Top chef Gale Gand: Cooking becomes magic

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Loyce Clark puts her arm around Chef Gale Gand at a book signing at Arden Shore Child and Family Services. | Shauna Bittle~for Sun-Times Media

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Updated: November 16, 2011 2:11PM

WAUKEGAN — She has hosted her own show on the Food Network and is a partner and executive pastry chef at what she calls “a fancy-pants restaurant in downtown Chicago,” also known as Tru.

But Gale Gand told a crowd gathered Thursday night for Arden Shore Child and Family Services’ 114th annual meeting that her path to culinary success began as a frightened young woman.

“I was 19 and serving in a restaurant, and got thrown into the kitchen one night,” said Gand, describing how after an initial flush of panic, “this feeling of calm came over me. I felt very at home.”

More than two decades later, and with such honors on herself as Tru’s AAA Five-Diamond rating, Gand said one of the lessons she’s learned is the value of teaching children to cook.

“There’s some kind of magic when you’re cooking, when you’re touching food, when you’re creating something for someone else to enjoy,” said the mother of three, including preschool twins. “If you can get kids touching food — if you can get them connected to food — they will live better lives and they will make better choices.”

Gand’s message connects with the mission of Arden Shore, which moved its headquarters to North Genesee Street earlier this year after more than a century in locations that included Glencoe and Lake Bluff.

With offices in both Waukegan and Lake Villa, Arden Shore provides children and their families with services that include counseling to “improve family functioning, address emotional and behavioral disorders, prevent abuse and neglect and ensure the well-being of the child and family,” according to a mission statement at the organization’s Web site, www.ardenshore.com.

“We see children and families at our counseling center in Waukegan with issues such us depression, violent behavior, truancy, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, trauma and separation and loss,” the statement added. “Issues such as domestic violence or substance abuse that impact the whole family are also addressed. We also see children who are removed from the home by the State of Illinois because of abuse and neglect or are identified as ‘at risk’ of abuse and neglect.”

One of the many community members who has stepped up to provide foster care for such children is Evelyn Correa of Waukegan, who has taken in 15 youths since 2001 and was honored Thursday as Arden Shore’s Foster Parent of the Year.

“Evelyn has established what I would call a labor of love,” said Arden Shore president and CEO Dora E. Maya as she presented Correa with the award. “She has helped children with special needs, nurturing them and making them better.”

Correa told the gathering that “I am a very happy person who has love in my heart, and I have a big family that includes some of my foster children.”

“In 11 years, I’ve had 15 children under my care, and sometimes when they leave, they are sad,” she said. “I try to be friendly with (their families) so I can see the children again. I want to see them grow. ... I have been blessed by being a foster mother. The children under my care are blessings from all different places.”

Correa added that one of her principles is to provide her foster children with good nutrition, because she feels that “what we put in our bodies helps determine how we will be.”

That sentiment was echoed by Gand, who recalled her father’s seemingly offhand advice when she told him she wanted to become a chef after he had supported her education in the arts.

“He says to me, ‘Well, I guess everybody’s got to eat,’” she said. “That didn’t sound very supportive to me, (but) I think back on what my dad said, and he’s right — everybody’s got to eat. It’s an essential part of life.”