Many readers will be aware of Jane Morgan and the Dinner Club. After Cyclone Gabrielle devastated so many thousands of homes and lives in Hawke’s Bay, Jane and some friends decided to cook a free meal once a week for those most in need.
The premise of the Dinner Club is to provide the comforts of home: to serve a delicious, nourishing meal, similar to what guests would have cooked at home, if theirs hadn’t been destroyed in the floods. Between 30 to 50 people attend the Dinner Club on any given Friday. Jane says:
We serve them meals they cannot make at home, because they don’t have one. They have a caravan outside a destroyed home or they live in a shed with the bare basics. They’re surviving on a piece of toast and some tea before collapsing into bed exhausted from digging through the remnants of their lives.
Even now, a year on, this is a reality for too many people hit by Cyclone Gabrielle.
And many will endure a second winter in this same situation.
In February, a cookbook was published. Jane explains how this eventuated:
One night in June, a guest commented to me how lovely the meal was and that it reminded her of the way her mother had prepared [the same dish.]. This lady had not only lost her home but all her recipes in the floods of Cyclone Gabrielle. And the meal we served that night did just what I had hoped – it nourished her, gave her comfort and reminded her of better times. But at the same time, it served as a poignant reminder of what she and so many had lost.
Jane started thinking of the recipes she has and cherishes from her grandmother, father and mother and felt she had to do something, because it dawned on her that the wistful Dinner Club guest that night would not be the only one in the same situation.
We had a break from Dinner Club over Christmas so I set to typing up the recipes of meals we had served as well as some other old-school recipes I had. My plan was to gift each Dinner Club guest a copy on the anniversary of the cyclone.
After requests from guests, the Dinner Club planned an ‘extraordinary’ event for 14 February 2024.
But then, I felt concerned that they’d have a lovely time enjoying some delicious food and company to then head ‘home’ to their trashed properties and feel a bit flat after reflecting on their awful year. So the idea was they’d have the cookbook to flip through, as if somehow it would help them escape from their situation, albeit perhaps briefly.
The book escalated out of control when friends and people online started saying, ‘Hey we’d love to use your recipes too!’
And here we are!
Any profits made from the book will go back into supporting the Dinner Club.
Jane grimaces when asked about the cost of the books. “It goes without saying that there will be no profit until a lot of books are sold.”
Jane has spent over $17,000 on print and postage costs to date.
She opted to produce a quality product. The Dinner Club cookbook contains hundreds of full-colour photographs and the pages are printed on food- and liquid-proof paper.
While I DO hope to make a profit, right now I am in ‘twinge’ territory, i.e., hoping it happens. But at the same time, the book has been received with total joy by the Dinner Club guests, so that is nothing to sneeze at!
If the cookbook makes a profit, the plan is to use the proceeds to continue supporting Dinner Club guests in whatever way is needed. Be it dinners, welcome-home kits, housewarming events (one of Jane’s plans is to help guests host a ‘housewarming’ in their new or rebuilt home, with other Dinner Club guests). The idea being they go from being a group of devastated and traumatised strangers to a group of friends, showing off their home, while Jane and her tight-knit group of friends do the ‘catering’ and take care of the event for them.
Other ideas include taking dinner and a few staples and supplies to Dinner Club guests on moving day. I’ve done that a couple of times already, using my own food and/or paying for it myself. I am often asked why I would do this. I think if you ask anyone who’s spent any time helping our cyclone survivors this last year – they’ve become like family.
Regarding Dinner Club supporters, Jane says, “I appreciate the support of everyone out there: it’s been very humbling and wonderful. In many ways the cyclone bought out the good in Kiwis again. We just all mucked in and did whatever we could to help whoever we could.”
The book is around 180 pages and is not just recipes: it also includes stories from regular Dinner Club attendees who talk about their experience on that fateful day.
The Dinner Club cookbook is available via Trade Me (simply search “the Dinner Club”) or you can check out the Dinner Club website at www.thedinnerclub-hb.com. And Jane invites you to follow the Dinner Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DinnerClubHB/.