Chili Cheese Dogs And Crispy Potatoes

We weren't too busy at the Wednesday Community Meal today but guests who did join us for lunch at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in NW Portland enjoyed made-from-scratch chili cheese dogs and crispy oven-roasted potatoes.

We made the chili from donated dry beans that had soaked overnight, canned beans, onions and tomatoes. For seasoning, we added chili powder, cumin, garlic and salt and towards the end of cooking, snuck in some finely chopped kale for nutrition and color.

To serve, we added a scoop of the hot chili on top of an all-beef hotdog on a toasted bun and sprinkled on some cheese. It was a definite crowd pleaser — Quite a few guests asked for seconds and we were happy to oblige.

We served 272 meals today.

A Community Smorgasbord

Fourteen menu changes today kept the servers including Sharon and Thomas hopping. But as always, there was still time for service with a smile. We have the best volunteers at the Wednesday Community Meal.

We are so fortunate at the Wednesday Community Meal to be able to glean food twice a week from Good Samaritan Hospital.

From the hospital we get lots of wonderful all-ready prepared dishes like barbecue ribs, shepherd's pie and sweet and sour chicken and shrimp.

Sometimes we get very small quantities of dishes and when that happens,  we freeze them for a once every so often Community Smorgasbord. Today was one of those days.

We served 14 different dishes today from vegetarian lasagna and stuffed chicken breasts to roast pork and enchilada casserole. The latter we made using chicken and beef taco filling, refried beans and rice from Good Samaritan Hospital, tortillas and tomato sauce from the Oregon Food Bank and chedder cheese purchased by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

Putting all this wonderful food together and adding a few spices helped create the biggest enchilada casserole I've ever seen. Oh boy, it was heavy and awkward to get in and out of the oven.

And I give volunteers Kate and Davis a lot of credit for cutting and dishing it up. It was pretty hard to handle, but they made it work and the guests loved it.

Volunteer Davis and the giant enchilada casserole.

We served 351 meals today. Next week is the fifth Wednesday in April so we are expecting an even bigger crowd. We never know how many guests we will serve but somehow we always have enough for everyone.

A Variety Of Dishes

Many different dishes were served today at the Wednesday Community Meal at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and they were all well-received by our guests.

We rely on gleaned food to help us stay within budget and that means we don't have much control over what we get. We are just thankful to have ingredients to use and always try our best to put them together in a way that is tasty and appealing.

Here are a few of the 257 meals that we served today:

Stuffed chicken with gravy, rice, asparagus, foccacia and strawberries.

Barbecue ribs, rice, asparagus, strawberries and garlic toast.

Mexican chicken over Spanish rice, foccacia and strawberries.

Pasta with sausage and onions, foccacia and strawberries.

 The first dish that went out was the pasta. We made eight hotel pans of it and within 40 minutes it was gone and time to move onto the next item. Rapidly changing what we serve keeps us on our toes and keeps things interesting. We have a wonderful volunteer team and we work well together.

Adding the sausage and sauce to hotel pans before adding the pasta.

There would be no community meal without our dishwashers Bill, Brad, Dave, Steve and Jay (not pictured). With good spirits and a sense of humor they work pretty much nonstop. They are simply the best.