Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, September 07, 2016; 5:45-8:15 pm
I walked over from my office and arrived to see that
Marianne was in excellent spirits. She
was in fact reading some jokes on the phone and they were bad. For example, “What kind of eggs does a bad chicken lay” – “Deviled Eggs”, or “Where do people in Florida wash their
clothes” – “Ft. Laundredale”. Yeah,
they were really bad and she made sure everyone heard them. Tonight’s theme was “Greek” and Chef Dan asked me to cut in half several loaves of “Pita Bread”. I tried cutting 5 at a time and that wasn’t
working, with some of them being frozen.
But it did not take too long, especially when Marianne joined me to
help. Once again we were a bit “light” this week with volunteers. Remembering my experience from last month, I
was hoping that this wouldn’t be a problem.
Once the Pita had been stacked in “4 inch pans” and sent to the steamer, Chef asked me to start
working on the salad, which comprised of Lettuce, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Resins
and “Feta Cheese”. Another volunteer, who was new, joined me and
she chopped up the tomatoes while I handled the lettuce. There were several heads of lettuce and it
took me a lot of time to get through those. Next, I started on the resins and being
sticky, they were being a nuisance to chop.
Thankfully, my fellow volunteer said she would do the resins while I
took over the cucumbers. We divided the
salad in 2 big bowls after which I crumbled the cheese in each of them. Then we divided the dressing that had been
made and I told my fellow volunteer that there was only one way to mix all of
this, which was to get in there with our hands. We did that and then it was a question of
dividing the salad in 80 individual serving sized bowls. We were
doing a generous fistful in each bowl; till we realized that there were a dozen
other bowls that we had missed, meaning that we had to go back in to
redistribute. We stacked all the bowls
on racks and then I went and caught up with John, who was returning after a
long absence. I learned that he had
broken his collarbone while playing soccer, which was a coincidence since
another volunteer Katie and strained her “MCL”
while playing soccer as well. Maybe
soccer is not a good game for “Breaking
Bread” volunteers, since they are breaking more than just bread!
 |
| Guests loved tonight's menu |
I went outside and saw one of the guests who I had not seen
in a long time. He was looking weak and
thin and when I asked where he had been, he just said away. In any case, he greeted me warmly and we
discussed tonight’s menu, which was “Gyro’s”,
“Greek Rice” and some “Greek Beans” dish. Plus there were “Blueberry Muffins” – baked, not from a box. I went back and saw that Marianne was still “entertaining” everyone with her jokes
and had just found a book called “Erotic
Stories” in the kitchen. I said that
instead of the usual discussions, we should just read that! Well, that did not happen and after the
introduction - we had 2 new volunteers – there was assignment of the duties;
where I would be on plating as usual. We
took our places after distributing the salad bowls, and for the 3rd
time in a row, I was on the garnish; with a plate of Pita, lamb, rice and beans
coming to me. I would then put greens on
the pita, as well as “tzatziki sauce”
and finally sprinkle parsley. Marianne
made the announcements and since we were short of volunteers, there was a
backlog of plates, with 2 volunteers struggling to serve everyone. One lady guest was stranding and watching us
plate and when I asked why she wasn’t taking a seat, she said that she was
watching all the men on the line!
We finally managed to get everything out and boy we were
busy. We immediately started seconds
with me keeping the tally. Even for
this, we had a big line and it looked like people had enjoyed the food. They were asking for more meat and one of the
new volunteers said that they should also take veggies with that. We had some food left over and so Marianne
asked me to make “to-go” containers
and I spent most of my time doing that, meaning someone else had to stack and
move the chairs. I helped wipe down the station and then it was
time to go. Marianne thanked me and I
left, a little less tired than before since I had not done the chairs thing
today.
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