On Friday, the Methodist Hospitals Auxiliary hosted a book signing and fundraiser at their Southlake Campus featuring the newly published “Three Generations Cooking With Sole” by Methodist Hospital's own Executive Sous Chef, Pamela Ward.
Ward, a Gary native, graduated from Lake Cordon Bleu in Mendon Heights, Minnesota and did her internship at Charlie Trotters in Chicago, Illinois. She has been with Methodist Hospitals for four years and spent a little over a year working on the book.
“It has been an excellent experience,” said Ward. “The recipes are based on three generations of cooking in my family. They are very sentimental to me. My great-grandma had over 4000 recipes and they’ve all been passed down over the years. I love to cook and the recipes in the book are very easy and something everyone can do.”
“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Ward said. “My three children have been so great supporting me and encouraging me. I cried so hard when I finally got the books in the mail. It has a little over thirty recipes in it that are very detailed with pictures but are not too complex.”
Helping Ward to promote and sell her book is the Methodist Hospitals Auxiliary who will be receiving part of the proceeds. “The Methodist Auxiliary volunteers donate their time and service to the hospital in many ways and I really love what they do,” Ward said.
At the book signing was Methodist Hospitals Auxiliary member, Evelyn Cole, who spoke about how the donated funds will help the hospital as well as doctors and nurses.
“One of the major things the Auxiliary does is make funds available for nurses to continue their education,” said Cole. “Every year we pick as many as two nurses at the hospital to receive a scholarship to help pay for that education. We normally try and pick two nurses, one from each hospital. We’re going to be trying a few new things in the future. We’ll be seeing about picking a unit at the hospital and helping fund something they need. We’ve talked about that frequently.”
The Methodist Hospitals Auxiliary has approximately 110 volunteer members and has been improving the healthcare community for over 50 years. In the recent past, the Auxiliary has been raising money for mothers and babies, the Breast Care Center, the LPN to RN Scholarship Program, and for the general fund, including a $30k check presented to CEO Raymond Grady in 2015 on behalf of the Auxiliary.
“We have a culture here at the hospital where we support our employees because our vision is to be the best possible place for our employees to work, the best place for physicians to practice medicine and the best place for patients to receive care,” said Evelyn Morrison, Marketing & Corporate Communications Manager with Methodist Hospitals. “By doing things like this to support our employees, Pam’s obviously our Sous Chef, we feel it’s supporting our vision of creating the best place for employees to work. She’s giving back to her employer by donating some of the proceeds from the sales of her book and nursing education is so important so we were happy to be involved in promoting her work.”
“Three Generations Cooking With Sole” is available at Methodist Hospitals North and Southlake Campus’ as well as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Methodist Hospitals will be hosting a second book signing at the Northlake Campus Gift Shop on Monday, February 15th from 11a.m. to 2p.m..