Roasted Asparagus And Potatoes

Volunteers Teri, Cindy and Ginny were stuck at the sink today washing and cutting potatoes - 100 pounds to be exact. It was hard work but they stayed in good spirits. I am so thankful to have them on our team.

We served a variety of main dishes today at the Wednesday Community Meal and were lucky to be able to serve them with two pretty and very well-received side dishes - oven roasted white potatoes and asparagus.

Having fresh produce for our meal is always great but it does take a lot of prep work and time.

We had two 50 pound boxes of white potatoes from the Oregon Food Bank and it took a hardworking team of three volunteers to scrub and chop all of them. Thankfully we had Teri, Cindy and Ginny willing to take on the job. Working nonstop, it took a full two-hours to get them ready for the oven.

The beautiful organic asparagus was donated by Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale. Volunteer Kate picked up the asparagus for us as well as prepared and cooked it for the meal. She seasoned the asparagus with garlic powder, salt and black pepper and roasted it perfectly so that it was still bright green and not overcooked.

The fresh asparagus that was donated by Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale.

Our main dishes today included Italian Chicken, Ham, Salmon, Cod, Shepherd's Pie, Enchiladas and Ribs. For dessert there was an assortment of delicious cakes, pastries and pies donated by Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's Streusel Cake.

Trader Joe's Apple Pie with whipped cream.

We served 248 meals today.

Spring Break Helpers

Elise, Kayla and Eleanor were on dessert duty today. They dished up ice cream and made pudding.

It was a really busy day at the Wednesday Community Meal.  So we were lucky to have extra help from some energetic students who are on Spring Break.

Zane prepped potatoes, sliced pears and made the vegetarian option of the day using beautiful big mushrooms gleaned from Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale.

We served 454 meals during our two hour service. We changed our menu a few times today but most of the guests got homemade enchilada casserole as their entree. Of course we also served soup, salad and dessert.

The enchilada casserole that was the main entree of the day. Ava helped make and serve it.

Colin served dessert in the dining room.

Thank you Zane, Ava, Elise, Colin, Kayla and Eleanor for helping us out. I really appreciate it!

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.

A Lively Day

The first entree to be served was homemade meatloaf and mac and cheese with a side of sauteed greens. We served an unexpected 447 meals today.

I always try to get pictures of the food and activity during the service of Wednesday Community Meal but today was just too busy.

I snapped a few pictures before the doors opened but after that there was just no time because we served an unexpected 447 meals during our two hours of service and in the end had nothing left over.

All I can say is thank goodness we had an extra big bucket of pizza gleaned from Pizza Schmizza because it saved us and helped us feed everyone.

The meal started out with homemade meatloaf and mac and cheese. We put a crispy topping of bread crumbs on the latter and added a few bits of "yellow" cauliflower from Food Front Grocery Cooperative in Hillsdale. The pretty cauliflower combined perfectly with the cheesy pasta and was a great way to add nutrition to the dish.

Once the service started at 11 a.m, it took just twenty minutes for 14 large meatloafs to be sliced and gone. Then it was on to turkey, chicken, burritos, ribs, sweet and sour chicken and shrimp, a spicy vegetarian dish, chili, pizza and finally hot dogs.

We also offered guests soup, salad and dessert.
 
There was a lot of improvising and running around but in the end everything worked out and everyone who came for food was fed and we had positive comments from the guests. 

Longtime volunteer Cheryl, who oversees the dining room, has started putting paper on a clipboard in the kitchen for volunteers to record comments from the diners. It's a wonderful thing and helps us remember why we serve.

One especially nice comment today came from a man who was just released from jail for violating his probation. He said being in jail for 30 days was "my fault," and all he had been eating while there was "baloney sandwiches" - so "thank you" for "my first real meal in a very long time."

Why We Work

Cheryl with fresh fruit cups of honeydew from The Oregon Food Bank and beautiful strawberries donated from Shannon who works at Trinity.

It's not easy cooking and serving food to an unknown number of people every week at the Wednesday Community Meal at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

And, we don't even know the majority of what ingredients we will have to work with until Tuesday afternoon since most of the food is gleaned the day before the meal from generous businesses like Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale, Spring Hill Organic Farm in Albany, Good Samaritan Hospital, Phil's Uptown Meat Market, Grand Central Bakery, Pizza Schmizza, Baker & Spice and Starbucks.

We also weekly "shop the dock" at The Oregon Food Bank, looking for free items we can use. Every week is a surprise.

But despite this, the work is rewarding and something I and the other volunteers love.  I've even heard my friend Bill who volunteers each week to wash dishes say "it's the highlight of my week." Now that's saying something.

What makes the work rewarding is that the volunteers are the nicest people and the guests are lovely and appreciative.

My friend Cheryl who oversees the dining room volunteers shared these stories from today:

A male guest told volunteer Dorrie that he "hadn't eaten in two days" and was so hungry and really looking forward to the meal.

Another male guest told Dorrie "this is such a wonderful place," and then enthusiastically said "let the feast begin."

And volunteer Jan who was stationed at the exit door, said one man said as he was leaving that he was so happy because "it's my birthday today and I got all of my favorite foods."  That would be homemade pigs 'n' a blanket and ribs from Phil's Uptown Meat Market.

We served 296 meals today.

We made pigs 'n' a blanket today with Hebrew National Hotdogs and homemade dough that we spiked with chunks of cheese. The guests loved it.

