SEQUIM — We won’t have the warm Mexican sun, but we will have the hot salsa.
So promise the two cooks who will rise early Sunday to make the first Mujeres de Maiz benefit breakfast of corn tortillas, scrambled eggs, tomato-chile salsa, black beans and Mexican cheese.
Steve Gilchrist, a board member of the Mujeres de Maiz Opportunity Foundation, a nonprofit funder of scholarships for women in Chiapas, Mexico, came up with this idea.
He, fellow board member Molly Rivard and a few friends will cook and serve the traditional breakfast at the Sequim Prairie Grange, 290 Macleay Road, from 8:30 a.m. until noon Sunday.
The meal will come with coffee, donated by Raven’s Brew Coffee of Tumwater, and tea for $10 per person.
“It won’t be too spicy, but it won’t be dull, either,” vowed Gilchrist, who confessed a love for desayunos Mexicanos muy picante, a hot Mexican-style morning meal.
Rivard has decades of experience cooking for crowds, as she ran the Sequim School District’s food service operation before becoming Olympic Cellars winery’s tasting-room manager.
Believes in cause
But like Gilchrist and the other Mujeres de Maiz volunteers, Rivard believes in the cause: helping young women go to high school and college so they can share that education in their own communities.
Mujeres de Maiz, founded in 2006, has raised money for scholarships as well as children’s enrichment programs in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state.
The organization hosts an El Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, fundraising dinner and auction around Nov. 1 each year, and at the 2012 event, Rivard, Gilchrist and Mujeres founder Judith Pasco started talking about another meal.
A display table will have information about Mujeres on Sunday, but “we decided to have this be a low-key breakfast,” Gilchrist said.
There won’t be a formal presentation about the foundation, though board members will be on hand to answer questions.
A few copies of Pasco’s new book, Somewhere for My Soul to Go: A Place, a Cause, a Legacy, will be available.
But the real book-release party is planned for March 28 at Olympic Cellars, the winery just east of Port Angeles at 255410 U.S. Highway 101.
Women’s Day
Olympic Cellars also is the place for the annual International Women’s Day celebration, a fundraiser for both the Mujeres de Maiz Opportunity Foundation and for Hill House, Serenity House’s program for women.
It begins at 6 p.m. this coming Wednesday.
Bread and soup will be provided free of charge, and wine will be available for purchase.
Everyone is welcome.
For more information, visit www.OlympicCellars.com or phone 360-452-0160.
And to learn more about Mujeres’ programs, visit www.MujeresdeMaizOF.org or phone 360-683-1651.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
