Chocolate Mousse & Community Service: Mary McCormick’s Rotary Farewell

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Live from Studio D in the 3rd Ward in downtown Milwaukee, this is Cooking with
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Milwaukee Community Leaders.
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Hi, I'm Charlie, and today on Cooking with Milwaukee Community Leaders,
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my guest is Mary McCormick.
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Mary, good to see you. Hi Charlie, good to see you. So Mary is the Executive
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Director of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee.
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She started there in 2001, so she's been there 25 years and retiring this year. I am.
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We'll talk a little bit about Rotary in just a minute.
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She's received many accolades and awards along her career.
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Let's name a woman of influence by the Milwaukee Business Journal,
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the Temple Mentor Award, among many others.
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So congratulations on a great career, and I know you'll enjoy your retirement.
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So let's start where we usually start at the beginning.
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First, let me say thank you, Charlie, for having me here. I mean,
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I really am very glad to be here. I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
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and I really like the beard, I have to say.
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But thank you, Charlotte. Thank you. Do I look tan?
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So you're born in Hartford, Connecticut. I am. I was.
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You was. I was. So tell us a little bit, your growing up years for heading off to college.
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Well, I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and have three brothers.
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My grandmother lived with us, so it was kind of that family of the 50s and the 60s.
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So pretty vanilla upbringing. Went to Catholic school, went to Catholic girls
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school, and then I actually started college in Hartford at Women's College,
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Hartford College for Women.
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So I was really in the Hartford area through the time I turned 20.
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So, you know, first job was like working at the A&P. I'm really good at packing
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grocery bags to this day.
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And, you know, I just thoroughly enjoyed my growing up in New England in the spring and the flowers.
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But really, I've embraced Milwaukee now.
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So you went to college in Connecticut, but then ended up transferring down to Georgetown.
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I did. Where you got your undergrad in economics.
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So did you have a plan after graduating or did you know what you wanted to do?
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I was very fortunate when I was in college that I had an internship with the
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city of Washington, D.C.
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And I worked in the budget office for, I don't know, probably a year,
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year and a half, on a part-time basis and full-time in the summer.
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And so I really graduated with a job offer to work for the city of Washington, D.C.
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And so that was really pretty easy for me. I was working in the Department of Transportation.
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And this was a long time ago. It was, I'm having my 50th reunion soon.
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So it was 1976, and it was just when the first miles of the metro were opening
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up in 19— There were five miles opened.
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And so I was like a liaison person between the city and the—.
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Rail authority. Deficit allocation was a really big deal. There were,
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you know, seven jurisdictions involved.
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And so, you know, I actually really grew to love local government and working
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in environments where younger people can make a difference early on.
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So, I really had a good experience working in Washington, D.C.
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I did, I was very interested in transportation.
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And so I decided to go to graduate school.
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My graduate degree, I don't talk a lot about this because it's actually in transportation
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at Northwestern's business school.
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But when I came out of business school in 1980, and Tim and I decided to move
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to Milwaukee, I had to pivot a bit. And that's when I ended up working in banking.
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Okay. So you worked in banking for a while, and then eventually you make your way to Rotary.
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So I'm assuming the banking was here in the Milwaukee area?
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Right. I worked what was then First Wisconsin Bank, turned into First Star Bank,
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and then First Star was bought by U.S. Bank in 1998.
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I had been working part-time from 1984 until 1998. I was working about,
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I don't know, 60%. And at the end, I was working in strategic planning.
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And when the bank was bought, that department was eliminated.
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And Tim and I also have four children and
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at that point the youngest was well Charlie
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was it was 1998 so Charlie
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was four or five and we I really didn't want to go to work full-time and so
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I did some consulting for a while and then in 2001 the opportunity to work at
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Rotary came up And it seemed like a manageable full-time job.
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And I thought it would be fun to do for a couple of years. And lo and behold...
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Turned out it was a really good fit. Absolutely. So in 2001,
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you became the executive director.
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So talk a little bit about the work that Rotary does and some of your accomplishments
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and things that you want to point to during your tenure. Okay.
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Thank you for the opportunity to talk about Rotary. I enjoy doing that, as you know.
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You know, Rotary is an international organization, and there are,
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you know, 40,000 plus clubs around the world.
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But the large club that, which is, you know, Rotary Club of Milwaukee with 375
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members is considered a large club, is fairly unique in the Rotary world.
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There's really, you know, I think we're the 19th largest club in the world.
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You know, there's a lot of small clubs. And so there aren't a lot of clubs with staff.
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And that really makes a difference, I think. But we take a lot of pride,
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you know, we meet every Tuesday at noon at the War Memorial Center.
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We take a lot of pride in having high-quality speakers that really talk about
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what's going on in Milwaukee or the state or the world.
