Given that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, we wanted to focus on how food can heal us. There are some incredible chefs in our world, but there are also some incredible chefs that do amazing, inspiring things with their talents.
One of those chefs is Spanish Chef José Andrés. While Andrés holds two Michelin stars, he’s also an incredible humanitarian as the founder of World Central Kitchen.
World Central Kitchen
Originally envisioned as an organization that would use food to empower communities and strengthen economies, Andrés had no idea that WCK would turn into an organization that would be on the front lines of disasters. Through his experiences in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, he quickly realized that food is a powerful tool to heal communities in times of crisis and beyond.
Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
That lesson and experience is what Andrés shares in his book We Fed an Island. He arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. What he saw – a destroyed economy and people without clean water, food, power, the ability to communicate – was overwhelming.
So Andrés addressed the crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. He started by serving sancocho with his friend at his own restaurant in San Juan and grew to cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island. Through their efforts, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people.
What’s in the Book
This book does not just rehash all the good work that Andrés did while helping, but also focuses on his insider’s take while in the middle of a unique humanitarian crisis. He showcases his viewpoint on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico and how a network of community kitchens would activate and create real change.
Andrés saw a broken system that helps to keep some of the biggest non-profit organizations in business. To confront that, he lays out his own unique insights for how to address similar crises in the future.
If you’re at all interested in helping during crisis situations, getting involved to help the world around you, or just want to understand more about the situation in Puerto Rico, we highly recommend this book. It provides a unique perspective different from what we would normally hear.
We hope it will provide you with some inspiration!
