Yearlong project brings generations together over family storytelling.
Una Mitchell taught Milani Stephens and Oscar Lewis III to make traditional peas and rice, Mitchell’s grandmother’s recipe. “Sundays, holidays and Christmas, it’s on the table. They did really well,” she said in praise of her helpers. Milani easily recited the recipe. “We used peas, coconut rice, garlic, onions and Scotch bonnet peppers.” The hardest part? “Cutting the onions made me cry,” Oscar said. (Photo: Janis Fontaine/Stet)
Children’s laughter echoed through Extraordinary Charities’ commercial kitchen and mixed with the aroma of broiled fish, rice and peas, cornbread, rum cake and bread pudding.
A dozen kids and their senior citizen mentors had gathered in West Palm Beach to cook family recipes for a tasting to introduce their project, “Roots & Recipes, a Community Cookbook.”
Diane Lewis, co-founder of Feeding Hope Village, the nonprofit that organized the event, said the intergenerational culinary storytelling was the culmination of a project to bring together seniors and youth.
Lewis matched participants from the senior and youth empowerment programs to produce a cookbook of the seniors’ recipes, transcribed by the kids. They wrote down 17 recipes and the stories behind them, which will be compiled into a mini cookbook.
On March 21, the groups prepared their dishes at a celebration with colorful decorations and plenty to eat. The kids invited family and friends, who traveled from Port St. Lucie to Boynton Beach, to taste their food.
The idea for the yearlong project came from church cookbooks, a popular fundraising tool in the early and mid-1900s. Congregations gathered the best of the potluck dishes and published their recipes.
The digital age made the project easier, but Lewis still needed money to make it happen. With financial support from the city of Riviera Beach and the Kiwanis Club of Riviera Beach, she said, things took off.
The groups met for weeks to get ready. “The seniors are the authors — they have the recipes, and they tell the story. The students are the writers — they all have a laptop, and they wrote the story out. The seniors would share why they picked that, why that recipe was important to them. Today, the writers and the authors are making the recipe together,” Lewis said.
The Rev. Teresa Nelson of Nelson Outreach Ministries with, from left, Reginae Patterson and sisters Alaysia Hayes and Aria Hayes. They made Mildred Butler’s Quick Fix casserole. A mix of macaroni, tomatoes and hot dogs, “You can substitute any meat you have, chicken or beef or sausage, but we used hot dogs,” Nelson said. It’s served with cornbread.
Serving hungry people
Lewis founded Feeding Hope Village ministry with her husband, Oscar Lewis Sr., senior pastor of Faith Deliverance Church, in 2016 to serve hungry people in Riviera Beach.
Since then, they’ve provided more than food: They offer health and wellness counseling, help people identify available resources and assist incarcerated residents with reentry into the community.
“But the first component after the pantry was health and wellness. Getting a diabetes check. Getting a hypertension check. Educating people about salt and sugar. We had to take a stand on that,” Lewis said.
Oscar Lewis Sr. addresses the guests at “Roots & Recipes: Stories You Can Taste,” an intergenerational culinary storytelling event hosted by the nonprofit Feeding Hope Village on March 21. Diane Lewis is at his side. (Photo: Janis Fontaine/Stet)
Connecting kids and seniors became important to Lewis as she saw mistrust growing between generations. People fear what they don’t know, so she started there, and she found a way to connect them: food. The cookbook had strangers bonding. “The mentoring started, and to see them interact now is awesome,” Lewis said.
Now the recipes were ready, but she needed a kitchen. “We needed someplace that was certified and a chef to oversee all of the cooking to make sure that things were done properly, procedures being followed,” Lewis said.
She found Extraordinary Charities, a thriving hub of affordable office space for local nonprofits and home of the Recipes for Success program, which has been providing culinary training and employment opportunities for underserved people since 2022. It has a commercial kitchen and a community meeting space.
Nicole Young, owner and founder of Mainline Nursing Services, made her grandmother’s no-bake cheesecake recipe. “It was passed down to me and it’s one of the first things kids in our family learn to make. And it’s a no-bake, so it’s been a wonderful blessing. We have it at every family get-together and we top it with cherries.” Twins Olivia and Abigail Lewis, age 11, were the writers for Young’s recipe, a task they found challenging. “It was very hard and slow. You’ve got to get all the measurements right, especially with cheesecake,” Abigail said.
Lewis said, “When I reached out to the executive director, Christine Raymond, and shared my vision with her, she said, ‘I love this. This is right down our alley.’”
Raymond said, “We’ve got the kitchen. The space. The chef. It’s perfect. We need to help.” Extraordinary Charities provided the kitchen and the expertise of their chef, Greg Schiff, who leads the students in the Recipes for Success program.
In both programs, the goal is the same, the chef said. “The kids are learning knife skills, accountability, responsibility, recipes, and, most important, they’re learning how to taste their food. They’ve been awesome, so I’m very happy to be here. It’s all about families and traditions and flavors.”
Many of the dishes have a Caribbean influence, chef Greg said. “This is cooking from the heart, which makes the food even better.”
The kids learn to cook and take responsibility. “They’re doing dishes,” chef Greg said. “Taking care of business. That’s the accountability aspect of it, but it’s really all about caring. That’s what we’re teaching.”
Chef Greg and Lewis encourage parents to cook more with their kids.
“Cook some broccoli with them,” she said. “Tell them why you love broccoli. We hope this is going to encourage young people who are too used to using the microwave and boxed food to actually cook something real that’s tasty, savory, and has a little meaning behind it.”
Claudette Shirlon and Kalani Stephens bonded over Shirlon’s Jamaican rum cake, which is often served as a wedding cake. The cake is made from mixed fruit soaked in rum, plus 2 pounds of butter, 2 dozen eggs, 2 pounds of sugar and lots of spices. “Christmas is not Christmas without the Jamaican rum cake. It is luscious. We soak the fruit anywhere from four to sometimes six months,” Shirlon said. Kalani was excited: “It’s going to be in a book of recipes and it’s going to have our names. It’s gonna be awesome.” (Photo: Janis Fontaine/Stet)
Once the tables were laid with huge metal pans of food, Lewis spoke to the crowd. She said this intergenerational event makes human connections while introducing aspects of family history and practical kitchen advice. Through savory food and storytelling, cultural insights and good humor, love shared by the mouthful around a community table, Lewis’ goal of bringing together seniors and kids was realized.
Tess English, the president of Kiwanis of Riviera Beach, joined the party to demonstrate the Kiwanis’ support was more than financial. “Food always connects people,” she said. “Lost recipes are rediscovered and passed down. It’s fun and it’s a quality project and we’re happy to be involved.”
There is a limited number of print copies of the cookbook, but a link to the digital version will be available soon.
Dining and Cooking