Cuisine

Our Legacy Garden planting is complete, helped again this year by our partners with Arapahoe County Master Gardeners and of course all the rain in the past few weeks. (Actually, all the rain has made it difficult to plant on some days because the ground was too wet.)

Last month we celebrated Juneteenth for the first time at the center, thanks to a request made by two of our students, Q and James, shown left to right above.

James is from Georgia and wanted to have a Juneteenth celebration because the day is celebrated back home. Julie readily agreed. Barbecue being the traditional way to celebrate, James determined to grill up burgers and brats for the entire center, with delicious baked beans and corn on the cob, of course. Home Management Instructor Dishon Spears gave him lots of support. Then In philosophy, we read the Emancipation Proclamation and Q led a discussion of its continued importance to Black Americans.

Today Charis is graduating from the center. Hers will be a unique graduation, with the actual Freedom Bell ceremony and the “love session” that typically follows being conducted on Zoom for social distancing purposes. No hug from Julie.

Charis was just one week away from finishing her program when we closed the building in late March and many of our students went home. Graduation means, among other requirements, that she must cook a meal for the entire center. Today that’s about 30 of us altogether.

Colorado Gives Day 2019 is December 10, and it’s the tenth year of this highly successful program to encourage online giving to Colorado nonprofits like the Colorado Center for the Blind. And we’re proud that we’ve been a part of Colorado Gives Day from the very first!

Sure, we’ll gratefully accept donations any day, any time, but Colorado Gives Day on December 10 gives all of us some distinct advantages. Let’s mention, um, 10 of them!

There are always firsts at the Colorado Center for the Blind. For example, today Casey, a relatively new student, went on his first independent route to Romancing the Bean. Sure, he’d been there before, but not traveling on his own. And that’s what makes it a first.

Adia has been at the center since August, and last night she cooked her dinner party – for herself and five guests. This afternoon, Cody completed his mini-meal – it’s only for 15 people. He served Mississippi Pot Roast over smoked mashed potatoes and homemade bread.

What makes the pot roast “Mississippi?”

“A whole lot of butter.”

And this afternoon the CCB Student Association is hosting the first-ever pie contest. There are seven student entries, and Julie, Daniel and Vicki are the judges.

It’s a horse race, for sure. It started this morning with the announcement that Laura was about to go on her support drop with Daniel. She made it back about 11:30, no problem.

Mickey has been working on her mini-meal – for fifteen guests – for the past couple of days. At noon she served a penne spaghetti with meatballs to die for, and chocolate chip brownies big enough for your head stone. There were plenty of extras to go around, no sweat.

Julie has been excited all day about meeting 9-year-old Lexi to talk about Braille. Lexi’s teacher, Janet Anderson, brought her over to meet Julie and talk about ways to read Braille even faster. Lexi is an excellent reader and loves to read, so she and Julie have a lot in common!

We’re proud of our senior programs and how they have changed the lives of seniors who have lost vision and the people who love them. We’re excited about how those programs continue to grow – from the residential Seniors in Charge (twice a year), to four support groups (one in Spanish), to ever-expanding opportunities to provide outreach services.

And so we’re proud of our new Senior Program video, made with filmmaker and long-time collaborator Djuna “DJ” Zupancic. The video doesn’t talk about all the program details as much as it endeavors to tell what those programs and services have meant to five seniors in particular.

Embodied in these seniors and in their stories are the values that drive our Senior Services – indeed everything we do at CCB – skills that build belief in ourselves, a community that supports us, hope where there was uncertainty and maybe just a skosh of defiance!

Thanks to DJ for her highly professional and creative work. She gets us!

Well, yes! And a geek who is blind can be too, as David describes how he’s come from being only able to warm up frozen French fries to making Shepherd’s Pie for fifteen people.

You wouldn’t have needed to be told that Dorine’s Cinnamon-Pudding Cake was an award-winner if you had been anywhere near the Center’s kitchen this afternoon. It’s our spring Seniors in Charge week, and we have five dynamic seniors determined to keep living the lives they want. This afternoon, of course, they were cooking and baking under sleepshades, and the smell of that cake had mouths watering out in the lobby and beyond!

Sleepshades are optional, though encouraged, in the five-day training for seniors. This group is pretty game though, and all are giving them a good workout this week.

Believe it or not, the forecasts were correct, snow came in Friday night and is still falling Saturday morning of the last weekend in April. So here’s a warm thought. Serena made applesauce from scratch on Thursday in Home Management – peeling, coring, chopping, cooking and putting the mixture through the food processor. She’s got her hands wrapped around the still-warm quart jar of the golden stuff in the photo above, and she’s probably enjoying some of it this morning!