Thanks to everyone who showed up on February 19th to help us celebrate the one year birthday of Selma Cafe’/Friday Mornings@Selma. Suzy and Nora (our chefs the following week) from Taste our Goods made birthday cake for breakfast, and the photo featured on this post is one of Heather Anne Leavitt’s amazingly fabulous edible confections that was the hit of the Saturday night volunteer appreciation party.

We had an amazing crew of volunteers both Thursday evening and Friday morning, and 135 guests showed up to eat breakfast. Big big thanks to Myra Klarman who took the most beautiful photographs and posted them on her blog Relish. Thanks also to Annarbor.com for their reporting on both FM@Selma and the Local Food Summit.

Here’s a shout out to this week’s volunteers: Jennifer Jensen, Kate Long, Suzanne Lipton, Remi  and Nate Holden, Amber Webster, Siri Gottlieb, Spencer Thomas, Kris Kaul, Merilynne Rush, Nora Feldhusen, Courtney Peterson, Arthur Peterson, Robbie Moore, Nate Lada, Shawna Jo Lee, Kerby Smithson, Claire Rice, Sarah Burns and Nevon Clark.

Looking back on this last year is an opportunity to deeply appreciate the hard work of several hundred amazing volunteers who have come into our kitchen to help prep food for the guest chefs, set up for service, serve food, run coffee, make waffles, fry bacon (let’s just pause for a moment and sigh over the bacon), wash dishes, clean the floor, put loads and loads of dishes, glasses and silverware away, wash pots and pans….and come back the next week to do it all again. For a whole year.

And, of course, thank you to the many, many chefs who were willing to take the time and energy to come up with creative, beautiful, imaginative, seasonal and local specials that proved over and over again that sourcing and cooking local food is rich in variety and flavor.

Let’s not forget the volunteers who showed up in Detroit to help build Greg Willerer’s hoop house, and in Ann Arbor, who gathered to build the hoop house for Tomm and Trilby Becker at their Sunseed Farm. These were unbelievably long days of hard physical work in the heat of the summer. No one complained, and no one got hurt. And the hoops got built.

Here’s the recap as I see it. 1 year, 2 hoop houses, and 3 little words: we love you. 3 more: we appreciate you. And a final 7: we could not do it without you.

Looking forward to seeing you in our kitchen soon, Lisa