I’m no cook. As a child, my mom let her kids “creatively design” their meals – although she kept tabs on us by stocking the house with only healthy ingredients.  The result? A gaggle of children who thought Saltine crackers and melted cheese was a prize appetizer, scrambled eggs and mustard was a king’s meal, and a good stick of rhubarb (with salt) topped the tree for desert. 

Surprisingly, we’re all healthy, fit adults. I don’t know how this happened!

Lately, I’ve tried to fill a meal-shaped void in my life by learning how to cook. Things aren’t going so well. I messed up Tuna Helper the other day…. Yes, I know this doesn’t quite qualify as a cooked meal, but as you may know, it contains more than two ingredients – and that’s a step in the right direction. Nonetheless, I burned it to the bottom of our Dutch oven. In retrospect, that’s probably not what I should have been cooking it in.

The worst part of this situation? I LOVE to eat. Love it! But no matter how closely I watch Julia Child trim a chicken, I can’t concoct a palatable, square meal from scratch. Clearly, I have lots to learn before adding “self-sufficient” to my life-skills resume.  Until then, good thing I have a husband whose momma taught him right. He’s a fantastic cooking coach!

The number of families in Alaska who have trouble feeding their families has grown tremendously this year. Anchorage’s Bean’s Café is under pressure, with more mouths to feed than ever before. A few weeks ago, the Café requested donations of canned vegetables to help them serve healthy meals to those in need – and Credit Union 1 donated a van full of peas and corn to help out. Since the statewide need is still present, we’re brainstorming additional ways to help.

CU1 Secret Talent: Our employees are great-idea generating gurus! Jessica R. from our Branch Operations department came up with a rockin’ fundraiser project. We’re going to create an employee cookbook! Jess’ excellent idea is to collect recipes from our employees throughout Alaska, and then compile them in one book that we could sell for donations to Beans Café. Way to go, Jess! I’m excited to get to work on this project, even if I won’t be contributing a recipe of my own (…though I’ll sure be buying a copy).

In the meantime, if you’d like to send us a recipe or two to bulk up our book, you can email them to oneforallalaska@cu1.org. The more recipes the better! As always, you can also make charitable contributions to places like Beans Café by logging in to CU1’s OnLine Access and transferring Rewards points to this cause.  Alaskan families appreciate your support!

When you sit down to dinner tonight, take a moment to reflect. Whether it’s burnt Tuna Helper or a five star meal, we should all be grateful for food on our plates.

P.S. Tonight I'm tackling Alfredo. Wish me luck!