The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fostered children serve a dinner to remember
On a hot summer afternoon, the spacious kitchen of Pasadena’s First United Methodist Church was bustling. Culinary students and their chef teachers were chopping basil, crushing watermelon and laying slices of rustic bread on baking sheets.
The students — in their late teens and early to mid-20s — were in high spirits. It was Saturday, and they were preparing a five-course meal for dozens of lucky guests, who would gather for dinner in the church’s courtyard Sunday.
Under the supervision of professional volunteer chefs, the young cooks would stuff mushroom caps, marinate carrots for a vegetarian ceviche, slow roast tomatoes for rigatoni, make arugula shallot chimichurri for grilled flat iron steak and whip up a dessert of brown sugar blackberry upside down baby cakes.
The dinner would be a graduation of sorts for these young adults, who had spent the past 10 weeks in a new culinary training program created by Hillsides, the Pasadena-based foster care and mental health charity. Twelve of them started; 10 finished.
“We weren’t sure how many were going to stick it out,” said Correnda Perkins, who dreamed up the program with her colleagues. “Our population can be transient, especially when housing isn’t stable.”
Perkins oversees Hillsides’ programs for “transition age youth” between 18 and 25, who have aged out of foster care, but who still need support, including housing and workforce training. Two of her aspiring chefs are homeless or couch surfing. Six live in transitional housing that allows them to stay for only two years.
The Culinary Apprenticeship Program, which pays the students $13 an hour, will help them figure out if they are suited to restaurant work.
“They don’t always have time to follow their passions,” Perkins said. “They need a paycheck.”
Each young chef was allowed to invite one or two guests.
After dessert and coffee, among much whooping and hollering, the students received certificates of completion. Guests, who also included officials and staff from Hillsides, were impressed by the delicious meal.