Date: Sunday, April 14, 2013; 4:00-7:00 pm
This was another program about
which I had heard a lot and hence had signed up way in advance. However, I realized that by coming here, I
was going to miss out on my favorite ‘Paint
The Town Red’ project. I told Wilson
that I was going to cancel my visit to ‘Inspiration
Café’ and switch to my usual program, but he insisted that I try this at
least once. I am sure glad I listened
for it was another first in my experiences with Chicago Cares. The opportunity description said, “On the menu tonight, we're serving a unique
dining experience great for all volunteers! Inspiration Café is a multi-service
restaurant for people that are homeless or at risk of being homeless in the
Uptown community. Volunteers make dinner and serve it to restaurant guest’s
café style.” When they say ‘make dinner’, they aren't kidding.
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| Cafe style seating |
Our Volunteer leader, Julie, sent
a reminder email a few days prior, in which she asked us to get a cap to wear
in the kitchen. Armed with a flat cap, I
was the first to arrive and was let in by one of the staff members. I walked around the facility and it truly was
a unique cafe-type place with a serving window separating the kitchen from
the dining room. Soon Julie arrived,
along with other volunteers – Mariel, Misha and Melanie. Julie got right down to business and started
allocating duties. It soon became clear
that unlike some of the other cooking projects that I had done, this one would
involve real cooking and that meant that I had to get in the kitchen to cook,
not just wash and serve.
The main course was going to be
spaghetti with meat sauce and so the first task was for me and Mariel to remove
sausages from their casings and brown in pan.
Besides sausages, we also had chorizo and Mariel and I each had a pan
which we used to cook the meat. These
pans were huge and heavy and soon I had to help Mariel transfer her load to another
vessel, after which we cooked the next batch. There was a lot of meat. Once
the meat was browned, Mariel moved to some other project and I was left to make the sauce. Yikes! Julie gave me two huge cans of tomato sauce
and spaghetti sauce, as well as some onions and garlic. The rest she left up to me…totally up to me.
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| My recipe! |
I looked at the spices and
decided to add all that one would expect in an Italian sauce. I figured that the best place to start would
be with a jar labeled ‘Italian Spices’. Now, I am not a complete novice when it comes
to cooking and I do have some skill when it comes to incorporating flavor. But I had never operated at this scale, with
a huge party sized vessel. I had to
estimate how much I would need to add for that amount and then followed up with
other spices such as dried oregano, dried basil and parsley, red chili flakes
and of course salt. Mariel was checking
on me periodically and when she saw me throwing in a few bay leaves, reminded
me to fish them out. After letting the
spices cook for a few minutes, I ladled out some of the sauce and added it to
some vegetarian pasta that had been made earlier. Once that was done, I added in the meat to
the rest of the sauce, covered the pot and let it stew.
Around me, other activities were
going on and while Misha was making a salad, one of the Inspiration Café staff
members was boiling barbecue beans. Melanie was measuring
ingredients for a cobbler and it was a recipe from the scratch, which meant
baking it to be ready just before service.
Mariel was going to roast some mushrooms and added some balsamic on it
before putting in the oven. Julie was
ensuring everything stayed on track and at the right time, she came and gave me
the go ahead to add pasta into the pot of boiling water, which I had going on
the side. For the next 15 minutes as the
pasta cooked, I adjusted the sauce for taste by adding more oregano, salt and
pepper. Soon the food was ready and
outside the guests had arrived. When it
came to draining the pasta, I relied on the big muscles of some of the staff
members, for there was no way I was going to be able to get that pot
drained.
 |
| Today's special |
Mariel went outside and wrote
down today’s menu on the white board.
The choices were Salad, Pasta, with or without meat sauce, Hot Dogs, Beans,
Roasted Mushrooms and Cobbler with Ice Cream.
Julie asked me to start plating and wanted me to mix the pasta in with
the sauce. Seeing that there was a lot
more of the sauce, I said it would be better for us to mix a bit of the sauce
with pasta, serve on a plate, and then add a generous ladle of pasta with meat
sauce on top. She liked that idea and we
proceeded to do that. Mariel and Melanie
were taking orders and just like a restaurant, tickets were coming in. Julie would then call out the order and Misha
and I would plate accordingly. Since it
was a sauce, there was some splashing on the edges of the plate and I wanted to
present it like a real restaurant, by wiping the plate clear around the
perimeter. Unfortunately we did not have
a clean cloth handy and no time to find one.
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| Cobbler and the pies |
The orders were flying out and soon
we had served all of the guests. An
announcement was made for seconds and to my utmost delight, some requests were just for
the meat sauce, the guests having enjoyed it a lot. We checked on the cobbler and something had
gone wrong and it hadn't set. Julie immediately
went into back-up mode and pulled out some pies from the refrigerator. We had a choice of Chocolate or Coconut pie
and Mariel went and made changes to the menu.
We were all disappointed, particularly Melanie, that the cobbler hadn't worked, but the alternative wasn't too bad.
Soon the dessert was served and we were ready to call it a day, since
the staff would be cleaning up after us.
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| Posted on the walls |
Before we left, Julie told us a bit about the Inspiration Café’s model. People sign-up for dinner, but in exchange are also required to attend mandatory job sessions and some other services. The website gives a brief background on the origins of the café: “Inspiration Cafe was founded in 1989 by
Lisa Nigro, a Chicago police officer who began searching for a personal
response to the homelessness she encountered in Uptown. She began by loading up
a red wagon with sandwiches and coffee to distribute to homeless individuals on
the streets. Today, the Cafe is still
the heart and soul of the thriving organization, which has grown up around it.”
It had been a very different
experience, working in this café style place.
And I had done a decent job, one woman having stopped by to compliment
the chef! Julie said that I had good
kitchen skills and that I should come back.
Wilson had been right and I had made a good choice in coming here. That hadn’t stopped him from sending me
pictures from all the fun they were having at ‘Paint The Town Red’. I
texted him back saying I was busy making pasta for entire café and sent him
some pictures back. His response, “How difficult can it be to boil water?”. Wilson may be a miracle worker, but I am
certain I have him beat when it comes to knowing how much oregano is to be
added to a meat sauce. Inspiration cafe had lived up to its name, and not just for the guests.
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