization receives generous donations from various restaurants in the Bay Area throughout the year, and we couldn’t fully accomplish our mission without the kindness of these outside gifts and services. We are in the process of planning our 10th Annual Dessert First, where 16 of the Bay Area’s finest pastry chefs will not only be donating their time and skills, but also all the ingredients to make 500 portions of a delicious treat for the event’s guests. We couldn’t hold this event without these chef’s generous contributions. But wait, there’s more…

As we prepare for this event, we are also asking numerous restaurants throughout the Bay Area for donations towards the silent auction. Until now, we didn’t fully realize the amount of similar requests restaurants receive on a regular basis. According to Inside Scoop, “rarely a day goes by that they aren’t asked for a donation; often they’ll get 10 in a day.” Now that we know this statistic, we will feel even more appreciative to those businesses who donate their services. Despite the odds, we hope to have a successful auction with many generous donations.

So when you’re bidding on an item at a silent auction, remember the generosity of that item’s donor. In today’s economy, it’s nice to know that there’s still support for POH in the community!

To read the original article, please visit: http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/michaelbauer/2010/07/06/the-generosity-of-chefs-and-restaurateurs/

Posted by Hannah and Ilana

Pride 2010

Come join us at the 2010 Pride Parade on Sunday, June 27.  Enjoy the warm sunshine, colorfully extravagent parade, and energetic festivities that fill this very special day.  Don’t forget to stop by the Project Open Hand beverage booth on the corner of McCallister and Polk!

Here’s a letter that provides a great description of Pride…

Dear friends,

No matter how many Pride seasons come and go, it’s still amazing. Calendars grow thick with events, rainbow flags sprout from rooftops and windows, the film festival packs them in at the theaters. Even the downtown mall across from Horizons’ office has our colors in a street-level window. And then there’s the parade, which, whatever complaints there may be about gaps between contingents or commercialization, has few rivals – anywhere, at any time – for sheer exuberance and creativity.

Yet Pride goes beyond some whirl of events and seas of rainbow flags; it’s more than marching in a parade. Part of Pride is intensely personal – it’s about who we are and what we believe about ourselves. It’s about having overcome a million messages that we’re sinners, deviants, criminals; it’s about the families we create, and the children we raise to love rather than to hate.

Another part of Pride is – inescapably – political. Defiantly, unapologetically political. I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering my first big Pride (mine in Chicago) and being lit up by a dizzying, almost dreamlike sense of connection and community. A sense of movement, even power. In a world where equality remains elusive, simply living our lives as out, proud people makes a political statement with every breath we take.

And Pride is about more than just a day or even a week in June. Pride is donating to an LGBT organization. Pride is volunteering our time. Pride is helping an elder, a neighbor, a young person. Pride is talking – really talking – with family and friends about why full equality matters to us. Pride is about holding hands wherever we choose, or supporting an out candidate for office, or talking with our LGBT friends about why contributing to the community is so essential.

Pride is what you do every day. Every time you give, every time you put pride into action in any way, you move us all a bit closer to the day when equality no longer eludes, when acceptance replaces fear, when love between people is never cause for contempt but always and only for joy.

As ever, thank you for everything you give and do for our community, and have a wonderful Pride.

With pride and gratitude,

Roger Doughty
Executive Director
Horizons Foundation

Presenting POH Peanut Butter!!!

Did you know that your average peanut butter contains more than just peanuts? A typical jar of your favorite creamy (or chunky?) nutty butter is chock full of sugar, molasses, hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, and mono and diglycerides… whatever that means. That’s why Project Open Hand decided to stop using the store bought butter that is full of mysterious, and not so healthy ingredients. Thanks to Dan, one of our amazing staff members, Project Open Hand currently grinds our own fresh peanut butter regularly for our wonderful clients. And it gets better! Our peanut butter is made with just one ingredient… peanuts! Just the way it should be. By doing this, not only are we producing an all-natural, preservative-free product, but we have also reduced our annual peanut butter costs by forty percent! With these savings, we are able to produce more food for more people every year. Curious as to how this delicious and healthy treat tastes? Project Open Hand is excited to announce that their Peanut Butter will be available to the public at Whole Foods on Franklin and California Streets in San Francisco very soon. And, thanks to the generosity of Whole Foods, one-hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated back to Project Open Hand so that we can continue serving nutritious meals with love. We will announce our Peanut Butter’s premiere on the grocery store shelf as soon as possible – but start spreading the word today!

-Hannah and Ilana

CALL TO ACTION to Restore Weekend Senior Meals

In a last-minute budget cut, the Department of Aging & Adult Services has directed Project Open Hand and other senior nutrition providers to close all weekend meal sites serving low-income seniors throughout the City!

Project Open Hand has been providing hot nutritious meals and socialization for 300-500 seniors every weekend at five weekend meal sites for 12 years. Our weekend meal services are in the lowest-income neighborhoods of San Francisco, including the Tenderloin (at Curry and Downtown Senior Centers) and in the southeast section of town (at Visitacion Valley Community Center). Closing the Curry site will also stop the breakfast program for 190 seniors on weekends and holidays.

