Chicken Again

Today's meal.

A scene from the busy dining room. We are so blessed to be able to serve our guests in a space that is both large and beautiful. Thank you Trinity Episcopal Cathedral!

We served oven-baked chicken again this week at the Wednesday Community Meal and our guests once again loved it.

Alongside the chicken we served rice with gravy, cranberry sauce and roasted vegetables.

In the latter were baby carrots from the Oregon Food Bank, onions, sundried tomatoes and mushrooms. The dish came about because we knew we didn't have enough carrots for everyone and needed to find and add other ingredients so that we could serve everyone.

The mushrooms in the dish were dried porcini and shiitakes, so we reconstituted them and reserved the flavorful mushroom water and added it to our gravy. Waste not, want not.

The medley was beautiful and quite tasty. Sometimes creating under pressure yields unexpectedly delicious results.

Kate and Rieko mixing our vegetable creation.

In addition to the chicken meals, we served hot soup courtesy of Good Samaritan Hospital and green salads topped with pomegranate seeds courtesy of Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale.

I want to give a special shout out to volunteers Teri and Martha who worked so hard removing all the pomegranate seeds. They did such a great job.

The super pomegranate seed removal team — A.K.A. Teri and Martha.

Beautiful salads.

We served 391 meals today during our two hour service.