Kitchen Angels held our second cooking class in May. This one was taught by Anita Hausafus and featured East Indian cuisine. The event was sold out and the food was amazing. If you are interested in attending a class but it's already sold out, you are welcome to put your name on our waiting list. We occasionally have cancellations and can get an interested attendee into the event at the last minute.

We are just a few checks away from our Angels Dine Out fundraising total, and it looks like 2022 was a very good year indeed! In 2019 we had 40 restaurants and total donations came to $95k. This year we had nine few restaurants and it looks like we will clear $90k! We couldn't be happier about the generosity of our community members. Thanks again to all who participated in the event.

If you click on the link below, you can watch Kitchen Angels' 30th Anniversary video! Many thanks to Thom Eberhardt and Christie Vasquez for the gift of their time and talent in creating this masterpiece. This short film perfectly captures what it means to be a Kitchen Angels volunteer and supporter. Here's to 30 more years serving our beloved community!

June is National Dairy Month and June 4^th is National Cheese Day. While the celebrations may be enough to put a lactose-intolerant individual into gastric distress, for those who enjoy dairy, any recipe that calls for cheese can be spruced up with a trip to the gourmet cheese counter. BBC goodfood has a good list of 40 recipes that feature cheese.

Dairy doesn't mean only cow-based products, however. Sheep and goat-milk cheeses make up a growing share of the dairy products consumed in this country. For example, there's halloumi - a semi-hard, unripened cheese made from a mixture of goat and sheep milk. This recipe for warm halloumi, chickpea & lime salad looks light enough for a warm June day.

If cold, sweet desserts are your thing, then you can easily celebrate National Dairy Month with everything ice cream. No time for trial and error? Here's the Only Ice Cream Recipe You'll Ever Need, kindly provided by Melissa Clark of The NY Times Cooking. But if variety is your thing, then The Spruce Eats has your back, with 54 Summer-Ready Ice Cream Recipes. There are some seriously interesting flavors here- like Ube, Everything Bagel, and Avocado ice cream. Not that we can do anything about it now, but Snow Ice Cream, made with actual freshly fallen snow, looks intriguing.

Most of the recipes above require an ice cream maker of some sort. If you're looking for one, why not head over to Kitchenality. Last time we checked, they had at least three machines on the shelves, and one gelato maker! If you want to enjoy ice cream during National Dairy Month ONLY, then return your machine in July and Kitchenality will clean it up and put it back on the shelves. Consider it a rental.

You may have heard talk of the latest Kitchen Angels offering, which we're calling Encore Bites. This initiative provides snacks once a month for our homebound clients. So far the food items have been shelf-stable, but we'll soon be preparing and delivering fresh food items as well. Since this will take more effort, we need to recruit willing volunteers!

The snack bags will be distributed on the 3rd Wednesday of each month. We will need four volunteers in June and six volunteers in July. Here are the shifts:

If you are interested in assisting with this special project, either in the kitchen or in the warehouse putting together bags, please contact Lauren. The clients love the extra food and are looking forward to the next distribution!

Lauren was recently pulled into a conversation with some kitchen volunteers about their desire for more kitchen training. Volunteer Carol G. made a great suggestion: post some helpful tips each month in the Halo Headlines! So here it is folks: kitchen tips for new volunteers and seasoned ones who would like a refresher.

We will continue to post kitchen tips and eventually we'll compile all of the information into a thorough kitchen handbook. Thanks to our volunteers for the good suggestions!

There are a lot of people and agencies working together to assist individuals displaced by the wildfires in New Mexico.

Kitchen Angels has provided meals to evacuees having medical treatments in Santa Fe and we will continue to help people connect to local and federal resources. If you know an evacuee or someone who has lost their home, please share this information.

FEMA is making the rounds and offering federal assistance. DisasterAssistance.gov is the online portal where you can apply for financial assistance. Here is the FEMA flyer in English and one in Spanish.

YouthWorks has teamed up with World Central Kitchen to cook and deliver meals to individuals displaced by the wildfires as well as emergency responders. If you are interested in contributing your time in the kitchen at Santa Fe Community College, they are looking for cooks to assist with meal preparation. The shifts are listed as AM (8am - 1pm) and PM (1pm - 6pm), but you don't have to work the entire five hours. We were told to show up when you can and work for however long you can. Any amount of assistance is greatly appreciated. We've already had quite a few Kitchen Angels volunteers cook for the relief effort. You can click here to register and sign up for a shift.

Highlands University in Las Vegas is coordinating relief efforts with multiple agencies working on their campus. A number of very useful links for northern New Mexico can be found here.

The Food Depot is working with Gov. Lujan Grisham's office and other local agencies to offer pop-up food pantry distributions in areas affected by the wildfires. You can scan this QR code, which will bring you to a webpage that tells about local food distribution.

Evacuees staying in Santa Fe county can reach out to https://www.santafenm.gov/connect or call 505-995-9525 in the city, or 505-992-9849 in the county, and a navigator will assist you in finding the resources you need.

It's a huge effort, but together we can help make life just a little bit easier for those living through crisis brought on by the fires.

Mary Persinger has driven our Madrid route for the past year and has been exemplary in her volunteer tasks. She delivers to nine clients from La Cienega to Madrid. She handles new stops easily, checks in when there are issues with clients, and is always willing to add another stop. When a client was going to be out for surgery on her scheduled delivery day, Mary asked to pick up the bag on the day the client was scheduled to return home, to ensure she would have meals.

We also have enough clients living in the Tesuque area that we have a team driving meals out to those folks. Roxie & Valana used to deliver meals for us in town, but when they heard we were looking for volunteers who lived in or around Tesuque, they stepped right up. These two have shown such care, bringing more than just food to make sure the clients' needs are met.