Chef Matthew Carmichael - Charity Dinner for the World's Fare [Events]

2012 Sep 26
Dear All,

I wanted to quickly take the opportunity to invite you all to an upcoming charity dinner that, in my capacity as co-organizer of CreativeMornings Ottawa, I have been asked to host/organize locally in support of the upcoming Social Innovation Week and the Feast Worldwide. The goal of this dinner is essentially for a group of people to get together share a meal and by the end of the meal, collectively decide on one thing that they can all collaborate on to make the world better. We have settled on poverty and access to food in Ottawa and the bulk of the funds raised from this event will go towards funding a group initiative intent on helping the Foodbank battle through the tough upcoming Holiday season. I have reached out specifically to each and everyone one of you because I am not looking only for people who will partake in the dinner but also also for people who care to act locally in an attempt to better their community and those around them.

More details are available here - feastongoodottawa.eventbrite.com
Here is the video of the talk he did at this Summer's CreativeMornings event:
vimeo.com/47638068

I look forward to potentially sharing a meal with you and hopefully doing our small part in staving off hunger in our commnuity over the next few months.

PS - Chef Carmichael has graciously volunteered his time to prepare us dinner in an open kitchen venue and this is not commonly something that would you get to experience !!

Sincerely,

--
Sharif Virani

Co-Organizer, CreativeMornings Ottawa Chapter // creativemornings.com
Creative Mornings Ottawa Twitter // @Ottawa_CM
Personal Twitter // @thescribblr

2012 Sep 27
Sound interesting, Anyone interested in going?

2012 Sep 28
LOVE this idea. Kudos to the organizers but will be in the USA.

2012 Sep 29
ahhh that sounds great. I was considering flying early to Paris but maybe I will go at the originally planned time so I can attend this..

Actually another idea. The funds for this dinner go to Ottawa food bank but might want to take out a small collection say $5 or $10 per person and in addition to something local maybe find something interesting on kiva.org for microloan that can improve someone else's life far away too.


2012 Oct 1
Sharif,

What is the capacity of the event?

2012 Oct 2
Sorry for the late reply got hit with the flu this weekend..capacity is about 30 but I have saved 5 tickets or so for the Ottawa foodie community just DM me on twitter if tickets are sold out before you can sign up.

Love the Kiva idea and totally open to these type of suggestions at the event - ie thats the whole goal of the dinner actually!!

Hope to see some of you all there!

Foodbank rep confirmed today as well!

2012 Oct 2
Okay. Bought my ticket and the online sales is down to 6.

As for kiva.org, it fits with the Think big and execute small principle since minimum loan amount is $25 per individual since you don't need to loan the whole amount someone is asking for. If we collect say only $5 each from 30 people it would be $150 and can potential do 6 slices of $25 loan. Some can do their own $25 loan directly if they prefer.

BTW, would the foodbank rep be able to take food donations that night if we bring some. Considering thanksgiving is coming up, we can easily put a few more things in our shopping cart and donate them.

2012 Oct 5
Was a very good event. It was held Grounded Kitchen & Coffeehouse and on the left side where you can see the kitchen and the chefs working there.

When you arrive they hand you a glass of sparkling wine. During the mingling period they refilled the glass.

The 4 course menu for the evening are:

1. Local spinach and arugula salad with sungold tomatoes, cantonnier cheese and red wine vinaigrette.

2. Cauliflower Soup with curried potatoes, golden shallots and coriander

3. Red Wine braised beef short-ribs with leek mashed potato, brussel sprout leaves and braising jus

4. Suzy Q's donuts and Pascale's ice cream.

The star of the evening is the beef short ribs, really tasty. Just wished I had some bread to soak up the great sauce. The lighting was pretty dim so the pictures did not come out that well so I stopped taking them.

The soup was good. Did wish there was a pepper grinder at the table since I would have loved some freshly ground pepper with it.

Salad was decent but might have opted for a larger bowl of soup and passed by the salad if I had the choice.

The ice cream was nice and there were several donut types available but people were not given a choice of donut type and you got what was put on your plate. I think I got one of the chocolate flavours. Did notice one of the guys at the table did not finish his Suzy Q donut.

They were catering also to vegetarian(s) in the group. The one that was vegetarian at our table got a mushroom risotto with some brussel sprout leaves.

I heard in addition to Chef Carmichael donating his time, some vendor donated supplies used in the meal.

Additional drinks after the 2 glasses of sparkling wine are on tabs and you settle up after with Grounded. 2 glasses of 2011 Cote de Rhone was $18. So this came to about $55 so a pretty decent value for what you get.

2 reps from Food bank, and someone from Suzy Q and Pascal I think were there.

Each table had a pad and some comment sheets about ideas / opportunites for better food provisioning.

I would guess the event had close to 40 people so hope it raised some money for the food bank. Would have been interesting to know which farms donated food for the event.


2012 Oct 6
Some good idea were being batted around at our table. The speaker talked about them supplying 140 food agencies and some people were donating grown potatoes and other veggies. and some CSA donate some portion of their products. There is probably a food drive somewhere for thanksgiving and beyond.

The organizers said they will circulate the mail with the different ideas and any initative and I hope Sharif also post them here.

Someone actually given microloan on kiva.org before and had asked family members to do the same last christmas.


2012 Oct 11
Glad to hear that you enjoyed the dinner. After this I can definitely understand all the hard work restaurant workers put into organizing a single service!

A ton of ideas were bumping around and you can be rest assured that we will follow up on them all. We are just compiling everything post event and will be sending a mail out to all attendees shortly.

In the interim here are some pictures from last week's Feastongood at Grounded w/ Chef Carmichae, enjoy!

www.flickr.com

Thanks who all that came out!

In touch soon!

SV