When the Dallas 24 Hour Club had to cancel their annual Dallas All-Star Chef Classic benefit dinner, they decided to create a cookbook to stay involved with their community and raise funds for their mission.
Their first cookbook, Cooking at Home: A Collection Of Recipes Created By Dallas’ Top Chefs From Their Home To Yours, was released last November and sold over 1,600 copies across the United States. Their second edition, Cooking at Home Through the Seasons: A Collection of Recipes Created by Dallas’ Top Chefs from Their Homes to Yours is set to release early November 2021.
Chef Matt Balke, Jacquelynn Beckman, Josh Bonee, Junior Borges, and Sharon Van Meter, amongst several others, contribute recipes, knowledge, and inspirational messages to the book.
“The recipes are for anyone who’s a home chef. With the restaurant industry up in the air right now, a lot of people have been cooking from home,” April Horton, communications and development assistant at the Dallas 24 Hour Club, states. “They’re from well-known chefs in Dallas and are easy enough for anyone to do.”
Founded in 1969, the Dallas 24 Hour Clubs is “One of the only places that allow people to come in off the streets with no money in their pocket, and we extend them credit,” Horton states.
Homeless individuals who come to the club who cannot pay for room and board enroll in a program where they receive temporarily free housing. The programs require that the individuals be sober and working with a sponsor to find employment. Over time, they begin to pay back the fees they’ve accrued.
Horton, who grew up with an addiction but was able to become sober through the help of the Dallas 24 Hour Club, states “I found a home and a family here and the recovery that I desperately wanted and needed. It’s been very cool to watch other people come in and get sober and their whole life changes.”
For more information on the Dallas 24 Hour Club and their soon-to-release cookbook, visit their website here.
