Summer Intern – Kitchen Cooking Fun

Summer Intern

As a new intern here at Riverview Gardens, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Dianne and I’ll be working with the Director of Human Resource Management as a Communications Intern for another month or so. I’m currently in the Professional Communications program at Fox Valley Technical College and will be graduating with honors this Fall, December 2016. I have been very fortunate to be able to receive this wonderful opportunity to intern with Riverview Gardens for the summer and to be able to learn more about working in the communications field.

Last week, I grew curious to learn more about some of the volunteers who enjoy being a part of Riverview Gardens and found myself wandering into the kitchen. After hanging out with these talented volunteers, I wrote the following, my first Riverview Gardens blog:

Kitchen Cooking Fun

Every Monday morning, Riverview Gardens is fortunate to have an exceptional team of ladies volunteer with cooking and baking weekly meals for ServiceWorks participants and everyone who volunteers at Riverview Gardens. The free lunch is provided to ServiceWorks participants and other volunteers every weekday. Riverview Gardens feels it is an important part of creating a positive social environment for job-training participants as they navigate appropriate workplace behaviors.

I became inspired to learn more about their cooking techniques and to get involved with the kitchen cooking fun. Personally I’m not much of a cook, so I was impressed with all of their cooking knowledge, skills, and expertise.  While they only volunteer from 9:00am to 12:00pm on Mondays, they somehow manage to create a variety of amazing dishes that last the entire week.

From chopping and dicing veggies, to cooking, baking and creativity, these ladies have taught me a lot about spicing things up, working with what ingredients you have, and mixing replacement ingredients to change up the flavor a little. This week, the ladies have put together a baked bean dish, an egg bake, split pea soup, cranberry conundrum, pineapple cake, brownies, and sliced watermelon. Below are some pictures I was able to snap with my smartphone while we got dirty in the kitchen.

After all the hard work with creating the meals, and some taste testing, here are some of the finished goodies:

Overall, I really enjoyed learning from these wonderful ladies and was truly inspired by what one of them said. One of the ladies told me that she loves to volunteer because she wants to use what the earth provides naturally and organically, and to be able to use her skills to give back to the world. All of the ladies enjoy cooking and volunteering at Riverview Gardens, and they all work really well together too. I’m glad I took the time to work with them this week in the kitchen and the ServiceWorks participants are appreciative and thankful of all the cooking the ladies do for them.