It’s interesting the twists and turns Covid has brought all of us. Through this stressful time I’ve got to know an organisation, right here in Franschhoek, that has become close to my heart. It’s called the Franschhoek Hospitality Academy and the people there are doing the most amazing work.
Each year the academy takes on 20 students from the local community and teaches them as much as they can about all aspects of the hospitality industry. As a non-profit organization they rely on funding to survive. Historically their main source of funding has come from hosting large events, but this all dried up with the arrival of social distancing.
I happened to help Shirley Killian with some instructional cooking videos she did for them last July to help raise funds. This is where I got to know the core team behind the organization.
I really believe in what they’re doing so I thought there has to be something that I can do to help. I approached academy founder Michaela Julia and offered my All Sorts range of books for them to sell. I’ve been happy for them to place them in different stores and locations and all they have to do is pay me the cost price of the books, once they’ve sold them. This meant that there’s no valuable outlay of money to them without the guarantee of money coming back!
It’s been a great help to them and when they approached me to do a “Food and Film” evening again, I thought it was the perfect time to use my Tapas book as it had just been released.
They put together a super evening which we held at the Franschhoek Theatre. I worked with the students in the afternoon in their academy kitchen and they prepared some tapas recipes from my book. We had great fun as some of the students hadn’t really cooked before (they’d only been at the Academy for about a month and a half and they hadn’t got to the food side yet).
At the evening event, we provided the tapas and some superb wine was generously sponsored by Boekenhoutskloof so we enjoyed quaffing on their Patina Chenin Blanc and Boekenhoutskloof Syrah.
Part of the evening included a chat between myself and Reuben Riffel who is both one of Franschhoek’s most celebrated chefs and an ambassador for the academy. Reuben asked me some interesting questions about my book and it felt quite strange to be sitting there with him asking the questions and me answering. I’d always expected it to be the other way around!!
As it was a fundraiser there were raffle tickets up for grabs, my All Sorts books for sale, some Boekenhoutskloof wines were auctioned as well as some Morena sparkling wine. The main prize was a wine tasting with tapas at Boekenhoutskloof. To end the event we showed a documentary about the wine industry which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.
All in all it was a huge success and some much needed funds were raised for this worthwhile organisation.
