Okanagan Chefs Association
Helping to Support our Community Through Food
The Okanagan Chefs Association over the years has supported many different charities and community events as a group or group of members giving there time and energy to help support this amazing place we call home. From cooking for Royalty to raising money for the KGH Foundation, Gospel Mission, Central Okanagan Food Bank, Elizabeth Fry Society, Women's Shelter, Society of Hope, Ronald McDonald House, Joeanna's House, The Dream Rally, Daffodil Ball, Earth Wind, and Fire Natures Trust, Heart & Stroke Foundations Big Red Bike,
No One Eats Alone Christmas Dinner the Okanagan Chefs Association is proud to be a giving member of this community
Stone Soup - A Fundraiser for Niteo Africa
Niteo Africa is a Kelowna based organization that collects books from local households, schools, and libraries that would otherwise usually be recycled. The books are carefully packed into a shipping container destined for Africa. There the container is fitted with windows, doors, and shelving. It becomes their community library!! Each container will also supply about 100 reading corners throughout the community. Without these books, many children would simply have zero access. Niteo’s mandate is to provide quality education for all children and it begins with literacy. The OCA helps with a fundraiser each year where you chefs make dishes based on their favorites children books
A Royal Visit to Chefs in the Classroom
Chefs in the Classroom – edible education is an initiative of the Okanagan Chefs Association with a curriculum created by a volunteer team of chefs, associates, and educators. Modeled after other successful edible education classes all over North America, Chefs in the Classroom is unique in that it is an Okanagan inspired, hands-on curriculum with links to our Aboriginal community and practices.
On receiving the invitation to present to 50 students as part of the Royal Visit at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery, the Chefs in the Classroom committee assembled a ‘Royal Visit’ class curriculum of interactive stations for the students to experience including fruit and vegetable tasting and identification, the making of fresh pasta sauce and with the bounty of apples in the Okanagan readily available, apple sauce was also part of the lesson plan.
The class was in ‘session’ when the Duke and Duchess arrived and they wandered from station to station chatting with the students and our Chef presenters. The students were proudly wearing their newly decorated chef hats along with chef jackets and aprons generously provided by our hosts for the day, Mission Hill Family Estate Winery.
Both the Duke and Duchess showed great interest in the program and were enthusiastic about their support for the Okanagan Chefs Association’s initiative. It was a unique worldwide opportunity to present this homegrown edible education program.
After the Royal couple departed, each student took home a jar of Chefs in the Classroom applesauce and recipes to make both the apple sauce and pasta sauce at home.
In Spring 2016, six Grade 3 classrooms in School District 23 were involved in the first semester of 7 lessons over a 12- week period from April through June. Planning is currently underway for Spring 2017.
•Heart of Gold Gala
It was a record-breaking evening for the Kelowna General Hospital Foundation, as honorary Heart of Gold event chairs John and Maria Byland inspired the crowd to raise over $1 million dollars towards the completion the cardiac sciences program at Kelowna General Hospital. The Okanagan Chefs Association created intimate dinner party menus for groups of 20 special guests within the reimagined location of the Spirit Ridge Equestrian Centre. Each group of guests was spoiled by their chef and sous chefs for the evening with local ingredients and award-winning Okanagan Valley wines.
The Heart of Gold committee created this video as a recap of this stellar event.