ACF/KY Chapter wins two national awards.

I'm pleased to announce that the American Culinary Federation/Kentucky Chapter was won two prestigious awards.

Congratulations go out to Chef Nancy Russman, Culinary-Arts Coordinator, JCC, who won the 2010 Chef & Child Foundation True Spirit Award. This award is presented once a year to the person or chapter who has demonstrated extraordinary efforts to aid children. This award is quite an honor. Past winners include Paul Prudomme.

The chapter also won a Little Oscar Award as well. This award recognizes our efforts in facilitating programs to provide education in childhood nutrition and decreasing child obesity.

Here's a link to the announcement.....

http://www.acfchefs.org/Source/Partners ... Awards.cfm

[Robin Garr]

Great work! Two important awards, and I really like it that they're in areas that involve reaching out to the community and making things better, not just cooking pretty stuff.

Thanks Robin.
The new chapter board (of which I am a member) has really wanted to change the direction of what we do, how we are perceived and what the chapter can offer.
Our work with the Food Literacy Project, our fundraising efforts for the Salvation Army Culinary Training Program at Forecastle and our pending efforts to get the ACF "Kid Cooking Teams" program added to the curriculum of the JCPS Wellness Magnet elementary schools shows that we are actively trying to give local chefs the opportunity to give back to the community in ways that take advantage of their knowledge as culinarians.

We are trying to "re-brand" ourselves after many years of being mostly an organization of Sullivan Chef-instructors. While Sullivan is a valued member of our chapter, we are trying to refocus our efforts on getting local "working" chefs more involved and show what the ACF can offer it's members.
We have several events coming up to re-introduce ourselves to the local culinary community. Anyone is welcome to any of our chapter meetings as you do not have to be a member to attend.

Congratualations, Dan.

I "non-worked" 15 hours today. Congrats anyway, though!

I "non-worked" 15 hours today. Congrats anyway, though!

That's funny

I'm not discounting what the Chef-Instructors do in the least bit, as it is noble work.
I know what you are currently going through. I've been there too, that's why I got away from the club.
I guess the better term would have been the chapter is looking to get more "restaurant" chefs involved.

Let me explain it a little better,

I personally avoided the local ACF chapter for many years after being active in the ACF chapter I belonged to in New Hampshire which was 95% restaurant chefs.
At that time, when I moved back here in the late 90's, I was of the (mostly wrong) opinion that I didn't want to belong to an organization that was " all Sullivan guys, who haven't worked a line in years, all they do is take each other out to dinner with the treasury and then vote themselves Chef of the Year."
After many conversations with many of my peers, I found that I wasn't the only one who thought that way.

Like I said Marsha, you know who the current board is. There now are only two Sullivan coats out of six board members, which hasn't happened for several years, if ever.

It will take a lot of work to change the perception of the past that many local chefs still have. But we are trying to get the word out. We are planning some big events to let everyone out there know that we are here and what we are about.