When Leslie Ellis first started volunteering at the Cabbage Patch Settlement House (1413 S. 6th St.) in Old Louisville, she was looking for a place to spend some time to recharge her batteries while taking a six-month leave of absence from her job at The Courier-Journal in 1995.
She loved to cook, so it was a natural fit for her to get involved with the Seed the Table Program, which had been launched at The Cabbage Patch a year earlier at the suggestion of Kathy Cary, chef/owner of Lilly’s (1147 Bardstown Rd) and La Peche Gourmet-To-Go.
The Cabbage Patch works with at-risk youth and their families to help them become self-sufficient through a variety of programming. One element of that, the Seed to Table program, focuses on teaching participants about healthy eating both through gardening and cooking. Once Ellis got involved, she was hooked. So, she continued volunteering at Cabbage Patch when she went back to work at The Courier-Journal and stayed on after officially retiring a few years ago.
“The Patch is just a great place,” Ellis says. “I quickly fell in love with it and wanted to stay a part of it. It’s a warm place where kids can try all sorts of things and push themselves and visit places they never would otherwise see. The staff is amazing and very dedicated to bringing out the best in our kids. I hope that I play a small part in that, too.”
Bringing Seed to Table to Life
But by many accounts, Ellis, 66, who lives in the Highlands, is more than just a small part, she is now the backbone of the Seed to Table program, joining forces with two other volunteers – Lea Fischbach and Judy Buckley. Each week, the trio guides a group of 12 students through the preparation of a homemade, well-balanced meal. During the summer months, they also tend a garden that supplies them with fresh fruits and vegetables that students can share with their families.
“Leslie keeps us focused,” says Fischbach, whom the kids affectionately call “Miss Fish.”
It’s Ellis who insists that all things be made from scratch. They don’t use cake mixes or other kinds of pre-made shortcuts for making their dinners.
While the trio has refined the menus over the years and consults on what they will fix each week, Ellis takes the lead on menu planning and does all of the grocery shopping each week. She then gets all the recipes written out for the students and brings in the supplies to set up the kitchen each week.
“To remember all the little pieces and parts,” Fischbach says, “it’s a lot of work.”
Students divide up into four groups of three, each group working with an adult and a staff person from the Cabbage Patch usually fills in that fourth spot from week to week. Getting started is usually the most hectic part of the evening. Dessert is the most popular task – so no student can do dessert two weeks in a row, something some students hope the adults will forget.
One recent Monday night the students set out to make Chicken Tetrazzini, garlic bread, asparagus and pineapple upside-down cake. Ellis calmly explains the steps of how to make the sauce for the Tetrazzini, and the care that needs to be used to make sure that nothing burns. She explains to a young girl with tousled hair that she needs to keep stirring her chopped onions until they are translucent, then telling her that means they will look a little like glass and be tender and soft.
The other children start to measure the ingredients for the cake. They start to discuss how they will slice the loaves of bread before they spread butter on them for garlic bread. Others learn how to snap the ends off asparagus stalks and line them up in pans for roasting.
Learning to Love Cooking and Broccoli
For three years, 10-year-old Malachi has come to Old Louisville to experiment with eating, cooking and growing fresh vegetables. Working in the garden is one of his favorite parts of the program, especially because he gets to take home what he grows. Last year, he loved watching the watermelons grow. “I wondered how big it’s going to get by the end,” he says.
Working with Miss Leslie is a highlight of the program, because he says, she’s nice. “You can expect to learn something new every day,” he says. “She helps you if you don’t know what to do.”
Last summer, when they were growing corn for the first time, Malachi recalls how Miss Leslie showed him how to tie the stalks to rods so that the stalks wouldn’t fall over as they grew taller.
And he likes her recipes. He likes to make the meatloaf she taught them how to make when he’s at home. Though, Malachi admits, she still hasn’t been able to convince him to like broccoli very much.
Working with the children is the driving force for Ellis and all of the volunteers. Each week, she says there is generally a skepticism from at least one person about something that’s on the menu. One boy during Tetrazzini week had never even seen asparagus before, but he ate it and even said he liked it, Ellis says.
“I love the kids and get very attached to them,” she says. “We – myself and the other two volunteers, Lea and Judy – develop real bonds with them through our sharing in the kitchen and during mealtimes and interactions in the hallways. I relish the kids’ excitement, and the pride on their faces when they master a new cooking technique. And there is nothing better than one of our kids throws their arms around you at the end of the night. Makes my day!”
