Dinner with Happy Healthy Cooks

The invitation read, “As a way to give back, our students would like to make dinner for our supporters! The Happy Healthy Cooks at Grandin Court elementary school are excited to prepare and serve a meal to our greatest supporters...”

This past Wednesday, June 2nd, at the “venue” of Christ Lutheran Church at Grandin and Brandon, the atmosphere was like coming to a school recital. Excitable kids with proud parents and their friends awaited the “performance” soon to be presented. What was this all about?

If you’re a first-grader at Grandin Elementary School, you know all about this. There’s a wildly popular and very welcome new program put together recently by one of the parents, Heather Quintana, called Happy Healthy Cooks. She and a friend brought HHC to Grandin Elementary School last fall after realizing that the school lunch program offered at city schools left much to be desired. Donuts, Pop Tarts, Jelly on Biscuits… Children need something nutritious to help them grow physically and mentally. This menu, the two decided, just won’t do.

And so with 15 other volunteers, including some parents, Happy Healthy Cooks visit the first grade classrooms once a week to introduce children to healthy food choices in a way that would appeal to kids… they’re encouraged to assist in preparing the very meals they’ll be eating for lunch.

The program began last fall of 2009. Heather hopes to take the initiative further into the school system. (Maybe if we’re all lucky, this can go nationwide.) Already HHC has gotten great press in Roanoke, including a continuing guest spot with the daytime talk show, Our Blue Ridge, on WSLS-TV.

But nothing made the class and their fearless leader more proud than the dinner that was given by the children last Wednesday to HHC’s biggest fans (the parents) and supporters.

“Three classes of first-graders, about 60 kids, showed up after school around 4:30PM to prepare the food for tonight’s meals,” said one parent, Dawn Stein. “It was a lot of work.” Dawn has a step son in the class, and she’s a volunteer with Happy Healthy Cooks. She was also one of the ten volunteers who came that night to help serve the meals.

Another parent, who sat across from me at one table, told me that each child was asked to bring one parent. “They got to choose which parent,” she explained.

What was really nice was that many of those parents were Dads who came to have a meal prepared by their own kids, and to show their support for HHC.

The dinner began at 6PM, with Heather introducing some slideshows and talking a little about the program, seeming very obviously excited and happy to have made this initial progress towards a worthy goal. Our fun and tasty celebration meal consisted of Caribbean Red Beans and Rice, Three Sisters Casserole, a vegetable salad, and an eye-catching, colorful shish kebob of cubed fruit pieces. Everyone received a program to take home with the recipes of the evening included.

Many congrats to Heather and all her volunteers! Thanks for a great dinner and for bringing this much-needed program to the school kids. Star City Fame wishes HHC wider success. Long Live Happy Healthy Cooks!

The Grandin Theatre – Open Projector Night

Edited from original post on Star City Harbinger – August 26, 2009

You can live in a town for quite some time before visiting a place that is a landmark or doing something that ought to be part of one’s typical interest as a resident. For example, I lived in the New York City area for over 45 years, yet I have gone to the Statue of Liberty only once. I rode to the top of the World Trade Center only once. I have never been to Coney Island. Sometimes I don’t feel like acting like a tourist, but definitely, there just isn’t enough time to see and do everything.

Finally, after living in Roanoke for five years, I visited the Grandin Theatre. The event, I felt, was the best one to which I could be initiated – The Open Projector Night.

I learned that Open Projector Night is a quarterly contest for filmmakers of all levels. I wanted to acquaint myself with Open Projector Night because I too am interested in entering a short film in November. I needed to see how videos looked on a theatre-sized movie screen and to get a taste of the talent in our area. Of course, I also went to enjoy myself, which I did.

I paid the admission price of $6.50 and walked up to the ticket collector who gave me a flyer. This flyer is no ordinary piece of paper, I thought, looking at the names and titles listed on it. This is what Open Projector Night is all about for the filmmakers who have entered their pieces for the evening. This, I knew, was the holiest sheet of paper ever printed on and ever to be checked off by every person in attendance. It demanded that I pay very close attention to each single frame flickering by on the screen.

And so I walked into a dark theatre, feeling embarrassed for being obviously late, and made my way to an empty seat all the way down in the front rows. It was an awkward walk, but once in my seat, I was relieved and, in an instant, forgot my crime. The screen had immediately grasped my full interest and I remained, as did the entire theatre full of viewers, focused without interruption.

I’m not sure how many seats are at the Grandin, but the theatre seemed pretty filled. I did not meet up with the Blacksburg Media Artists group that I recently joined, because I was late leaving my office. However, I managed to see all but the first selection.

I had no expectations, except that perhaps I might like or dislike some films more than others. But I hoped that at least one or two would prove worthy of the six bucks I just spent. To my surprise, each short film had a life of its own. Each had a statement to make. Some of them suffered slightly from holding back in cutting what might not have made it into its finished version once the film’s editor learned to say more with less. Most of the evening’s pieces were challenged technically from the difficult conversion to a large screen, having been shot and edited as videos and not in professional (and expensive) 16mm film. Otherwise, Open Projector Night was clearly a winner in itself, bringing out the best in our area’s short-film creators.

A couple films were dramatic pieces, one of which was presented in black and white (ii played for her), and told a story about a young man meeting a woman, to whom he’d eventually play his saxophone once he’d get up the nerve. There were a few music videos. One such work was entered by Randolf Walker, who set to his own version of “House of the Rising Sun” an emotional Wild West piece, which he directed and also played in as the wretched, gambling, drinking man whom his maiden (Lisa Angell) sang about in lamenting flashbacks while walking sullenly and lonely by the old railroad tracks. (You can see this piece here on YouTube.)

There were several comedies. Most enjoyable were The Great American Road Trip Part 2 about a road trip to the Martinsville Speedway, and First Impressions, about a young man sitting in a waiting room before an interview when suddenly he reverts back to his childhood fantasies.

Open Projector Night’s showcase of local filmmakers is one of the few held in Roanoke for this genre of visual media, oddly enough. The screening is paneled by the Young Curators and the Teen Advisory Committee of the Taubman Museum of Art. (You can see past winners on the Grandin Theatre website).

Roanoke appears to be the Arts hub of SW Virginia with all of its galleries, museums and music venues. This is a nice addition and shouldn’t be missed in anyone’s repertoire of things to do in Roanoke… I for one will put it on my rotation.

The Grandin Theatre and the area itself are very conducive to the Arts. The Roanoke Ballet is on the same street. The Grandin neighborhood is home to the Heart of Virginia Foundation, led by Americana artist Tommy Edwards and his partner Nancy Hunter. (They will be hosting a “Healing through Creativity” Festival from October 17-24. Please visit their website for more information.) The locals also enjoy the bohemian and artsy atmosphere in town, which includes the Grandin Gardens and the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op.