Central Kitchen DC

Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel show, "No Reservations", took on DC Central Kitchen in an episode I saw yesterday on the Travel Channel's Bourdain marathon. Pretty interesting stuff. DC Central Kitchen is like an organized, instutional version of Food Not Bombs that started back in 1989 right after that year's Presidential Innauguration. Lots of leftover food. Lots of hungry mouths to feed. All it needs is some organization of the flow. So they formed Central Kitchen, harvested the leftovers from innaugurations, and then later from restaurants and kitchens around the city, took them back to the kitchen, and got homeless and poverty stricken members of society who were looking for some new career training, to cook dinner for the homeless and needy of DC. Their philosophy is that nothing should go to waste- no people, no food, and no resources should go to waste. Sounds good to me. I visited the Food Not Bombs website as well, with memories of a Berkeley kitchen at Fort Awesome--a neighborhood co-op house right next to Ashby BART. Fort Awesome hosted FNB about once a month, and the local chapter would collect leavings and giftings from the local farmers markets and local buisnesses, bike it over to our kitchen with a bike trailer, and cook up a fabulous vegetarian, peace loving meal in Ft. Awesome's giant pots and pans. They'dd then deliver it and serve it up over at People's Park--a park that people took back from corporations back in the '60's, that now serves a lot of the homeless population and activist groups in the area. Mmm good stuff. I was interested to see some of FNB's other slogan-based sentiments on their site. "Bake Goods not Bank Bailouts" and "Food not Lawns". Excellent.