Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, January 06, 2016; 5:45-8:15 pm
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| "Holiday Cookies" |
My first project of the New Year and I was back over here,
being welcomed by a trolley stacked with “Holiday
themed” cookies. After greeting
Marianne and little Hannah, I cleaned up and was ready for the shift. It was good to see that Chef Dan was back and
he put me to work, sending me over to peel and chop apples. There were already 3 people doing this
activity and so I sought out something else.
I saw some cans that needed opening and said I that I would do that. There were cans of tomatoes, cans of beans
and some tomato sauce. Lots and lots of
cans; perhaps the apples task wasn’t a bad idea. But as Marianne put it, I applied some "elbow grease" and after I was
done, all of this stuff was added to a giant saucepan.
Next to me there was a volunteer cooking a lot of turkey
along with onions and peppers. Chef Dan
came over and added spices to my tomato sauce and then the volunteer and I
transferred all of the meat into my pan.
The pan was huge and required multiple burners. I had a small ladle and it was taking some
strength to do the stirring. I guess
today was all about hard labor. Next to
me a volunteer was cooking all of the apples for some sort of chunky “applesauce dessert”. The chef added cinnamon raisins and frozen
blueberries to it as well as lemon juice and salt. He was also giving us cooking tips on why salt
should be added to apples etc. I said to
my fellow volunteer "who needs food
network"?
The chef added some chocolate “disks” to my pan saying it would give it a “mole taste”. I asked if the
chocolate should have been melted and he said that it would melt with the heat
in the pan. I said that I would just
take it out and eat it if it didn't. Another
volunteer started making pasta in a giant pot with boiling water and after it
was done, chef carried that big heavy pot to drain. He crossed himself before that saying this
was the advantage of being “Catholic”,
praying that you don't screw up! Yep, I was
starting to like Chef Dan a lot. The
meat sauce was done and Chef asked if I wanted to carry the pot over to the
pasta. I said I would if I was the only
person eating, but considering that many were depending on this, we should not
take the risk of me dropping it. So
instead, we got the pasta near the pot and used another saucepan to pour everything
into serving pans. It was my job to mix
everything and then take it to the warmers.
We had a lot of newcomers today – maybe because of New Year’s
resolutions – and Marianne did the usual welcome with everyone. I was assigned plating and now we were
ready. We were in the assembly line and I
was plating a scoop of Pasta and sauce and passed it on to next person who was plating
the carrots; and then finally to the person plating the applesauce dessert. We had a full house today, so much so that we
even had to get more plates out of the cabinet.
After the first round, I took over the tallying job and counted all of
the seconds. After that I helped stack
chairs and then we were ready to leave.
I asked Marianne if she needed anything and she requested some coffee
creamers; which I immediately communicated to Wilson. Then I asked about the “Valentine’s Day Dance” and she said that about 10 volunteers and
desserts were required. I sent this to
Wilson as well and then left, first project of 2016 in the books.
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