We had such a blast at The Santa Rosa Marathon yesterday! The energy was great-people from all walks of life together either running, supporting runners, or like us, just chatting the runners and their families.

Anytime we can spread the word about D5, we’re happy. We met kids who were interested (yeah!) their parents who had such wonderful things to say, and also potential collaborators whether that be corporate sponsors or other organizations who want the D5 program at their locale. We were so excited!

By the end of the week we will have dates and time of future programs for you at Chop’s Teen Club in Santa Rosa and also the Boy’s and Girl’s Club on Hahman Drive, also in Santa Rosa. We are in talks with several public schools as well. Be sure to sign up on -the home page-for our newsletter to find out first where we’ll be next!

Here are some photos from Sunday’s event. Enjoy!

Here is one of our fantastic teachers, Mackenzie Rich signing girls up for our newsletter, so they can be the first ones to sign up!

From the left: Tanya Scott, Program Director-Mackenzie Rich, D5 Teacher, and Irema Sivcevic, D5 Teacher

Many thanks to our amazing Marketing Director Susan Backer and her supportive husband Philip Frankl of Quadriga Landscaping Architects https://www.quadriga-inc.com/  who printed and mounted these great photos for us. Thanks so much!!

A future D5 student happily munching on an organic apple donated by The O’Connell Vineyard and Vine Hill House. Thank you!

Tanya and Me and Irema having a great time chatting with each other and everyone!

Yes, we all have a great time and are so energized by these events. We hope to see you at the next one!

The invitation reads:

Wine, Whiskey, Bites and Beats

It is so exciting! It’s the Pat Jordan band who has agreed to play at our Gala at the beautiful Soda Rock Winery on November 5th.  We are so grateful to the Pat Jordan Band!

Listen to this…

You will not want to miss this night. It’s a for a great cause- DirectionFive- and will be delicious and fun!

Purchase Tickets:

HTML Code:

Hello everyone!

My goodness, we are working so hard and making so much progress. Here’s a little about what’s been happening since the pilot programs ended.

Our Marketing Director, Susan Backer, and I have written various proposals, as requested, and have submitted them to the YMCA and to The Boy’s and Girls Club of Santa Rosa. Susan does incredible work creating forms that we can use again and again with minor ‘tweaks’ to fit each individual organizations and their goals. Susan was marketing director for Traditional Medicinal Tea’s and we are so lucky and honored to have her on our team!

We have a proposal, as per their request, to a family owned bank, new to California, but  well-established in the mid-west, to become a corporate partner. We have been in talks for some time and look forward to the new year when this partnership will begin.

There are two Santa Rosa schools who are interested in the D5 program and I will keep you up to date when I know more about these collaborations.

The November 5th Gala is just around the corner! Yeah!  Heather and Aly from notion:creative, our graphic designers, have a first draft of the invitations ready. We’re waiting for a couple items to come together before we do the final edits. You can see some basic information about the Gala on the web site. Be sure to save the date! You won’t want to miss this fun evening where we will raise so much money to help kids with their health.

More big news very soon on a possible home-base (meaning a great kitchen!) next week. Here’s a photo of the kitchen. Isn’t it wonderful?

Here is a list of what we need to keep making such great strides in building DirectionFive and helping so many kids with their health:

Money

Yes, that will pretty much do it! We need many items, of course, but mostly we need funding. We could use more volunteers (understatement) to help with the gala and other events, so if you have some time, please let us know.

Also next week, we’ll update you on various monetary gifts we are going to receive from some local service organizations to help support our work.

More soon!

All the best,

Patty

Happy Sunday!

As of yesterday we are officially in collaboration with The Boy’s and Girl’s Club in Santa Rosa under the guidance of Dr. Mary Black. Mary is so excited about offering the D5 program to ‘her’ kids at the Hahman drive location. We’ll be offering the program on 10 half-day Saturdays. It will either begin the in October or November and will not be offered on Halloween or Thanksgiving weekend.  If your kids missed the pilot program, don’t miss this! It was so much fun and the kids learned so much.

https://www.santarosaboysandgirlsclub.com/about/

Check back for more details. Better yet, sign up for our newsletter-on the home page-and be in the know!

