Senior Diners Club

Location: Lidia Pucinska Apartments

Date: Thursday, November 21, 2013; 6:00-8:00 pm

I arrived at the location to see that while the room was full with residents, I was the only volunteer there.  Soon another arrived with a bag full of groceries and said that our Volunteer Leader Erica required some help in carrying some other bags.  So I went back outside and between the three of us we carried back a lot of things, making me think that it was going to be a grand meal.  The reason she had so much stuff is because Erica usually comes prepared with all the ingredients chopped and prepped in their individual containers, and so most of the dishes just need to be cooked at the site.  The menu for this evening was ‘Beef Stroganoff’, ‘Coleslaw Salad’, ‘Corn Bread’ and ‘Baklava’.

Say what!

Erica wanted to use white wine in the stroganoff, and had brought a bottle with her.  What she did not have is an opener.  I had seen a wine shop on my way to this place and offered to go get one.  Reluctantly she agreed and so I set off, stopping at the security guard’s desk to ask if he happened to have one on him.  He was a friendly guy and said that he may have it in his truck, though I said that it would be faster for me to just go to the store.  The said store around the corner was called, ‘The Noble Grape’, though the way they had the sign written, the “G” wasn’t really apparent, making it an interesting read.  I went inside, and as I purchased the opener, I mention as much to the girl at the register and she agreed with me.  I came back to see that Wilson was in attendance, meaning that he probably had an opener on him and could have saved me a trip. He started with the Bingo while the rest of us got down to cooking.

The beef for the stroganoff had already been precooked, though we still had to make the sauce.  Erica got it started and another volunteer put the pasta inside boiling water in another pot.  Over on another table the cabbage for the coleslaw was being chopped, while Erica was making the filling for the baklava.  She asked if I could help cut the mushrooms and I started by washing them and then slicing.  The pasta was done while the sauce was not even close to being ready.  As the volunteer in charge of pasta drained the water, I told him to add some oil to it so as to prevent sticking, as we waited for the sauce.  Finally, something that I had seen on the ‘Food Network’ was paying off. 

My mushrooms in the sauce

I had finished chopping the mushrooms and added them to the sauce, following which Erica added the all important wine and sour cream.  It was looking really good, though we could do with some salt.  The only problem was that there was no salt.  As usual, Wilson improvised by added some ‘Worcestershire Sauce’, which worked surprisingly well.  The baklava was in the oven, the stroganoff was cooking and the coleslaw was done.  In the meanwhile, all the Bingo prizes had been distributed and I worked with a volunteer in setting up the tables by distributing napkins and forks.  Many of the residents who had been waiting for dinner seemed delighted and thanked us as we did this.  I then went about pouring the drinks and one of the issues was the size of the glasses – they were too big.  To ensure that we had enough drinks for everyone, I was pouring half, meaning that people were asking for more.  I made a mental note to tell Erica that we should have smaller glasses from now on, as I tried to explain to people that we wanted to serve everyone before doing refills. 

The popular baklava pie

By now people were hungry and we started plating – Coleslaw, one muffin, some pasta and a ladle of the stroganoff.  As I stared serving the plates, some of the people started demanding that I go to them first.  I told them that I would get there, at which they grimaced.  Wow, it surely was a tough crowd tonight.  There were a lot of people and I asked one of the volunteers to point at the tables which hadn’t received plates, so that we could go to them directly and speed up the process - a trick I had learned at the ‘Wells Street Café’.  Soon everyone had been served and it was time for seconds.  The problem was that while we still had some pasta left, we were out of the stroganoff sauce.  Erica is a quick thinker and quickly whipped up a butter sauce, which smelled really good and am sure tasted great with the pasta.  In fact, seeing the bigger crowd she decided to make one more baklava pie, rather than just the two in the oven.  While that was baking we cut the other two into wedges and I asked one of the volunteers to stand guard, else people would start taking the dessert and it would throw off our numbers.  And that’s exactly what happened a little later as one lady asked for a piece for a little girl and after I had given it to her, I learned that the girl had already received one earlier. Since the amount of wedges were exact as the number of residents, this meant that one gentleman did not get a piece and we all felt bad.

As we wrapped up after a busy evening I asked Erica how much her budget was and she said it was $150, though she always exceeds it and sometimes has to pay out of pocket.  We were tired yes, but it had been a satisfying evening. Every chef gauges his or her success by the amount of food remaining and on that account, we had been outstanding since every single bit of food that had been cooked had been served.  Now, I had been the one to hand the extra pie to the girl meaning not everyone got dessert.  However, I was never going to disappoint a child if she asked for one more.  The point is that next time we should plan for contingencies and make more than just exact, so as to avoid situations such as these.  But despite this minor hiccup, it was a nice evening.