Fundraiser for Breast Cancer

They will call it The Pink Kitchen.

Yesterday found me at lunch with my good friend Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala, founder of I Can Serve, a breast cancer advocacy group and Bettina Osmena, who chairs this year's fundraising event. We had lunch at Restaurant 101 at the world-class
Enderun College in the Ortigas area. Joining us for lunch were Endrerun College Dean Dr. Lorraine Villanueva, Chef See Cheong Yan who is the Department Chair for Culinary Arts, and Philippine Star columnist Mayen Carmona. I was seated between Kara and Trisha Tensuan, Marketing Director of Enderun, who was telling me all about their beautiful school which now has 200 plus students. Trisha promised me a tour of the school and its facilities so look out for that next week. For now, let me tell you all about this great project that I Can Serve is undertaking where Enderun is one of the major partners.

The Pink Kitchen is a food festival that will feature established chefs who don't own restaurants like Myrna Segismundo, Reggie Aspiras, Jill Sandique; up and coming chefs like Tippi Tambunting, Sunshine Puey, Maj Lazatin, Wendy Ozamis to name a few and cooking aficionados like Wynn Wynn Ong, Suman Gogna, Chito Antonio, Mona Valdez and Marichu Vera Perez. These are some of the many chefs we will be featuring in the upcoming Pink Kitchen at the Rockwell Tent on Saturday and Sunday, August 11 and 12 for the benefit of ICanServe. Among the cuisines to be featured are Cuban, Moroccan, Spanish tapas, Balinese, Burmese, French, Continental, Italian, Chinese Dimsum, Salad Bar, Macrobiotic food from San Benito Farms, and many more. One of Enderun's chef's who is of foreign descent will be cooking up her special dishes at the event. There will also be freshly baked breads from Malaysia, brough ion by Chef See, Department Chair of Cuinary Arts at Enderun College, under licensed from Hiestand of Switzerland with no preservatives and considered Halal which you will see being retailed for the first time in Manila.

Pink Kitchen will be done in collaboration with ABS-CBN Publishing. There will also be entertainment at night and some pocket activities during the day, while having Starbucks coffee and merienda, like wine appreciation seminar, olive oil tasting (conducted by me) Ikebana flower arrangement demo (Aiko Taylor and Connie Gonzales) and Table arrangement, free of charge.

The booths will be offered to the chefs rent-free and all food sales go to them as well. I Can Serve will only be benefiting from the gate receipts or from ticket sales which is only Php200/ticket. Children are half the price.

Please support this event. Your participation here will go a long way to help the indigents with their much needed medicines for chemo and for the much needed information campaign on breast self-examination that I Can Serve hopes will reach up to the grassroot level. For more information on ticket sales, please call 687-2543 or email icanserve@yahoo.com