“Comfort food: Menlo Park couple whips up restaurant-style meals for Ronald McDonald House families”

Comfort food: Menlo Park couple whips up restaurant-style meals for Ronald McDonald House families

Posted: 27 Dec 2010 09:10 PM PST

They were instructed to only provide side dishes.

The 49ers were supposed to be the real chefs that night, barbecuing for the children and families at Stanford's Ronald McDonald House as a special treat.

But when Ginny Piazza arrived at the house with potato salad and macaroni salad in hand and saw the football players entertaining the guests instead, she looked at her husband Gary.

Then they rolled up their sleeves, grabbed the barbecue tongs and got to work.

"They're better at football," Gary said, laughing at the memory.

Though the Palo Alto house -- a home away from home for families with children suffering from serious illnesses in local hospitals -- has more than 100 volunteers who come in every week, the Piazzas earned Bri Carpaño-Seoane's nomination as two of The Daily News' "unsung heroes." As family services manager, Carpaño-Seoane oversees numerous companies and organizations that pitch in to provide meals for the house's guests.

"(The Piazzas) cook for 47 families and put a lot of work, a lot of heart into it, and you can feel that," she said, adding that the house is always full and regularly has a waiting list of 15 to 20 families. "It's restaurant quality, and it's just the two of them."

As the owner of Piazza's Fine Foods in Palo Alto and San Mateo, Gary has spent much of his life in food services through the family business.

"He's from an Italian family, so we

only know how to cook too much," Ginny said.

She first got involved with the house 10 years ago, though she didn't get her start in the Ronald McDonald House kitchen until Gary joined her in volunteering years later.

After retiring from management and sales in the temporary staffing industry, she responded to an ad that the Ronald McDonald House needed a gardener and worked out in the yard with a group of five women. Later, she started watering the house plants. This year, she co-chaired the house's half-marathon. In addition to running the marathon, she and Gary -- not surprisingly -- also provided the event's dinner.

Though Carpaño-Seoane said the Menlo Park couple makes every dinner seem like a special occasion (contrast Gary's popular sour cream chicken recipe with the common taco night at the house), the Piazzas thrive on holiday meals.

On Christmas Eve, they served beef stroganoff.

On St. Patrick's Day, it was corned beef.

They prepared nine turkeys and all the fixings for an impromptu Thanksgiving in August.

Do they get stressed?

"We just kind of do it," said Gary, as Ginny meekly said, "I do."

But after more than five years of serving dinner on the third Tuesday of every month, the Piazzas have their routine down.

Ginny will take care of the shopping, and the day before is spent doing prep work -- making sauces, baking cookies. When they run out of storage space in their own refrigerator, the Piazzas head over to use their neighbors'.

The next day, the real work begins. The Piazzas arrive by 4 p.m. and quickly work the numerous ovens and sinks in the Ronald McDonald House kitchen.

"We like to do the cooking so the whole house smells good, so they can smell it from their rooms," Ginny said.

As Gary presides over the entrée, Ginny prepares a salad and lays out her nice tablecloths. In the process, they make a vegetarian option and are sure to accommodate any children with food restrictions or picky habits.

"They're the only ones that ever thought to take this on by themselves. They wanted to make sure the families were well taken care of," Carpaño-Seoane said. "(You can count on the fact that) dinner will be served at 5:30 and it will be fabulous."

And it's a welcome change from the hospital food the families have become accustomed to, the Piazzas are often told.

Though unable to have children themselves, the couple see a number of families return from the hospital with plenty on their minds. But a home-cooked meal is quick to help.

"You have to get in there and think, 'What are they missing from home?'" Ginny said.

After the hungry mouths have been fed and leftovers stashed away for any families returning from the hospital later, the house gets ready for bingo night.

While the families set up their bingo cards in the cafeteria, "every time as I walk out, like clockwork, I always get 20 people in unison saying, 'thank you,'" Gary said.

"If nobody said anything, that would be fine," Ginny added.

"But even if they don't speak English, they say thank you and that's all they can say."

E-mail Kristen Marschall at kmarschall@dailynewsgroup.com.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.