The Department’s plan calls for replacing the sit-down congregate hot lunches served on Saturdays and Sundays with substandard take-out meals distributed on Fridays, and laying off the staff who prepare, cook, distribute, and serve these meals on weekends. The Department proposed to cut $107,367 from Project Open Hand’s weekend meal service, and directed us to substitute bag lunches that don’t follow the Older Americans Act nutrition standards, instead of our “meals with love” that exceed those standards.

We know that our Senior Lunch Program is more than a meal – it is the opportunity to get out and socialize over a nutritious hot lunch with longtime friends. The program addresses the problems of isolation and depression as much as the nutritional needs of our elderly neighbors. These meal sites are essential community gathering-places for the lowest-income seniors who are struggling to live in dignity despite their poverty. Without the meal program on weekends, the sites would be closed, and seniors would be left alone in their SRO rooms eating a bag lunch.

The Board of Supervisors will consider the Department budgets this week and next, and they need to hear from voters who say they should not balance the City’s budget on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. Please call or fax the Supervisors and tell them not to cut senior services, especially the meals served to hundreds of seniors each weekend by Project Open Hand.

Supervisor              District     Phone          Fax         Room          E Mail
ALIOTO-PIER, Michela  2          554-7752       554-7843     274   Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
AVALOS, John              11         554-6975     554-6979     256 John.Avalos@sfgov.org
CAMPOS, David            9          554-5144       554-6255     272 David.Campos@sfgov.org
CHIU, David                 3          554-7450        554-7454    264 David.Chiu@sfgov.org
CHU, Carmen               4          554-7460         554-7432    260 Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org
DALY, Chris                 6          554-7970        554-7974     273 Chris.Daly@sfgov.org
DUFTY, Bevan             8          554-6968         554-6909     268 Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
ELSBERND, Sean          7         554-6516          554-6546     280 Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
MAR, Eric L.               1         554-7410          554-7415      284 Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
MAXWELL, Sophie      10       554-7670          554-7674       279 Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
MIRKARIMI, Ross        5         554-7630          554-7634       282 Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org

When Life Hands You Lemons

Interesting story in today’s Wall Street Journal about efforts to to deal with the invasive Asian Carp. It seems that efforts to control the carp population with electrified gates and poison are not having the desired effect but there is one weapon in the omnivore’s arsenal that may yet prevail, our appetite!

Chicago Chef Phillip Foss has hit upon the not-so-novel idea of feeding the carp to his patrons. Although the fish is popular in Asia and Israel, it yas yet to find a place on the American dinner table, enter Chef Foss:

Chef Phillip Foss gazed into the mouth of the giant, slippery Asian carp that had just flopped into the back of a boat writhing with two tons of the fish. “Mmm, carp,” said Mr. Foss of the 25-pound catch.For months, Mr. Foss has been trying to elevate the invader fish to fine-dining at his swanky Lockwood Restaurant and Bar in downtown Chicago.

He has tried to entice diners every which way: carp ceviche with lime and fiddlehead fern; broiled carp with grilled fennel; carp chowder; and even carp-accio, a play on the raw Italian dish carpaccio, which Mr. Foss makes with a thinly sliced version of the fish served with watermelon.

Small Change = Big Impact

The Operations Department at Project Open Hand always has it’s collective ear to the ground to find ways to save money and energy and we have just completed a small job that could help in both of those arenas.

 A recent development in refrigeration technology is the ECM motor.  This stands for Electrically Commutated Motor.  ECM motors are microprocessor controlled, requiring less current for the same effect and therefore resulting in greater efficiency.  ECM motors are also brushless causing them to have a minimal amount of resistance (friction) which translates into less heat in the coolers and freezers  from the motors themselves.  Refrigeration in it’s most basic form is getting rid of heat, rather than cooling air, so reducing heat from the fan motors is a great first step.  

We were able to have Bay Area Refrigeration install these ECM’s in our freezers and coolers at a minimal cost to POH.  We will be tracking our electrical usage over the next year to see how much of a difference these motors make, but my first impression is that they are already having an impact.

 I have observed over the last few days that the compressors,  which are outside of the boxes at various locations are simply not turning on as frequently as they were, but still maintaining the same temperature in the boxes.   Bingo, energy savings!  We will have some data within the next 6 months to indicate what kind of savings we are generating.  We are hoping to pay off the cost of the installation in energy savings in that amount of time. 

Every small increment of energy savings translates to more resources we can dedicate to our clients.

Posted by Steve

Still, No Magic Bullets

Fitness supplements are big business, billion-dollar big and it got that way by promising to make you bigger, stronger and faster but of course that begs the question, do they work? The answer is a a qualified, “maybe”:

Doctors and nutritionists say that people who eat a normal diet generally don’t need nutritional supplements, even if they exercise vigorously. But among the subset of people who already eat healthfully and want to bulk up in the gym, some supplements, when taken in sensible doses, can provide a lift.

We are pretty clear on our pro-food stance, as in: eat food, not pills but we are also open-minded and this article in particular gave some credence to certain types of supplements. If you take your excercise seriously, the story is worth a full read.You can read the whole story over at the NY Times.

Posted by: Dan

Drink Tea, Be Happy

Green tea to be precise.

Dr. Kaijun Niu, at Tohoku University Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering in Sendai, and colleagues found men and women aged 70 and older who drank four or more, versus one or fewer, cups of green tea daily were 44 percent less likely to have symptoms of depression.

You can read the rest of the story, here.

Posted by: Dan