Changing The Menu

We are lucky to have longtime volunteer Sarah on our team. She is an artist and every week designs a menu for our guests to see as they enter Kempton Hall. Today she patiently changed the menu many times for us. Thank you Sarah!

 At the Wednesday Community Meal we rely on gleaning to help keep our food costs manageable.

And one of our biggest supporters is Good Samaritan Hospital which lets us glean from their kitchen every week.

We get great food from Good Sam - hotel pans filled with things like shepherd's pie, sweet and sour shrimp, barbecue chicken and all kinds of soup. 

The thing is we just don't know for certain what and how much of it we'll have. One pan of breaded cod can feed 20 but today we served 308.

As a result we often have to change our menu at the Wednesday Community Meal to be able to utilize the food we've gleaned. Our entrees today included Italian chicken, baked chicken, pork roast, breaded cod, salmon, catfish, beef stir fry, sweet and sour shrimp and shepherd's pie.

It can be hectic but that's okay because we are working together and making lots of hungry people happy.

Volunteers Anne, Jeff and Tiffany pause for a quick picture before getting back to plating food. With so many menu changes they worked extra hard today.

Preventing Food Waste

We served 249 meals today at the Wednesday Community Meal and thanks to our gleaners and donors we also prevented lots of great food from going to waste.

The main reason for the community meal is to feed the hungry but saving food from being tossed is a side benefit.

It's really a shame that so much good food is wasted in the United States when there are so many people going hungry.

On Wednesdays we are helping to fight that in Portland with the help of community gleaners, local businesses and The Oregon Food Bank. Thanks to them we served a beautiful meal made with foods that would have otherwise been tossed.

Here's a taste of the food we saved and served today:

We served a spaghetti squash gratin. The squash and onions in the dish came from The Oregon Food Bank.

These oven roasted tomatoes were a hit and the tomatoes were passed on to us from a non-profit that had extra they couldn't use.

These oranges also were extras that were donated to us. They weren't perfect looking on the outside but they were just fine on the inside - sweet and juicy!

These Italian plums were donated by Linda who works as a volunteer in the kitchen and gleans weekly for us from Good Sam Hospital and Phil's Meat Market.  She had more plums than she could eat and didn't want them to go to waste. Our guest love them because they are easy to eat and super sweet.

These cupcakes were donated to us from Baker & Spice bakery. Volunteer Cheryl who every week makes and serves dessert is a co-owner of the bakery. Yum! We are so lucky to have her on our team.

Every week volunteers go to Starbucks to glean leftover baked goods. We get scones, muffins, pound cake, donuts and all kinds of wonderful treats. Kudos to Starbucks for sharing them instead of tossing them.