The Rice Queen

Once in a while, the William Hobbayne Charity organises fun nights for the local community with handmade decorations, volunteer chefs, event hosts, DJs and - of course - GoodGym kitchen & serving personnel! Behind each occasion, there is a story and a cause. Tonight's event was a musical bingo game and raffle to raise the funds for CAMK2 research.

CAMK2 is the name of a group of proteins that are the most abundant proteins in the brain. Disorders related to CAMK2 have been discovered very recently. They cause intellectual disability and motor coordination problems in children and adults. There is currently no drug for the treatment of CAMK2 Syndrome. The daughter of a local resident suffers from that condition. Her mum, Sue, decided to host tonight's event at the Hobbayne Centre to raise money to support the research on CAMK2 so that people like her daughter can have better treatment and life conditions in the future.

The GoodGym crew from West and East London reported to Mandy in the kitchen and discovered that the back room where the volunteers usually hung out was taken over by some workshop. Everyone was happy to stay in the kitchen and listen to the familiar tunes chosen for the musical bingo until the time for serving. Steph, the Soup Kitchen veteran, was in his element.

Steph was not the only hospitality expert in the team. When Mandy wondered how to make the best rice in the new rice cooker, Louise knew the answer.

You need to fluff it.

Louise followed her words by action and volunteered to make the fluffiest rice Hanwell had ever seen. And yes, she did it!

8:30 on the clock, the dinner was ready to serve. The GoodGymers first took the orders from each table, only to discover later that, as usual, some people had relocated to another table, and some changed their minds after discovering alternative options. And this time, the chefs had a selection of not two but three different dishes: veggie chilli, beef chilli and Korean beef!

The serving went quite smoothly compared to previous events. Most of the guests were very patient and helpful when we came back to collect the empty plates. After the main course was served, we had time to eat ourselves - just in time to be ready to distribute ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Louise was very particular about compressing the empty ice cream packaging before throwing it away.

The more space they take in the bin, the more trucks it takes to collect them - and that is bad for the environment!

We admit that today's event could have been more sustainable if not for the use of paper plates. On the other hand, it meant less washing up for us. After washing and drying the giant pots, it was time to scrub the rice cooker. But the rice cooker was still not empty - even after we prepared the takeaways! We decided on the zero-waste approach and scraped all the rice into boxes to take home. It felt good to be kinder to the environment while being kind to ourselves!