Alameda County Community Food Bank

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Contact: Kari Martell
(510) 636-4902

Celebrity Chefs Talk, Cook & Jam at Alameda County Community Food Bank’s 3rd Annual Fundraising Gala

"Savor the Season" to showcase new 75,000 sq. ft. warehouse

Oakland, Calif. (10/07/05) – The Food Network’s Iron Chef America Cat Cora will kick off Alameda County Community Food Bank's 3rd annual "Savor the Season" celebration with a rousing keynote speech in the Food Bank's new warehouse, and Joey Altman, "Bay Café" host, will perform along with fellow chefs in the "Back Burner Blues Band." Cat will also be autographing copies of her cookbook, and donating all the proceeds to the Food Bank.

Guests will be treated to a seasonal banquet paired with a variety of wines. Exciting auction items will be up for bid during both a live and a silent auction, including a thrilling helicopter ride over San Francisco, cooking classes in Italy, and hot air balloon rides. Proceeds from the event will help the Food Bank provide monthly food assistance to 120,000 people in need.

"Each month, 50,000 children rely on our Food Bank for a healthy snack at an after-school program, a hot meal at a soup kitchen or fresh fruit from a food pantry bag," states Suzan Bateson, executive director. "Right now, our shelves are bare, and we're hopeful this event will help us stock enough food to distribute during the busy holiday months."

This afternoon party will take place on Sunday, October 9 from 1 to 4 pm at 7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland, CA 94621. Tickets are $50 per person, which includes luncheon and wine. Tables of 10 are available for $500. Dressy casual attire suggested. To purchase tickets contact Kasandra Kaplanes at (510) 635-3663, ext. 328 or visit www.accfb.org.

The event's presenting sponsors are Dewey Ballantine LLP and KPMG. Silver sponsors are The Clorox Company, Matson Integrated Logistics, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Media sponsors are The Oakland Tribune, KTVU/Fox 2, and Oakland Magazine.

Cat Cora has been an Executive Chef for 12 years and graduated with honors from Culinary Institute of America. Cat has worked in France with three-star Michelin chefs Georges Blanc and Roger Verge as well as famed master chefs New York, San Francisco and Napa Valley restaurants. She has been a multimedia chef for many years with Food Network and other shows, and will be starring in her own "Cat Cora Show" airing on KPIX this fall. She is also the author of Cat Cora's Kitchen, published by Chronicle Books.

In January 2005, Cat founded Chefs For Humanity, a grassroots coalition of chefs and culinary professionals who came together in response to the tsunami tragedy. Their mission is to be a lean and responsive organization with the ability to move very quickly to raise funds and resources in response to circumstances that put any group of people in a country in need of humanitarian relief.

The Back Burner Blues Band is a group of Bay Area musicians who haven't "quit their day jobs" yet…six of them are chefs in hot local restaurants. Joey Altman, the host of TV’s Bay Café and an avid blues guitarist, discovered that many of his guest chefs were fellow musicians eager to find colleagues to jam with and began to put the group together. With the guidance of Scott Warner, chef at Bistro Don Giovanni, and a USC music studies graduate on lead guitar and dobro, Back Burner Blues is known for an eclectic repertoire of Blues, Rock, Funk and Jazz as well as original material written by fellow guitarist, Gordon Drysdale, the chef owner of Pizza Antica.