paddle, stirring
notes: label: Description
content: This wooden paddle was used to prepare food for furloughed federal employees by World Central Kitchen (WCK) during the government shutdown in early 2019. As the char marks indicate, this utensil and others like it were employed in the course of cooking many meals, including butternut squash and roasted root vegetable soup, quinoa, and pasta. The paddle is wider at the bottom for more effective stirring and has “WCK” marked at the top in black ink. After announcing food relief efforts for federal workers on January 14th, Chef José Andrés and his nonprofit organization WCK assembled a team of chefs, volunteers, and local businesses and nonprofits to prepare and distribute over 100,000 meals by February 7, 2019.
label: Description
content: After immigrating to the United States in 1990 at age 21, José Andrés established and expanded several restaurants in and around the Washington, D.C. area, including the popular tapas restaurant Jaleo. He founded World Central Kitchen (WCK) in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where the organization prepared and distributed food to Haitians in need. In addition to its work feeding islanders in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, WCK has supplied food for first responders and families after several different fires in California, in South Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018, and to those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and India (2020-2021).
label: Description
content: The longest government shutdown in U.S. history began on December 22, 2018, when disagreement on an appropriations bill delayed the passage of funding for the 2019 fiscal year. Around 800,000 federal employees, including National Park Service staff, members of the Coast Guard, workers at NASA, and FDA inspectors were furloughed or required to work without pay. In response, Chef Andrés and his organization set up near the United States Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, to provide meals on-site and to-go for federal families affected. Simultaneously, relief efforts expanded across the United States to support federal employees outside the DC area. Food trucks and restaurants in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, and several other states joined, ensuring that federal workers across the country were able to feed themselves and their families.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Food Technology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2019.0031.07
label: catalog number
content: 2019.0031.07
label: accession number
content: 2019.0031
objectType: label: Object Name
content: paddle, stirring
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 35 3/4 in x 1 3/4 in x 3/4 in; 90.805 cm x 4.445 cm x 1.905 cm