4 days ago
Winnipeg chefs band together to make hundreds of meals daily for wildfire evacuees
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With thousands of people seeking refuge in Winnipeg from wildfires burning around Manitoba, a group of local chefs are now cooking more than 1,000 meals every day, to make sure everyone who's displaced has something good to eat.
"Me and a couple of chef friends rallied to put together a game plan on how we can help and support [evacuees] through what we love to do, which is cooking," said Matthew Neufeld, the owner of Prairie Kitchen Catering.
"The Canadian Red Cross has reached out and asked us to cook 1,250 meals per day for the next two weeks."
Neufeld's Prairie Kitchen Catering is part of a group called the Hachere Pop Up Collective, which also includes Bahay Kubo, Loaf and Honey, Baon Manila Nights and Atomic Dinner Rolls.
The owners typically collaborate for catered events, but they've been working together since last week to create different meals each day for wildfire evacuees.
"Today we have caesar salad, a nice little pasta bake with some pork sausages. Yesterday we did a vegetarian chili.…Tomorrow we're going to be doing a barbecue pork loin with some wild rice pilaf," said Neufeld.
"We love what we do, and now that we can do it for a good cause, it makes what we do even more meaningful to us."
With 27 active wildfires burning across the province as of Wednesday, prompting evacuations from several communities, more than 17,000 people are expected to be forced from their homes.
To help those relocated to Winnipeg, Atomic Dinner Rolls owner Stephen Strecker said the chefs are literally working with tons of food each day. Each chef brings something unique to the table, he said.
"We have people that specialize in bulk production, we have people who specialize in ordering and costing, and it's just a bunch of chef members getting together to feed some people."
Strecker said they put out a call on social media for volunteers to help in the kitchen and got hundreds of offers.
"We have people that have never worked in the kitchen that are just here to help do dishes. We have people who worked in kitchens 20 years ago that just want to give back," he said.
'The food is a comfort to them'
When it came to helping feed evacuees, the Canadian Red Cross reached out to Community Helpers Unite, a local organization working to end food insecurity in Winnipeg's North End.
The Red Cross asked the organization to cook and deliver meals for evacuees, said CEO Brandy Bobier. The Red Cross has contacted her in the past to provide meals for displaced people, so when thousands of evacuees arrived in Winnipeg, they reached out again, she said.
"We got the call from Red Cross on Wednesday last week that we needed to start feeding 300 folks at the Century Arena [in Winnipeg] who were coming in as evacuees," said Bobier.
The Red Cross called again later in the week to say they'd be opening a larger evacuation centre on Leila Avenue, and would need more meals, she said.
"To be able to handle the volume of an additional 1,250 people, we went to work right away to co-ordinate services between six different restaurant partners and chef partners that we work with."
Bobier is waiting for more kitchen equipment to be installed in her space so she can handle the volume herself. She expects to be preparing meals for at least the next month.
"[The food] is a comfort to them, from what I've been told," said Bobier.
"So when they tell me that they are loving the food, then I'm happy. I know we're doing our job."
The Canadian Red Cross is accepting donations for wildfire evacuees, which will be used for a wide range of expenses, including the cost of food for evacuees.
The federal government said Tuesday it will match donations made to the Red Cross, as will the governments of Manitoba and Saskatoon.
