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May 18, 2012
Community cookbook
VTT project unites generations, raises funds.
MICHELLE DODEK
The new Vancouver Talmud Torah (VTT) cookbook, Together, could be called a perfect community project. Six years ago, Ari Shiff came up with the idea and his wife, Carla van Messel, ran with the concept – a beautiful, useful cookbook based on the vast culinary expertise within the VTT community. The idea gathered momentum and turned into something much more powerful than either Shiff or van Messel had envisioned.
Inspired by Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital cookbook, which is titled Panache, van Messel and project co-chair Stacey Sobol-Kape imagined a book that would pull the community together.
“It started as a friend-raiser,” van Messel said. “We wanted to bring in those currently involved at VTT, alumni, as well as anyone affiliated.”
The development officer at the school, Audrey Moss, applied for a grant, which came from the Government of Canada under the New Horizons for Seniors Initiative. This meant that the intergenerational aspect of the cookbook had to work. Van Messel collected recipes and Sobol-Kape set about finding people to make up the committees to undertake the project.
Over a six-month period, hundreds of recipes were gathered from all segments of the community. The recipes were then distributed to close to 100 volunteers who cooked or baked the recipes to take to meetings at which they were tasted and rated.
Sobol-Kape explained, “We had 15 tastings. The dessert committee alone met four nights and there were 18 people on that committee.”
Each tasting was held in someone’s home and people who may not have ever met each other before sat, ate and reviewed the recipes together. “It crossed different cultural, educational and monetary boundaries,” van Messel noted. Both co-chairs were thrilled with the warmth and willingness of people to open their homes for the tastings.
Once the food had been tasted and the successful recipes were selected, the food needed to be photographed. This is where the third driver of the project came in. Rachel Lando, a professional photographer, volunteered her talent and knowledge to the shaping of the cookbook. She convinced Sobol-Kape and van Messel to hire nationally acclaimed food stylist Murray Bancroft to contribute. His styling – provided at “a very considerate rate,” according to van Messel – along with Lando’s team of photographers, give the book its professional look.
The finished result, the organizers say, is not only beautiful and functional but also community building.
“It has West Coast and international influences. You get a flavor of how diverse the school is and it represents the community nicely,” said van Messel. She explained that, through the course of collecting, tasting, photographing and putting together the book, every generation in the community was involved.
The response to date has been encouraging. Two hundred copies were pre-sold and, once the cookbook reached the school on April 18, another 200-plus were bought up at $36 each. The first print run was 1,500 copies, which leaves van Messel already wondering about printing more, especially given the positive feedback.
“The book has a life of its own,” van Messel said. She has been getting e-mails from cookbook users describing either what they have made or what they plan to try. The majority of the messages come on Friday afternoon as people prepare for Shabbat dinner.
“It’s the lemon chicken. It’s had rave reviews and it’s so easy to make,” van Messel shared as one example. She, Sobol-Kape and Lando continued to swap stories about the comments they have received about the various recipes, with Sobol-Kape noting, “People are still participating even though the cookbook is done.” There are plans to update the website for the cookbook to include photos, testimonies about the recipes and a contest of some kind.
A link from the VTT website outlines the progress of the cookbook from the food-themed women’s event in September 2009 up to a “sneak peak” at some of the photos of the food pictured in the book, as well as a couple of recipes. Although Together took six years and untold hours of work, the journey has been, according to the co-chairs, amazing and rewarding. “I’d do it again in a second!” said Sobol-Kape.
Lando, Sobol-Kape and van Messel all said they felt that the dynamics at the school have changed, with so many people having gotten to know each other by participating in a project like this. And, people are continuing the process by sharing the recipes with their friends, family and others. There will be a multi-generational celebration of the book coming soon and there are books available for purchase from the VTT office. Proceeds from the sales support programming at the school.
Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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