... even though I burned the chocolate pudding and it will take weeks of baking soda scrubs to get the char off the bottoms of not one, but TWO pans!
Food Not Bombs had a lot of eggplant donated this week, also potatoes, peppers, onions, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, seitan, and tofu. We couldn't all manage to get together to cook until today. I got up early and burned the pudding, then I made a fruit salad with peaches, apples, grapes, and I squeezed all the citrus on it; 1 grapefruit, two limes, and four lemons, then I got fresh mint from the garden and did a rough chop and mixed it in. After everybody came we chopped and chopped (Oh, I guess I did the eggplant before they came) we mixed everything together in our NEW pans and added some olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried Italian seasoning. In one pan we added chopped seitan and in one pan we did crumbled tofu. We threw those all in the oven. Michael and Shaun made a tomato salad with all the grape tomatoes and rosemary and thyme from the garden. We had also been given a bunch of single serving yogurts of different flavors, so Stephanie mixed those all together in a bowl. So we had two chafing pans of hot veggie food, one 8 qt. size more than half full of fruit and about a quart of yogurt, and a mixing bowl of tomato salad. We had OVER FIFTY people in the park eat, plus us. Most of our friends in the park are men, but there were also at least seven single women and one mother with a toddler.
The pudding had been made with donated soy milk I felt kind of bad about wasting it, but I learned some more about cooking it in a large quantity and if we get some again I will be able to do better. I want to be a good steward of the resources we are given. We had a $100 donation and I bought two food quality plastic containers with lids and 3 large mixing/serving bowls and a 5 gal water cooler at an auction a couple of weeks ago. I ordered two complete chafing pan sets and we made and served the hot food today out of one of the actual pans and one of the steam pans from one of the sets, and used both lids. I think we will actually need a couple more of these if we continue to get large crowds. We hope to be able to continue even after it is cold, and that is when we will use the full set up with flames to keep them warm.
It just occurred to me that we will have to make sure to keep the fuel watched, some of those guys will drink ANYTHING with alcohol, especially on Sunday when even if they have money, they can't get booze. I remember I was in town on Super Bowl Sunday and one of the guys was drinking mouth wash. Yuck.
Part of the time we were serving a PIT BULL parked itself under the table on my foot. I was nervous as hell, but I just kept on serving... I was pretty careful to not move my foot! That is one of the things about going to the park that bothers and scares me, the dogs, and they tend to let them run loose. Even if there is a leash on a dog, it gets dropped and the dog runs around trailing the leash. There are at least three dogs who they and their people are usually in the park when I go.
I am so tired. I need to go to bed, but I don't want to go too early or I will wake up in the night. I still have some pans to wash. I brought them home (ugh). We talked about will we store them here or ??? Plus a lot of the young ones are going up to Chicago next weekend for a Big Queer Dance Party and even thugh I am going to Lafayette on Saturday, I will be back on Sunday.
Okay, the end. By the time I mess around a little bit more, wash another pan, fill my medicine doses for the week and shower it will be late enough to go to bed!
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Losing a Parent
6 years ago
2 comments:
Food for bombs?? Can you explain more?
I made a great reply yesterday at an unnamed location and because I could not sign in it was lost. :( Food Not Bombs is a national, all volunteer organization. BTown Food Not Bombs gets donated food that is either on the way to the dumpster or is rescued. Most of our food comes from Bloomingfoods, and we also get some from Kroger and Mother Hubbard's Cupboard. We use it to cook meals that are served in People's Park (down in Kirkwood, if you don't recall)on Sunday evenings. That is the time when there is a gap in what the shelters, Community Kitchen, and the churches provide. There is never any charge or requirements to eat, just show up. I've had an itch the past year or so to become involved in some kind of nutrition project for people without "food security." This is not my ultimate ending, but it's really helping me right now learn some of the systems and skills I want. I love/hate the Food Not Bombs not-structure There are no leaders, everything is kind of... well, loose. You know I am dieing to jump in and say, "We are going to meet at 6:00 at X location and cook..." and other directive sort of statements. Instead I step back and take a deep breath and.. so far, there are meals each week and food collected, and food cooked and people to serve. I'm learning a new, not-the-bossy kind of organization. It's good for me and people get fed.
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