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Have a good mix of, you know, business people, community people,
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sports people, you know, we try to mix up the speakers.
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I think Tom's going to want to join Rotary. Probably.
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We also take a lot of pride in the fact that we bring people of different points of view together,
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that we believe there's a real opportunity for people who think differently
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about the world to come together for lunch and break bread together and have
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conversations in a meaningful way.
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And in the community, we have a history of doing significant projects.
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So in my time, the first one was really big, had been launched a bit,
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but we ended up buying the naming rights to the amphitheater behind Discovery
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World, which is a beautiful place.
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And in the summer, we have a group of people that put on a music concert that
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runs on Wednesday evenings after the close of Summerfest through Labor Day.
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Live at the lakefront. Live at the lakefront. Thank you for the name.
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And this will be the 17th year that that's been going on.
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For our centennial project, we worked with the Urban Ecology Center and the
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county and other leaders in the community to create the Milwaukee Rotary Centennial
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Arboretum, which is up on the river up by the Riverside Park.
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We also, around that same time, raised some money to renovate Johnson's Park
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and the playground for the Brown Street Academy.
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In 2017, we worked with community leaders to create MKE Urban Stables,
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which is a unique facility on the south side.
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That is the home to the Mounted Patrol and also a equine-assisted therapy program
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for teenagers. and we're bringing in a VETS program, also a police community relations component.
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And now we're hoping to really create a special park that runs on the Beer Line
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Trail between Keefe and Capitol.
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So that's some of the things that we're working on. And when is your retirement date?
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I also just have to say we have a really cool scholarship program.
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I forgot about that. And we do work internationally, too.
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We have $2.5 million of infrastructure that we've built in Guatemala.
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We have 25 scholarship students at any given time that are all MPS graduates.
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So I live in the city of Milwaukee.
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It's the right way to say it because not all went to MPS. My retirement date is early June. Good.
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So it's coming right up. So just early June, and you just pick a date in early
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June. Just pick a date in early June.
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Okay, good. I'm actually going to Taipei.
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Rotary has an international conference every year. And my final activity for
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Rotary will be to attend the Rotary International Convention.
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And so I leave for Taipei on June 10th.
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And when I get back, I will be done because we change presidents at the end of June.
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And I really want that to be the time for the presidents to change and not be
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involved in that or distract from that.
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So we call this Serious People with Serious Jobs, having a little fun.
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We're going to have a little fun. I'm going to give you one of our aprons.
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Thank you. So, Mary, why don't you tell us what we'll be making today?
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We're going to make chocolate mousse, which is... Chocolate is my favorite food group.
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It is my favorite food group, right up there with pesto.
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And it's an old family favorite. I believe it was given to me,
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the recipe was given to me by a co-worker.
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I really like this apron, Charlie.
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It matches your outfit. Yeah, I'm very color-coordinated. And I'll tie it when I get done.
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Oh, chocolate mousse. So this is, I got distracted here.
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It's a recipe that a coworker gave to me many years ago, like probably when
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we first moved to Milwaukee, so over 40 years ago.
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And it's pretty straightforward and simple, and anybody can make it and enjoy
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it, but it's kind of elegant. So it's a nice dessert for company.
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All right. So we're going to go back here and put it together.
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We might have an expedited version of it.
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Instead of double boiler we're going to put in the chocolate microwave
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all right so this will be an easy one to make
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at home so just give us a minute we'll be right
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back all right so we're back here in the kitchen so mary
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tell us what we're doing here well we're we have a lot of simple ingredients
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in here we have a half a pound of baker's sweet chocolate and then just one
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square of unsweetened chocolate and i'm going to melt that in in the microwave
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i'm going to separate four eggs,
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and I have five just in case because you never know, right?
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And then add a little bit of sugar. We are going to actually not to add the
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sugar yet, but I am going to, you know, stiffen up the egg whites.
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And then I am going to fold in the chocolate.
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I'm going to beat the cream and make whipped cream, and then I'm going to fold it together. Okay.
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All right. So the first thing is to melt the chocolate. And the recipe,
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you know, as I said, it's an old recipe, so the directions are to melt the chocolate.
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But the chocolate's not old.
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The chocolate just bought yesterday. It was good. That's right.
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But I bet if we were to see your recipe today, it wouldn't tell me to melt it
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in the double boiler. It would probably tell me to melt it in the microwave.
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All right. So we'll melt this, and then we'll separate the eggs.
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Then we will separate the eggs. All right. Chocolate in the microwave.
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All right, Mary, so what's next? I think I'll separate the eggs. All right.
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So let's see. We'll put the egg white in here and egg yolk right in there.
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And which one are we using?
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Which I'm going to stiff the egg whites in the silver pan. And are we using the egg yolks?
