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.