WHAT COMFORT FOOD MEANS TO ME Why Mercy Chefs' Founder Gary LeBlanc brings family favorites to the front lines When I was growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother, mom, and aunt would make this homemade concoction called cherry bounce. I still have vivid memories of running through my nanny’s backyard with my cousins to pick wild cherries for the special recipe. Once we collected all the cherries our small hands could gather, we would rinse them and place them in an empty gallon bourbon bottle, and cover them with sugar. After watching the cherries sit in the sugary stew for days that felt like months, I would watch as bourbon was poured over the mixture and it was put away to age to perfection. In my family, the cherry bounce was only pulled out for special occasions and gatherings, and it was reserved as a coveted cocktail ingredient to make a Manhattan or an old- fashioned one. The taste and ritual of making cherry bounce transports me back to childhood and those halcyon days picking cherries with my cousins. I created this recipe for Cherry Bourbon Barbecue Chicken in honor of my late grandmother, Nettie Butler Dore, whose backyard was home to the cherries we used to pick and whose spirit and love for cooking are in every bite.
For me, this dish is the epitome of comfort food, memorable dishes that make you recall your childhood, family, and close friends. It’s food that feels like a warm hug. As the founder of Mercy Chefs, a nonprofit that serves restaurant-quality meals to victims and first responders of emergencies and natural disasters, I make sure that comfort food is at the heart of what we do. I started Mercy Chefs in 2006 during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The devastation hit incredibly close to home, and while volunteering, I saw the lackluster food that was being served to people who had just lost everything. In the years since, our mission at Mercy Chefs has been simple: Just go feed people. We have fed more than 10 million people since Mercy Chefs started. No matter where we serve, our goal is to provide a meal that, for just a moment, will make the individual we are serving feel like things are going to be OK—meals just like this Cherry Bourbon Barbecue Chicken.
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