- With food...
We have that as this tool.
And that's a way for us to show our elderly
that the communities here that even
amongst all of this devastating news, there's still hope.
- So we got 2000 pounds of salmon donated.
So everyone's been making salmon meals
for the past three weeks.
And this is the last of it.
- So, Heart of Dinner - we gift and donate hot meals,
lunches, and groceries
to homebound Asian elderly.
After this week, I believe we're going to hit 65,000
meals.
- So today's our first day cooking out of Essex
Pearl. Usually we've been rotating kitchens
'cause we don't have our own kitchen.
So if anyone wants to donate kitchen space that's amazing.
This week I'm making 52 meals and that's going to be paired
along with our care packages.
So the reason we're slow cooking it is to really
infuse a flavor into the salmon.
It's almost like a light poach.
So this is a shortgrain Japanese rice.
And then we also added a bit of farro inside just
to give it extra texture and extra nutrients and cooked
extra, extra soft, where it's almost borderlining a congee.
You know, initially we're actually doing all brown rice
but that was one time when we did get feedback
they weren't used to eating brown rice and white rice
is just a lot more comforting for them.
Yeah. So this morning we've cooked 50 salmons.
And then we also have two vegetarian meals.
- Heart of Dinner began as a supper club and really the crux
of it was to provide a space
for people who feel alone and lonely.
- The foods we're cooking every week,
we like to ask our restaurant partners also to
make a meal that reminds you of your grandparents
or what your grandparents used to make you growing up.
So right now we're going to make the radish egg.
It's a very comforting dish, basically an omelet.
Eggs radish, sesame oil
and a little tiny bit of soy sauce.
And growing up, we would just have this over rice.
- My grandma also grew up making it for me.
- [Moonlynn] It's a very much a quintessential dish in
Taiwan.
We're basically done just a little smidgen of soy sauce.
As you get older, you know
sodium leads to a lot of high blood pressure,
sometimes cholesterol. A lot of the seniors we're servicing,
I don't know why, but in the Asian community
we're very much prone to high blood pressure, diabetes.
And so just making sure to service them
with very nutritional meals.
- So cooking restaurants then cooking for Heart of Dinner
it's very different, but also very similar.
This is still hospitality, just in a very, very
different form.
And I also realized that the through line of why
I enjoy what I do is for the hospitality, you know,
anticipating intuitive service.
It's what really drives me.
- 5, 10, 15, 20, 20, or 33 at 40 45...
Doing this work,
you also find rewards in very random, small places.
For example, boxes.
We noticed, when a box fits the meals perfectly
it's like a hot commodity.
So we hold onto those boxes forever.
The small things.
- So every Wednesday is operations day for Heart of Dinner.
What we do is we wake up around, I'll say 8:00, 8:30
and then at around 10:15, we swing by our first stop, Party
Bus Bake Shop to pick up the scallion buns and then
the milk toast brioche.
Good morning.
Heart of Dinner has changed the way I see the food industry
where there is now so much more community involvement.
It's amazing.
I think the restaurant industry is just so tied together
naturally, but throughout this time it's people jumping
into different kitchens to help
out. Ooh, these
- are our scallion bond collaboration with Party Bus Bake
Shop and Heart of Dinner.
So Jacqueline originally started making milk toast for us
because we asked her to make something that was
culturally appropriate.
We actually asked if it was possible
for her to add scallions.
Cause that's a popular bread growing up in bakeries.
- Yeah. So we're at Cervo's.
And so they've been donating two cases
of eggs each week and it's been so awesome.
I think they're blue again this week.
They're so beautiful.
Thank you so much.
- And then right around the corner, we swing by Fongan.
- So this is Fongan.
They're the oldest tofu maker.
Soy maker, they make tofu, soy mill
grass jelly in Chinatown.
So we get our soy milks from them every week
because our elders, a lot of them are lactose intolerant
but we still want them to be able to get the calcium
and the protein and the nutrients.
- Bye I'll see you next week.
Bye.
- That is incredible. So this week Asian Veggies, on top of
veggies they had Joe, who's donated six bags of rice.
So we get that.
And here we have the Shanghai bok choy.
- In Chinatown, everything is so accessible.
If you don't know something, there's bound to be someone
like a neighbor who will understand what you're asking for.
And so I think it just makes everything more efficient.
So around 11:00, 11:15, we're back packing at Essex Market.
So this is Nancy.
One of our ongoing,
- she's incredible, artist volunteers.
