Saving The Soup

With no Wednesday Community Meal for two weeks in a row due to Christmas and New Year's Day, we have been accumulating quite the surplus of gleaned soup at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
 

A bucket of chicken and rice soup gleaned from Good Samaritan Hospital. This was just one of many of the soups we have been accumulating since we haven't had a Wednesday Community Meal for two weeks due to the holidays.

We glean the soup weekly from Good Samaritan Hospital and it is both delicious and nutritious and would be a shame to waste. So yesterday I met with my fellow volunteer community meal organizers, Cheryl and Fred, in the kitchen of the church, with the sole mission of saving the soup.

When we arrived, we found both the freezer and the refrigerator packed with buckets of all kinds of soup -chicken and noodle, lentil, chicken and rice, hot and sour, etc. - so we got right to work.

First off, we heated up two batches of soup to hand out to guests coming to the church for bags of canned food. On Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday from  10 a.m. to noon, anyone can come to the church for a bag of canned food. We served the soup in disposable cups and it was a well-received ready to eat treat. That used up a little more than three gallons.

Now what to do with the rest?

Lucky for us, one of the volunteers handing out food bags was Ginny who also volunteers at Transition Projects and knew that they could use the soup and had the freezer space to store it. So Ginny took the excess soup there and saved it from going to waste.

And, we have plenty of soup in our freezer for the community meal this coming Wednesday. It will be so good to get back on a regular schedule and back to serving our wonderful guests.

Soup For Everyone

There was soup for everyone today at the Wednesday Community Meal at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Good Samaritan Hospital is so kind to donate their leftovers and this week they gave us lots and lots of homemade and hearty soup — ham and bean and beef minestrone. Many guests asked for seconds and we were happy to oblige.

In addition to the soup,  we served 206 meals.  A bit of a lower number than usual but not surprising with it being the first Wednesday of April. We consistently feed more people towards the end of the month when money is running out.

Our menu changed quite a few times today so that we could use what we had. It's all about feeding people and preventing waste.

From the Oregon Food Bank, we had apples, eggs, herbs and potatoes so we made a frittata, roasted apples and biscuits for the first group of guests.

Then we had more food gleaned from Good Samaritan Hospital and some from Phil's Meat Market. Our later guests got barbecued chicken, baked chicken, meatballs, beef stir fry or catfish served with rice and a salad.

For dessert there was homemade chocolate banana cake with buttercream frosting.

There was plenty for everyone.