Wednesday, May 30, 2007

"too much food, not enough people"

I had breakfast today at the Kitchen Academy. My husband is enrolled in culinary school (read his blog here) and he's at the stage of the curriculum where his class is cooking full meals every morning simulating a real restaurant setting. It's a little weird eating restauarant quality, five course dinners for breakfast but boy is it good. I had chilled pea soup with curry, foie gras, squab on wild rice with mushrooms, pasta in an onion sauce with chunks of beef tenderloin, a vegetarian plate with spinach in puff pastry, and then profiteroles with chocolate and fennel ice cream for dessert.

The 20 or so students cook a ton of food and then serve it up to any guests they want to invite. Today there were exactly two of us eating, and the plates of food piled up on the tables, uneaten. I live only 20 minutes from the school and I don't have to be at work at 9 AM so it's no problem for me but I suppose most of the students don't have friends that can come at that time.

it's so sad to think of this excellent food getting tossed out, in the middle of hollywod, surrounded by hungry people. Apparently the school doesn't have the kind of license that would allow them to give the food to strangers, and I'm sure they don't want the kind of hassle it would require to set up that system. One of the students did go outside and invite a couple of security guards from the movie theater across the courtyard. One of the chef's summed up the problem in the quote that forms the title of this post, exactly the opposite problem of the global situation, but of course the world's hunger problems have never been caused by a shortage of food, but just by getting the abundant food delivered to the people who could eat it.

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