What a treat!

A Busy Fifth Wednesday

Our team of color coordinated super servers. It was just a fluke that they all came dressed in shades of violet today.

The Wednesday Community Meal usually sees a spike in the number of guests we serve towards the end of the month so we knew we would be busy today with it being a rare fifth Wednesday. And, we were right. The line of guests waiting for our doors to open looped around the block.

We served 397 meals today and needed every single one of our amazing kitchen and dining room volunteers. The first guests in the door were treated to oven roasted chicken, rice, sauteed kale and watermelon along with soup, salad and dessert.

A meal of roasted chicken, rice, kale and watermelon.

Crisp green salads made with produce donated by Spring Hill Organic Farm in Albany, Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale and longtime volunteer Kate.

A scene from today's busy kitchen. There would be no meal without our dedicated volunteers.

Volunteer Sierra cutting onions that came from The Oregon Food Bank. Working on her own, she cut 15 pounds of onions and didn't cry once thanks to a trick I had never heard of until today. She held a spoon in her mouth as she worked. She told me she learned of the trick from a teacher at school.

A Dramatic Day

There was some excitement in the dining room at the Wednesday Community Meal today because of an unhappy and unruly guest who was itching for a fight with a tablemate.

Fortunately no one was hurt and according to longtime volunteer Dave, the hero of the day was another guest who has experience working as a bouncer.

"He knew what to do and quickly got between them and kept them from hurting each other," said Dave.

Nearly all of our guests are polite, kind and appreciative. They enjoy and rely on the weekly meal so when another guest causes problems, it's just as frustrating for them as it is for us volunteers.

We served 317 meals today and had to change our menu multiple times.

Here are a few menu hightlights from today:

*Fresh tuna served in a lemongrass Thai sauce over rice that was donated by Fishpeople Seafood. Thank you Martha for arranging and preparing the special treat!

*Barbecue chicken that was donated by Good Samaritan Hospital and served with roasted red potatoes, roasted tomatoes and just baked biscuits.

Volunteer Ava making biscuits.

A barbecue chicken meal.

*Fresh fruit salad made with organic produce donated by Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale.

The fresh fruit salad made by young volunteers Caroline, Bethany and Paige.

*Green salads made with just picked lettuce donated by longtime volunteer Kate who has an amazing garden and is so generous.

It was just one of those days but the positives prevailed.

An Early 4th of July Celebration

We celebrated the 4th of July a day early at the Wednesday Community Meal by serving all-beef Costco hotdogs, crispy roasted potatoes, green salad, soup, watermelon and ice cream sundaes.

Volunteer Quinn making ice cream sundaes for our guests.

On the actual 4th, many food agencies in our city our closed so we wanted to make sure our guests today left very satisfied. With extra help from some young volunteers who are on summer break, we served 237 meals during our two hour service from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

My sweet niece Maya helped me season the potatoes before roasting. It took a lot of time and effort cleaning and dicing 300 pounds of potatoes from The Oregon Food Bank. Thank you Mary, Leah, Sierra and Ann!

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral provided the hot dogs, buns, watermelon and ice cream. The potatoes came from the Oregon Food Bank and the salad ingredients were donated by Spring Hill Organic Farm in Albany and Food Front Grocery Cooperative in Hillsdale. The soup was donated by Good Samaritan Hospital. We were worried that the soup wouldn't be popular because of the heat but we were wrong. Our guests were hungry and appreciative of everything we offered.

We always try our best to accommodate our guests' dietary needs. For vegetarians we served potatoes, watermelon, stir fried kale and oven roasted asparagus, squash and cauliflower.

A Hearty Meal

We served 237 meals today at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's Wednesday Community Meal and even had some extra food that we packaged up for our guests to take with them.

When I asked one guest if he wanted extra food to go he said, "I'm feeling nice and full but I would like to have extra for later." It was a hearty meal today and I'm not surprised it left guests satisfied.

Here's what we served:

Hot soup garnished with bread and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. The soup was donated to us by Good Samaritan Hospital.

Green salad with apples, grapes, nuts and dried fruit. The apples and grapes came from The Oregon Food Bank.

Chicken, rice pilaf, roasted vegetables and cheddar biscuits. The chicken and rice came from Good Samaritan Hospital. The biscuit mix came from The Oregon Food Bank. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral purchased the cheese that we added to the biscuits. We decided to add the cheese because we didn't have any butter to serve with them. The vegetables came from Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale and The Oregon Food Bank.

Strawberry shortcake. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral provided the ingredients to make the homemade dessert.

A Record Month

Today at the Wednesday Community Meal we served pasta topped with a sausage tomato sauce and homemade garlic bread.

The fresh baked bread smelled so wonderful and was greatly appreciated. Guests were also offered soup, salad and dessert.

Homemade garlic bread. Making bread from scratch takes time but the results are always worth it.

We always do our best to accommodate the dietary needs of all our guests so for vegetarians we served pasta minus the sausage and oven roasted carrots and beets. The bright vegetables were were kindly donated to us by Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale.

Bright roasted carrots.

Oven roasted beets.

We served 329 meals today which makes February 2013 our busiest month to date.  Our first Wednesday Community Meal was served in March of 2008.

At this time last year, serving more than 300 meals during our two hour lunch service would have seemed unbelievable but this month our range was between 329 and 397 meals every Wednesday.

I am so thankful that we have enough food and volunteers and have never had to turn anyone away.