Cooking For Cancer

  was bustling with activity on Wednesday night. Wives and husbands, mothers and sons scurried around in aprons, wielding large kitchen utensils. About 21 hungry would-be chefs turned out in support of the Foothills Relay for Life, a fundraising event benefiting the American Cancer Society.

At Dream Dinners, an "entreé assembly store," shoppers register for certain products and a session, during which they preperare the delicious meals at the store’s location, using easy-to-follow instructions. On Wednesday, participants chose from one of 11 meals such as "Crispy Sesame Chicken with Gingered Green Beans," "Baked Riviera Cod," or "White Chicken Lasagna" to prepare.

Lorri Carrico, a co-chair for the Foothills Relay for Life committee, is a regular at Dream Dinners, and approached owner Lissa Money to sponsor an event to raise money for her charity. Money, who recently hosted a similar fundraiser for the Verdugo Hills Relay for Life just a month ago, naturally agreed, and offered a very generous deal: for every $25 dinner purchased that evening, $12.50 would go to the Relay for Life committee. By the end of the evening, $175 was raised for Foothills Relay for Life.

The Relay for Life comittee is comprised of over 50% cancer survivors and family of cancer survivors. They are gearing up for a 24-hour, fundraising event (read more about that here) May 16-17 at . They hope to raise at least $125,000 to be donated to the American Cancer Society to fund cancer research. Last year’s event raised about $105,000.