Pizza To The Rescue

Volunteer servers Carol and Rusti posed for a quick picture at the start of today's meal. After days of rain in Portland,  it was so nice to see warm sunlight beaming into the dining room.

Well what a difference a week makes.

Unlike last week at The Wednesday Community Meal, when we had plenty of food and the service was smooth and easy, today's meal kept us hopping but we survived.

As luck would have it, we just weren't able to glean as much food early in the week and so when we emptied the refrigerators this morning and saw what we had — a few large containers of soup, some white rice, some fried rice, half of a pork roast, about 2 cups of sliced chicken, six pieces of salmon, a gallon of white sauce, pepperoni, some cheese and 32 pounds of ground beef  — we knew we had to think fast right from the start if we were going to feed everyone who would come to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral to eat.

In our downstairs stockroom we had pasta, tomato sauce and tortillas so we brainstormed and  quickly got a meal plan together.

We would make a pasta dish with the white sauce and a few pans of ground beef enchiladas with the tortillas, tomato sauce and cheese. With the remaining ground beef we would make meatballs and with the pepperoni we would make pizzas using French bread gleaned from Grand Central Bakery.

The pork roast and fish could be heated and served as is and the sliced chicken could be added to a small portion of soup to make a "chicken gravy" that could be served over a bed of rice.

Volunteer Dave kindly made a run to Cash 'n' Carry for salad ingredients and some additional items that were necessary to implement our plan including extra cheese and tomato sauce for the pizzas.

It really is amazing how our team comes together to make the meal happen no matter the circumstances. And truth be told, the times we're scrambling are often the most fun because it's exciting and challenging.

The first entree we served today was pasta with meatballs.

French Bread Pizza

There wasn't a dull moment at the meal today but it was indeed a success thanks in large part to pizza.  Besides the French bread pizzas that we made from scratch, we were fortunate to get a large donation of pizza from Pizza Schmizza right before the meal. At the end of the two hour lunch service every bit of pizza was gone but we made it, we served 306 meals and fed every single person who came to our door.