Summary: A seven-seat van with a truck full of a variety of vegetables, Tzu Chi noodles and Tzu Chi meals departed early in the morning from Los Angeles, Southern California, to begin its journey to Chico, Northern California. Six Tzu Chi volunteers sat in the seats, holding the food they prepared the night before, as they continued on their way to serve disaster relief volunteer diet.
On Thursday, one of California’s most stormy days, the volunteers had to take a detour due to a flooded road being closed. It took them a total of ten hours to arrive on that stormy night.
In the wind and rain, the Tzu Chi Culinary Kitchen is the eternal backing of Tzu Chi
On Friday morning, the six members of the Culinary team were busy at work in the disaster center. The stove fire at the Disaster Relief Center was unusable, so the Culinary team used their two Datong electric cookers instead to cook various kinds of hot food. Preparing large quantities of fresh food with these tiny electric cookers took a long time. The team prepared 100 meals for volunteers before noon with patience, care and compassion. The food was getting hot in the sound of the steam spray pot.
After a sip of hot soup, volunteers who had been stationed in the Disaster Relief Center of Chico City for a long time picked up fragrant soup noodles wrapped up in cold vegetarian Mexican rolls, and delivered them to the entrance. They were moved and say, “This is really the warmest delicacy in the world.”
