A Taste of Victory

CSISD educators compete in culinary fundraiser

may sarin & atticus johnson managing editor & section editor

50 Men Who Can Cook, the CSISD Education Foundation’s largest fundraiser, is a cooking competition for male district, faculty and community members. Guests pay $75 to sample and vote on recipes after the competitors spend the day preparing their dishes.

The event, which also features a silent auction, was held at the Brazos Valley Expo Center on Feb. 3 and managed by Director of CSISD Education Foundation Teresa Benden.

“We rent [the Expo] out, and we provide tables and piping for the cooks to put their backdrops on,” Benden said. “We provide them tablecloth and all the stuff they need to serve their dish, like plates. Then they provide everything else — the food and their decor.”

When the event is set up, guests arrive to eat and converse with friends. After they sample all of the foods, they vote for their favorite booths.

“When a guest comes in, we hand them a bag of tokens, and they get to vote for each category,” Benden said. “At the end of the night, we actually weigh the tokens — that’s our trick. It’s a lot faster than trying to count them.”

Competitors must be male, have food handling certificates and be able to cook 500-700 servings on contest day. Spanish teacher Bonifacio Solis-Mora’s team consisted of members from the elementary school where he used to teach, although they are now at different schools in the district.

“The principal and two male teachers used to participate, but it got to a point where the principal got too busy,” Solis-Mora said. “He invited me to take over because we were only the only males in the building.”

Contestants had to submit their recipe by November in one of four categories: entrée, appetizer, soup and chili or dessert. SolisMora has had trouble buying mass ingredients on cook-off day, so his team pre-ordered food and other materials, like props and decorations, and used an industrial kitchen.

“We contact the supermarket, usually HEB, and tell them, ‘Hey, by this date, we need this many pounds of meat,’ because on a single day they won’t have it,” Solis-Mora said. “We have a connection with somebody who owns a food service business. He let us use his kitchen [to] prepare the food.”

The event includes an auction and setup where teachers can present grant opportunities that community members can immediately sponsor. A new addition to this year’s cook-off is a booth sponsored by jewelry store Kendra Scott.

“It’s called the lockbox,” Benden said. “You go up to it and you make a donation of $60. For that donation, you get a key and you can pick which door you want to open. Every door has a piece of jewelry behind it.”

CSISD Education Foundation puts all of the money that gets raised at their events directly back into schools and the classrooms in the district. Librarian Chauncey Lindner, who has competed before, appreciates the fundraiser for this reason.

“It’s a worthwhile cause for me to make sure that good things are happening at those schools and that those teachers have the funds to make cool stuff happen in their classrooms,” Lindner said.

The event allows faculty and community members to get together, make donations and have a good time. This is especially fun for Solis-Mora, who gets to reunite with his cross-campus team members each year.

“Once, we were all on one campus, but now we’re on different campuses,” Solis-Mora said. “This is a good excuse to get together and catch up with life beyond this event.”

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