She comes by every so often to pick up 50 brown bags
and then she'll bring it home to illustrate.
- [Yin] Each of our care packages and our meals
or dishes are paired with a handwritten note.
The handwritten note actually started because
from our relationship and even prior to that...
I grew up as a latchkey kid.
I just remember always being so sad that my mom, especially
I didn't see her often.
She would always make sure to leave love notes for me
that carried through to our relationship.
- [Moonlynn] And it just translated through to heart
of dinner where she used to write all the notes.
We then heard yet again, another news
about our elderly specifically in the Asian
and Asian-American community being violently attacked
and seeing videos.
And at the same time
we were all also experiencing racism firsthand
like people leaning in and saying really nasty slurs
and telling us to go back to where we're from.
I felt lost.
I felt scared.
I felt anxious and frustrated
about what was happening in the world that we're dealing
with this worldwide pandemic
this disease that no one knows how to stop.
And yet people are seeing us as the disease
and attacking us when we're just trying to survive
and just thinking, okay, how would our elderly feel?
And it made me tear up.
They must feel so scared, so writing those notes,
It was just so healing for us to know
that we can get through to them in that way.
- [Moonlynn] So this is just a small fraction
of Heart of Dinner's operations.
Most people don't realize that there's a whole hidden like
behind the scenes team at social service organization
locations, where they're recreating these care
packages as well.
And those are upwards in the hundreds.
- [Yin] And what we mean by that
is we have restaurant partners.
We call them our restaurant families,
Saigon Social also of course, Party Bus Bake Shop and Beso.
So what you see here happens
in multiple different locations around Manhattan.
So these eggs, along with the milk toast
go to the home, Nanum House.
And that is a home that allows, invites,
and welcomes those who don't have a place to live.
So they're specifically helping Korean American
immigrants who may have language barriers, again
who don't have homes.
And so it's a house.
So they prefer the donated items in large cases
in bulk so that they can choose to make the food
how they like to make it. Food insecurity,
- it covers a vast amount of problems that have been
existing. It's interesting because
in the Asian and Asian-American communities
not many people realize how many
of our community members are hurting.
We're the second harshest hit when it comes
to being low income. With many of our cultures
it's hard to ask for help.
And you're ingrained to not ask for help too.
- Sorry. I just put Vaseline all over you.
- [Moonlynn] growing up
being closeted for a really, really long time.
It was almost like you don't tell your parents to
save them face was okay with it for a while until I met Yin.
And then when Yin and I met, she came out first
and I was like, oh, okay, then I'm going to come out.
And so after that, I mean, it was a little rocky
in the beginning 'cause still trying to like feel
comfortable. But after that it was smooth sailing.
We were on a phone interview, even though we mentioned
you know, we're partners.
I think she took it as business partners.
And so we had to correct her and let her know that we're in
in a relationship.
And so she started chuckling, but we didn't understand what
that chuckle meant.
Was it like, "Oh oops, I, I misunderstood."
Or, "Oh, I'm embarrassed for you?"
Or was she embarrassed that she thinking we were talking
like, oh, so what do you think if these elders
you know, that are getting the meals, they find out
that these meals are being provided by Heart of Dinner
which is ran by, you know, two women who are
in a relationship together
how would that affect their response?
- So it's one o'clock,
- I think we got everything and
now we're just waiting
for the delivery drivers to come by.
And then we're going to start moving all the bags down by
- [Yin] By routes.
So they're split up throughout Chinatown, another route
throughout Brooklyn and our Queens route is super long.
So we broke it in half.
- [Moonlynn] We were on, on the phone
with an elderly and she read that piece in the newspaper.
So she knows now, did they say something
like a romantic partners in life and not just businesses?
- Yes, exactly.
And I felt so seen and so respected that they
printed it out
with Chinese readers and audience.
One of our elderly, she read it
- and she thanked
- us so much and kept saying, had it not been
for you both coming together
I don't know what, what would have happened.
- [Moonlynn] Doing this work has,
it's been very eye opening, not
just the work, but also for us in a long-term relationship.
We're approaching seven years.
And we joke about it all the time, where
if this just started, when we were first dating
I think it would be very difficult, but because
we've been together for so long, we understand each
other's personality, strengths, the weaknesses
and how to compliment each other.
And so I think it's incredible that...
- [Yin] It has been so smooth sailing when it comes
to setting up and just executing on ideas.
I'm so grateful to have women
by my side to do this work and I
wouldn't have imagined anyone else to do this work with.
- I'm very lucky.
Oh,
wow.