Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, July 01, 2015; 5:45-8:30 pm
It was July and it was cold! I arrived and saw that we were “light” in terms of attendance today. Marianne assigned me the duty to slice
apples. Initially my fear was that it
would be using knives, but thankfully there was an electric slicer, and a good
one as it sliced extremely thin slices – something which would have come at
great blood sweat and tears were I to be using knives. As we started slicing, at one stage the
machine stopped working and upon opening I saw that lot of slices had just
clogged inside. Fortunately, Chef Dani
wanted around 150 slices and we were done with just a few apples.
I teamed up with another volunteer to lay out the thin
slices on 5 sheet pans lined with parchment paper, as we heard
stories of little Hannah's trip to El Salvador on a mission. The Chef wanted us to sprinkle cinnamon on the apple
slices, as she looked for honey to drizzle on top. I said that all of these components are something
that I don't like - apples, cinnamon and honey.
Marianne said she didn't need honey when she had us around. Coming from her that was really sweet, but I
guarantee that if I had used that line, I would have been looked upon as either
a creep or an idiot. I guess it really
depends on who says the words and how, rather than the words themselves.
 |
| Our dessert looked gourmet |
We didn't find any honey, so chef asked me to sprinkle some
sugar on top and I did so. Then all the
sheet pans went into the oven for 5-10 minutes.
Marianne then had us open 75 cups of “apple
sauce” and it was difficult! I had
never imagined that it would be so tedious to open a cup of apple sauce but
believe me it is. The
apple/cinnamon/sugar slices were to be placed on top of the cup, but now we had
another problem - the slices were crisp and had stuck to the parchment paper. I said to Marianne that we should have
sprayed the paper with non-stick and of course we had none. Between Chef Dani, Hannah and Marianne, we
got the slices out and placed each on the 75 cups. Marianne said that had no “Math skills” as we were trying to
figure out how many cups per tray, and asked Hannah to do the math of rows vs columns. Both Chef Dani and I looked at the cups and
said at the same time that we needed cherries. Chef got dry cherries and placed
it on top of the apple slice. It looked
really nice and we had definitely earned full points for creativity and
presentation.
We placed that in the refrigerator and I went out to see
that the dining room was getting full. I
spotted a guest with whom I had connected last time. I went over to say hello and he remembered
me. He and some of the other guests
asked what was being served for dinner, and I told them that I could definitely
talk about the dessert. I went inside to
ask and I heard fish and so came out and told everyone. The gentleman mentioned that pasta goes well
with fish and vegetables and I mentioned that we certainly had both. I liked this gentleman and he seemed refined in his taste.
In the kitchen, Marianne had started her speech and soon
after we got our roles, with me being on plating. It was time to serve salad and I was pleased
that we were sticking with smaller bowls for less wastage. I was at the back end of the line, where I
would receive a plate with “Pasta in
Chicken Sauce” and the fish, and my job was to plate green beans, biscuits
and finally the fruit cup dessert. After
we had finished plating the firsts, I went over to count the seconds. One lady came before the announcements and
asked for some pasta and I said that unfortunately she would have to wait. Later, she chatted with me and told me that
she had traveled a lot and has been to Singapore, Delhi, Agra and Mumbai. After the seconds had been done, I went to
help with the clean-up. We had less
people helping and I pretty much stacked all chairs and then moved them in
place…all of them. It was backbreaking
and exhausting and Marianne said that she seemed to have "worked me" today. Well, that probably was accurate and I was
happy to leave without much damage.
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