Location: Wicker Park Apartments
Date: Saturday, May 25, 2013; 9:00 am-12:00 pm
It was the long Memorial Day Weekend
and I had absolutely no plans of travel or any visitors coming. Thus I found myself headed to Wicker Park
neighborhood this Saturday morning and through some favorable CTA schedules,
arrived with a lot of time to spare.
After some coffee from a 7-Eleven, I wished that I had been delayed so that I
could have avoided that deplorable drink.
As I came back to the apartments, I saw that the other volunteers had
already arrived, including our Volunteer leader Daphne and her daughter. Besides a couple, the two other volunteers
were Ricardo and Rebecca. Also present
was a teenager who had been dropped off by his dad. Daphne had brought all of the groceries and
while a couple of the residents had come to the community room to chat, we
still had some time to go before service.
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| The Eggs |
The ingredients for the day were eggs,
biscuits, bacon, sausages, hash browns and strawberries. The first order of business was to crack the
eggs because, you know, “You can’t make
an omelette without cracking the eggs etc. etc.” There were a lot of eggs, but we cracked them
all and Ricardo took over making scrambled eggs. The sheer volume of eggs and the smaller
vessels meant that he would have to do it in multiple batches. Plus, the cooking area was narrow and so all
of us would have to make some adjustments if we were to cook together. I took the stove-top next to Ricardo and
started browning the hash browns. Also
on that crowded cooking top were sausages being steamed and bacon and biscuits
in the oven. If resourcefulness would
have been a competition, we would have won the top prize.
Ricardo seemed to have some skill
with the pan and was able to flip the hash browns with a flick of his
wrist. When I complimented him, he
mentioned that he was indeed a chef. I
asked what his favorite thing to make was and he mentioned hors d’oeuvres, especially prosciutto wrapped asparagus. Well, not just a chef, but a gourmet
chef! Besides his skills, Ricardo
appeared to be a great guy with a lot of charm, empathy and general zest for
life. He had done some volunteering with
One Brick as well and I asked him what had made him take up volunteering. He said that he had always thought about
doing it, but finally decided to “stop
talking and just doing it”. He said
that while he liked cooking, he also wanted to develop his office skills. I asked what he wanted to be doing in 10
years and he replied that he did not want to commit to a plan. I said that while plans can change every
month, there should at least be some idea of the vision.
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| And the hash browns |
The cooking was proceeding well,
albeit in batches and the room was filling up with residents. We moved the food onto the serving trays and were ready to begin. As with the other
dinner and breakfast projects that I have done, people were required for either
serving or running. The kid who had been
dropped by his dad, was very keen on running.
He said that it was like playing soccer; though I hope with less sliding
and tackling! I ran for a bit, but there
were more than enough people doing it, and so went over to help Roberto clean
dishes. I scrubbed while he rinsed and
dried, much like my job at the other breakfast club project. It gave us more time to chat and I asked him
about his knife skills. He said that he
was learning and getting there. He saw
me take pictures and asked if I was tweeting in real time. I said I do a blog about all of my volunteer
experiences and he said that he prefers to stay behind the scenes. I said that was good, but the purpose of my
blog was more to make people aware of what’s out there and if possible, get
them enthused.
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| The Worlds Greatest Hot Chocolate |
While we had been cleaning, the
residents had finished eating and that could only mean one thing – Bingo! As with many places, you could only win once
until the final coverall game. One of
the other volunteers, Rebecca had a lot of energy and was floating from table to
table conversing with the residents and cheering them on. She was taking pictures of the volunteers and
asked if she could photograph me. I said
sure, though she mentioned that she would get me when I least expected, which I
am sure she did. I walked about a bit,
but everyone seemed like they were focused on the game and so I stood by the side
and watched. Soon we were out of prizes
and we had finished this session in record time. As we left, I asked Roberto about his next
project and he said that we would definitely cross paths sometime in the
future. He was headed to a cookout and I
was on my way to get the world’s greatest hot chocolate. It was a long weekend for sure, but this
morning’s activity had gone by in a blur.
And we had used every component of the cooking stove at the same
time. How’s that for multitasking!
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