Location: Pilgrim Church-Oak Park
Date: Saturday, July 13, 2013; 9:30 am-2:00 pm
First of all, let us contemplate
the title of this project. Yes, it does
have the words ‘Make Donuts’ in there. So when I saw this show up on the One Brick
calendar, I couldn't have been fast enough to opt-in as an EC. As soon as I was assigned, throughout the
preceding month Wilson – who was the EM – and I were promoting this event with
One Brick as well as Chicago Cares. We encouraged
people to sign-up and promised everyone it would be the best time that they would
ever have. I mean come on, have you
checked the title!
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| Mmm...donuts! |
This was also the first volunteer
project that I would be doing outside the Chicago city limits, Oak Park
technically being a suburb. Thankfully
it was accessible by the CTA, so I could take the train and got off at Oak
Park on a beautiful morning. I walked up
to the location where the weekly Saturday Farmer’s Market was being held, as has
been the case during the summer months for several years. And for all of those years one tradition has
endured – the famous Pilgrim Church donuts!
It is one of those traditions that generations talk about and people
come from far and wide to buy. Every year
Pilgrim Church partners with more than a dozen local non-profit organizations
each summer to make the donuts and coffee at the Oak Park Farmers Market. They share the revenue with the organizations
and help to get information about these organizations out to the Oak Park
Community. Today while One Brick volunteers
would be helping with activity, the proceeds were going to go to support ‘Wonder Works Children’s Museum’. A two-in-one deal for us!
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| The supplies |
I arrived to find Wilson already
there with some of his Red Cross volunteers, including Sarah - a travelling
teenager from Switzerland - who was spending a few weeks in Chicago and
volunteering while here. We also had
Laura – who had brought her visiting Mom – and some of the regulars like Polly,
Franklin, Anvi and Sylvia. We took some
pictures while we waited and then one of the organizers from the church, Mary, came over to assign our duties. A group had
been volunteering since early morning and was in the kitchen making
donuts. We were going to assist them as
they wrapped up and also be responsible for preparing the donuts and eventually
selling them. They needed 5-6 volunteer
on sales and while Laura and her mom took over donuts sales, Wilson’s Red Cross
folks took over coffee and juice. The
rest of us went downstairs.
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| The fryer |
The basement of the church has a
restaurant style kitchen with heavy duty equipment, all of which was being used
since 4:30 am in making donuts. Some of
our volunteers started taking finished donuts and dumping them in trays of
powdered or cinnamon sugar. Some of the
donuts were being sold in the classic plain style as well. Once the trays were full, there was a small
window through which we could pass these to the team outside where they had the
sales booth. Mary asked if I could help
out in the kitchen and I was more than happy to. I put on an apron and went in to get my
instructions, which were really to be a helper.
The way donuts were being made was there was a bag of pre-mixed donuts powder which went into a mixer with water.
After the batter was ready, it went into a dropper, which dropped perfect
donuts into a huge pool of fryer. What
gave these donuts their taste, was that the fryer used lard instead of oil, and
it had to be constantly replenished.
Once the donuts were done, someone removed the hot batch and then couple
of girls put them on trays, loaded trolleys and sent them outside for mixing
prepping with sugar etc. My job was to
ensure that water was readily available for the batter, sometimes weigh the
donuts mix on the scale - 4.3 kg - and then also help pour the mixed batter
into the dropper. The batter was thick
and gooey and at times I had to get my hands dirty trying to scrape off from
one bowl to another. I even helped lift
a 50 lbs. box of lard when one fell on the floor. The point was that I felt involved in the
process of making donuts!
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| The Saturday Market |
The donuts were flying off the
shelf and we were constantly making a new batch. After our 13th bag was done, we
decided against opening another one, but that still meant that 100s could be
prepared. We then started cleaning the
table and the mixing equipment, but it still was a chore due to the sticky
batter. We had plenty of rags at our
disposal and the only thing you could really do was scrub. I was on it as was another girl who had been
there since earlier and quite honestly, she was doing a terrific job. I cleaned my area and then emptied the water
cooler before going outside to take a break.
I walked through the market and sampled all the fresh cheese and other
goodies that were on offer. I stopped at
a bakers stall and purchased something called “Mesmerizing Pastry”, which was every bit its namesake. At one place I bought a ‘Bloody Mary Mix’ and the lady selling it said that I could use it
like a topping sauce for leftovers. “I am going to use it as a topping for Vodka”,
I replied!
I came back and while the donuts
had been made, the wiping down of the kitchen was in full flow. Since it was a nice summer’s day, a lot of
tables and chairs had been set outside.
As we were almost at closing time, these now had to be wiped down,
folded and stored inside a shed. I had
soap water and rags to do the task and was joined by some other volunteers as
well. A guy from the church was giving
orders and from the way he was talking, you could have mistaken our activity
for some military battle exercise. The
sun was blazing hot and it slowed our progress, plus there were a lot of
chairs! Furthermore, the gentleman
wanted the storage inside the shed to be precise and there was an art to
it. After some time all the chairs and
tables had been stored to the gentleman’s satisfaction and I went back to see
that most of the cleaning had been done as well. I saw that all of our volunteers were being
thorough about it, Sylvia even cleaning the exterior of the garbage can, which
had been covered with powdered sugar!
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| The donuts crew |
We all went upstairs and the
sales team was down to their last few donuts.
I asked Laura which ones were the most popular and she said that almost
everyone went for the coated stuff, with a few purists who asked for the plain
ones. We had all worked hard and now it
was time to relax. A few of us walked
down Oak Park’s streets and had lunch at ‘Eric’s
Deli’. We chatted about Red Cross
and emergency response and how chaotic
everything in Chicago would have been if the city had won it’s Olympic
bid. It had been an extremely satisfying
morning and I told Polly so as she drove me back to downtown. I am accustomed to doing projects and have
done many of them. But making donuts? I mean come on, it doesn't get better than this!
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