One day as a volunteer – kitchen | PEACE BOAT Disaster Relief

One day as a volunteer – kitchen

Peace Boat volunteers in Ishinomaki are undertaking many other jobs as well as the mud and debris clearance previously introduced here.

The Kitchen teams are responsible for preparing meals, Delivery teams for bringing these throughout the region, Store teams for managing and distributing the relief goods donated from around the word, and other groups helping at evacuation centres such as that at the Minato Primary School.

This report introduces the work of the Kitchen teams.

Each day, Peace Boat is preparing and distributing between 1000 – 2000 meals – and the Kitchen teams are responsible for the preparations. The daily menu is confirmed on the whiteboard, and the team meets to decide how to go about the preparations.

On this day, a total of 1140 lunches were prepared and distributed throughout 9 parts of the region. The menu for the day was cream stew and daikon (Japanese radish) pickles. Many ingredients are required for such a large number of meals – 30 kg each of onions and potatoes, 20 kg each of cabbage, carrots, bok choy and pork. And the amount of rice – 80 kg.

Peeling and cutting such a large quantity of vegetables is a huge job, which requires more than the six members of this Kitchen team – and so other volunteers including the delivery team also help out.

This is Morinaga Yoko, a volunteer now coordinating the kitchen team.

Ms Morinaga has ten years’ experience as a chef and nutritionist, and so when she is preparing the menu for the following days makes efforts to consider not only the stock of meal ingredients, but also ensuring variety in the meals, and selecting foods which can be enjoyed by people of all generations.

Thanks to the extra support of the Delivery teams, the Kitchen team can prepare side dishes also – such as today’s pickles.

Members of the local community are particularly pleased by such vegetable side dishes, key parts of the Japanese diet.

Ms Morinaga always asks the delivery teams “What was the response today?” once they come back from delivering the meals. Feedback conveyed from the local community such as that they particularly enjoyed the boiled soup dishes, or meals that had a lot of vegetables, are of great importance for planning the meals for the next days.

Maintaining stocks and storing fresh vegetables and meat is very difficult, and for some time it was very difficult to secure enough vegetables to provide nutritious meals. The Peace Boat office in Tokyo at that time approached different companies and producers, and was able to secure enough vegetables to provide at least 1000 meals per day.
Members of the local community also sometimes generously donate ingredients which can be used in meals as well. Thanks to such support from different groups and inviduals, Peace Boat has been able to continue to provide this service of hot meals.

Ms Morinaga is always reminded of the importance and meaning of the Kitchen team’s work when she meets people enjoying eating the meals provided by the team. However, it also reminds her of the need to ensure some kind of a “normal” situation for the local community, where people can have the choice of eating what they like each day – a day that all members of the Kitchen teams are working towards.