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Yes. Okay. I'm going to mix those up with the milk and the chocolate.
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All right. So we're separating, but using both. Yes. Nice.
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Now, Julie, a child, she likes to do this with her fingers, but I've never quite mastered that.
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OK, one more egg here. All right, so this is the last egg.
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We've got the egg whites in the big bowl, and the egg yolks in the smaller one.
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All right, so we separated the eggs, and what's next? I'm going to stiffen the egg whites. OK.
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I think it's one of the fascinating things about egg whites is that you can
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turn them into something so stiff. Oh, yeah.
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Right now I'm just mixing up the egg yolks, and I will add some sugar to these
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in just a moment, and then we will mix the egg yolks and the milk and the chocolate. together.
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We're getting closer. We've got a little bit of sugar in here.
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How much sugar are we putting in? We're putting in four tablespoons.
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One tablespoon per egg? One tablespoon.
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That's what Will said. I measured this out a little while ago,
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so I'm just going to toss it right in there.
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It's always nice to see the egg yolks change color. Today I'm mixing this with that whisk by hand.
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I have done it with the beaters, too, which is a little bit faster,
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and sometimes you can get it a little bit lighter yellow in color,
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but I think that this is going to be just perfect today.
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Glad to be doing that. I'm going to make whipped cream. Heavy whipping cream.
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That's heavy.
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Nice to get you back.
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All right. How much is that? That's 16 or 32? This is a pint, so 16 ounces.
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And I'm going to add, oh, calls for a teaspoon of vanilla.
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I may add a little bit more just because we're kind of a family that really
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likes vanilla. Teaspoon plus of vanilla going into the heavy whipping cream.
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And it's always a family tradition to smell the vanilla because it's one of our favorite aromas.
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And there, through the magic of editing. We will have whipped cream.
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Cheers to our milk with chocolate.
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I think we'll be okay.
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All right, so we've got our egg yolks coming in. Okay, so egg yolks,
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milk, and chocolate we're mixing up now. I think the milk would help smooth it out.
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So that's four tablespoons or half a cup? Four tablespoons.
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So again, like four eggs, four tablespoons of milk.
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All right, and after we do this, what's the next step?
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The next step would be to fold the egg whites and the chocolate together.
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All right, so those are the egg whites. Those are the egg whites.
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So we're going to fold. I'm going to do this in sort of slower stages here together.
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All right, I'm going to do just a little bit more folding here,
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And then we're going to put the whipped cream in. All right. And it stops.
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All right. Once we get all the whipped cream in, we're going to serve it in some bowls.
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Yeah. And we're going to take it over to the table and have a nice chocolatey breakfast.
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So while Mary finishes up here, why don't you give us a minute and we'll be
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back at the table eating our chocolate mousse.
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All right. Here we are. Back at the table. So, Mary, tell us what we got here.
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Well, we have chocolate mousse.
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Simple, straightforward, and elegant. You can serve it at any dinner party.
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Absolutely. And we have two kinds of cookies, orange milanos from Pepperidge
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Farms, one of my favorites, and the dark chocolate pirouettes,
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which I really like. Yes.
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So Mary, why don't you go ahead and take whatever cookie you'd like.
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And we'll pass it over to the assembled audience. Yes, here.
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The cookie is really just makes it all that much more elegant,
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I'd say, Charlie. So thank you for bringing these cookies. Absolutely.
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Yes.
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Cheers. All right. Let's see how we did.
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Chocolatey. Delicious. Yep, it's great. Oh, good.
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It is. It's delicious.
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Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to make it for you all and have an
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appreciative audience.
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So how long would you chill this before the dinner party?
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Usually, I would make it in the middle of the afternoon, probably four hours or so. Okay.
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Yeah, it would coagulate. Yeah, it would be a little bit firmer. Right.
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And it'll last about a day before the whipped cream begins to water down again.
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So you can pretty much count on having it available the next day in case there's
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any left over. Probably.
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It's just often a lot left over. It's the lift. Like this.
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I have to admit, I didn't realize that eating a camera was going to be part of the...
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You're part of the deal, I know. This is the best part. That's right.
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That's good. How long have you been doing this now, Charlie?
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About three and a half years. So before you take another bite,
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thanks so much for coming by and making a great breakfast, dessert,
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lunch, whatever we're calling it.
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Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. And it was fun and in good company.
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I appreciate all you do to get good recipes out there and talk to people in
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the community that really care about Milwaukee. Well, thank you.
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And thank you for supporting Cooking with Milwaukee community leaders.
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Each week we talk to one of our community leaders we talk about their work that's
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being done in the community then we prepare something then we eat it so until
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next time thanks for watching,
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thanks so much for supporting Cooking with Tomalski Community Leaders we hope
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you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you next time.