Millet and Resiliency: Community MVPs' First Healthy Cooking Demo of 2014-2015

This weekend felt like Autumn. There was a clean crispness in the air, and all of those majestic DC oaks and elms were lit up with orangey yellows and reds. My neighbors at the community garden spent hours piling up cardboard, organic matter, and garden scraps on their now empty beds so the materials can break down over winter and nourish the soil for fertile growing in the spring. It may sound cliche, but everything about the fall reminds me that life is one neverending cycle; that what’s happening now will come to an end but will have a direct impact on how things shake out the next time around. The actions we take to care for the earth, for each other, and for our community today will set the stage for growth and flourishing in the future. There’s something really hopeful and resilient about it.

It’s that same cyclical positive energy and resiliency that I saw this weekend from our very own Brainfood Community MVPs. On Saturday, our group of talented second-years led a free healthy cooking demo, making vegetarian millet burgers in front of a crowd of about 40 people for the DC Urban Resiliency Weekend at Common Good City Farm. These high school students volunteered to invest their time and energy and share their knowledge with others, transferring skills that build a healthy, flourishing community.

As their “teacher,” I was so proud of the end product - a fun, interactive, and delicious healthy cooking demo. But as a youth worker, I was more interested in the process, the behaviors, dynamics, attitudes, and decisions that happened along the way. There were indeed some unexpected moments during the MVPs first demo. Like any public event, despite all planning, coordinating, and rehearsing, you can’t anticipate every detail. Cooking outdoors on a fold-up table on dirt floor with 40 people watching can bring challenges. And this is where the process got really fun to watch.

The MVPs maintained composure when the burner wouldn’t light and calmly waited while we replaced it with a backup. When someone missed his line and skipped a step, two other students casually passed him his ingredients as a gentle reminder to go back to that step. When the onions took longer than expected to caramelize and the MVPs had already run through all their pre-rehearsed lines, several students filled up the unexpected silence with anecdotes, testimonials, and crowd questions. They listened and watched for subtle cues from one another. They helped each other out. They expressed their thoughts and offered personal stories. They didn’t miss a beat. And the audience ate it up - literally and figuratively.

In their very first healthy cooking demo of the year, our MVPs demonstrated not only their cooking skills and culinary knowledge but more importantly, their individuality, poise under pressure, a strong sense of teamwork, and budding leadership skills. These youth were able to bounce back from kinks in the process and work together to create something bigger than themselves. After the demo, their beaming smiles told me they recognized it too. They felt a sense of ownership, contribution, and meaningful community impact. They were setting the stage for future growth and flourishing, both out in the community and also within themselves. And just like the cycle of the seasons, there’s something really hopeful and resilient about that.