Chili Cheese Dogs

Today's meal — A chili cheese dog with green beans and baked apples.

We served Chili Cheese Dogs at the Wednesday Community Meal today and the guests loved them.

We made the chili that topped the hot dogs from scratch from lots of cans of donated beans and a few large cans of tomato sauce. Then we added minced onion and spices —salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder and cumin. All it took was a little simmering and we had a delicious homemade chili.

Just a few cans of the donated beans that we used to make homemade chili.

The finished chili. Doesn't it look good?

For vegetarians, we topped the toasted hot dog buns with just the chili and added a generous helping of cheese.

About a half hour into the meal, we realized the chili wasn't going to go as far as we needed so we opened some more cans of beans and sauce and were able to quickly extend it and make it last.

Part of the fun of volunteering is the challenge of figuring out how to make do with what we have and have enough to feed everyone. We never know how many people will show up for our free meal and we've never had to turn anyone away.

We served 295 meals during our two hour service.