Amateur Bartending...

Last night, I volunteered at Plate by Plate, a food and wine tasting event put on by Project by Project.

PBP (as they call themselves) is a volunteer organization that does fundraising and outreach events for a different non-profit every year (hence the focus of "project by project"). Their main fundraising event is a giant tasting event where they have 30 restaurant chefs prepare tastings of signature dishes.

I volunteered to be on the marketing committee prior to the event. We helped with publicity and PR. We first updated the PBP contact list of food and Asian-American publications and general NYC event websites. Then we were each assigned a list of publications to reach out to and get our event submitted. I got the food publications and managed to get a few postings on blogs. I also used some stealthy email skills by trying to email different food journalists with different variations of their email addresses to see if I could reach them (e.g. FirstInitialLastName@newspaper, com, FirstNameLastName@newspaper.com, etc.).

For the day of, I was a volunteer and we were assigned to first man the VIP section and then I was assigned to "Zone 3", where there were a few chef tables and the drink tables.

Prior to the start of the event, I wandered around and took some photos.


Here are the chefs setting up. The space is Skylight in Tribeca, which is a nice airy open warehouse.
In the aisles between the chef tables, there were tall club tables that were decorated with dark blue tableclothes. The centerpieces were clear vases filled with little paper fans that were taped together so they looked like silver flowers and little blue tealights.

More shots of chefs setting up...

This the back table of Morimoto's station. The dish they presented was a foie gras custard, which was super yummy and decadent (I got to taste some during my break later). They had laid out all of the custards, little garnishes, and little dabs of wasabi all ready to assemble.

There was a VIP area where I had my first shift. A snack company called Lesser Evil donated snacks and Obama/McCain posters as centerpieces for the VIP area.


During the VIP reception, we were in charge of pouring champagne and serving drinks to everyone.

During the regular event, I was stationed in Zone 3, helping clean up used plates and utensils and also covering the drink volunteers when they needed to take a break. I also was moving crates of clean glasses out and dirty glasses back in.

I got pretty good at mixing little vodka shots with juice. We had little teeny plastic clear cups that I'd fill with a couple of ice cubes and put in a third of vodka and fill the rest with juice. People loved the vodka and would come back to get shots for all of their friends.

We were right around the corner from Cake Man Raven, who made the most delicious red velvet cupcakes.

Here we are enjoying the cupcakes!
All in all, a fun and delicious evening, even though it was super tiring being a volunteer. Next year I may come as a paying guest instead. :P

Pouring coffee all day...

This morning the boy and I went help out at University Soup Kitchens. They're an all-volunteer organization that does a soup kitchen once a week in the Lower East Side. The NYC UVA Alumni Association goes and volunteers once a month, which is how I heard about them.

This was my 2nd time volunteering. I signed up for the 2nd shift which starts at 11:45am. The first shift starts at 8:45 and who can get up that early on a Saturday?

It's a very cool set-up for a soup kitchen. Instead of having a buffet/cafeteria style service, it's actually restaurant style, where the volunteers serve the patrons at their seats. The main course is always meatloaf and they have salad and veggies and bread and bananas and brownies for dessert. They also started branching out into other services, like there's a free clothes table and everyone gets a bag of food when they leave.

The first time I was there, I managed the clothes table. Once we got a sense of what was available, we'd try to find something for each person to take with them. We became fashion consultants. We'd ask what they'd like and then offer recommendations and tell them they looked good or tell them they should go for something different.

This time the boy got bussing duties and I was responsible for serving coffee. The coffee was made in this gigantic brewer with 1 pound of coffee at a time and a filter with a 1 foot diameter. The first time I tried to brew coffee, I nearly spilled grounds everywhere because I didn't realize you could pull the whole grill out with the filter and grounds all in it. After brewing, we'd have to transfer it, pot by pot, into a dispenser, and then wheel it out into the eating area. Then we'd fill a pot and walk around to fill people's cups.

It was fun to walk around and talk to people and offer them drinks. My hands got really cramped up since I had to clutch the coffee pot pretty tightly. There was no insulation on the pot, so you couldn't use your other hand to support it. But I can pour coffee with my left hand, so I was able to switch back and forth. Although my hands will be pretty cramped tomorrow.

We serve for 1 hour and a half and the time just flies by. You are on your feet the entire time moving around and trying to help everyone as fast as you can. But everyone was very nice and polite and grateful that they were getting some good food.

It was a good morning, but we were pretty tired afterwards and ended up taking a nap for 2 hours.