More locations and collaborations coming soon….

Right now we’re…

Working hard incorporating all the changes the pilot program kids want to see changed and also what we feel we need to ‘tweak.’

Today I started creating teacher notes on all 5 programs for our Teacher/Mentor program.

We worked on Gala details. We are working on fund gathering to get the incredible Jon Cleary out here from New Orleans. Listen to him and tell us you can’t see yourself grooving to his music as your sipping wine and eating incredible food.

https://www.rosebudus.com/cleary/

We need to raise $10,000 asap before he’s booked elsewhere! Help!…..

Lots of great meetings this week. More on that soon…

The DirectionFive programs are based on what the kids across the country told me they wanted and needed to learn to lead healthier lives, and the pilot program kids told us what they liked and didn’t like about the pilot program. We are now ‘tweaking’ the D5 program to incorporate the kid’s input. Based on this input, all nutrition information received will be interspersed with kitchen time and the program will be five full days and not ten days. Interestingly enough, this is how I taught when I had my cooking school, so why did I think we needed to reinvent the wheel? No idea.

The program can be taken all at once during school breaks, or a bit (or should I say bite?) at a time. We are also willing to customize D5 for your organization. The YMCA will be receiving a program that works for their members, as will the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. We are also incorporating continuing education classes where all the kids who have been through the program can come back and keep the health/culinary information coming! The kids have already told us they want a pie making class (we can talk about locally sourced apples while we use various flours and fats in the crusts) and a canning class-yes, canning. We will put food by, as they say. Isn’t that great? Perfect…

Today the teachers who were there during the pilot program-yours truly, Irema and Mackenzie-and our program director Tanya, are meeting with Susan Backer, our marketing director, to go over all of our notes and do a lot of cutting and pasting! We won’t finish today, but it will be a good start. We are also discussing ways to get the D5 name out there in the world and, of course, fundraising, so we can help many kids to obtain this important information.

The kids have spoken and listening to kids is what we do!

Roger and Chloe torching their creme brule.

Christopher making an omelette Julia Child style.

Ready to eat

We used a VitaClay which is a rice and slow cooker made out of clay with no teflon and no aluminum. It was very kind of owner Michelle Lui to donate one for DirectionFive to use! Thanks so much!

Ratatouille

Serves 6

In class we made this in a VitaClay-a clay pot rice and slow cooker. Simply place all ingredients in the clay pot-after you have mixed them all together like Clare is doing- cover and press a button! You can also bake or cook this stove top.

Serving Ideas: Ratatouille can be served cold, warm or hot. Very nice served with crusty whole wheat French bread and baked halibut.

Ingredients:

1 medium eggplant, diced into 1″ chunks

1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1″ squares

1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1″ squares

3 small zucchini, sliced 1/2″ thick

4 medium tomatoes cut into 1″ chunks

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

5 cloves garlic

1/3 cup dry red wine

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon thyme, fresh or 1 teaspoon dried

1/4 cup basil leaves, fresh, chopped or 2 teaspoons dried

2 bay leaves, whole

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 lemon , optional

If you don’t have a Vita Clay, heat olive oil in a large pot like a Dutch oven. Sauté onions until they are translucent. Add garlic and sauté for another 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, wine, all the herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Add the eggplant, zucchini, red and green peppers and simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender, carefully stirring occasionally. Squeeze lemon juice in the Ratatouille if you like.

This video is much longer-20 minutes-but it’s worth watching to see how much these kids know about health! So impressive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAyHtFSznCU

…Sorry I cut their heads off so much!

Please share this link with everyone you know! The kids had so much as did I (obviously) and our other two teachers Mackenzie and Irema.

Jennifer is Isabelle’s Mom and she very kindly sent us this testimonial today. More soon!