Burgers Hot Off The Grill

Every burger came with a tidy pile of lettuce, onion, tomato and pickles thanks to super volunteer Leah who put them all together. Leah always works so carefully and lovingly, recognizing that a meal that is as beautiful as it is tasty means a lot to our guests.

Today's lunch of burgers on homemade buns and oven-roasted potatoes was one of the most labor intensive meals we've ever prepared at the Wednesday Community Meal.

I'm pretty sure every single volunteer who worked today is exhausted but pleased to have prepared and served 377 satisfying meals to our hungry guests.

The last time we served burgers on homemade buns, we made things a bit easier in the kitchen by serving them with a side of chips.

But today we had nearly 100 pounds of potatoes that were free from The Oregon Food Bank so we chose to utilize them and help keep our costs down.

Besides the extra work of cleaning and preparing the potatoes, roasting them took up a big portion of our oven space. With the homemade buns also needing to be baked, we decided to grill the hamburgers instead of cooking them in the ovens.

If it weren't for longtime volunteer Jeff, we would have been in real trouble. As soon as he came in, he got the grill up and running and grilled burgers throughout the entire lunch service. It was not an easy task but the grilled burgers sure did taste great.

In addition to the burgers and potatoes, we served bowls of hot soup and homemade apple cranberry crisp made in-house by Cheryl who is a longtime volunteer and our dessert specialist.

Homemade apple cranberry crisp with whipped cream.