Grand Junction Soup Kitchen, time well spent

 

Well I have been in the position to cook when I want for a few years
now. Today was my first day volunteering to cook for the Grand Junction
Soup Kitchen, the name of the organization is Catholic Outreach. I
actually went down two weeks ago and looked the place over, received the
tour and found out what it is all about.



I liked what I saw so I inquired about helping on Saturday Mornings.
They needed a chef on the Third Saturday of every month. So I signed on
board for the tour of duty! Today was my first day. I have a new crew
made up of a church youth group and the two adults that run the group.
Only one had food service experience, he is a pizza delivery guy and
dish dog for a local pizza shop.



This place and many like it survive on donations, so it is my kind of
gig. You walk in and look at what came in for donations, then do a menu,
then prepare the meal for 200 plus persons. I look at it like a mystery
box competition sort of thing. Don't get me wrong, I am volunteering to
help these souls get a meal. But I think it should be the best you can
make it with what you have available.



So the local grocery store and the local Boston's restaurant apparently
had a tough time selling whole roasted chickens this week. The walk-in
had about 28 birds in it. All in various states of dehydration. But all
useable product!

Also a couple cases of tortillas in the walk-in from the local factory.



Into dry storage: Gallon cans of refrieds? YES. Posole? yes. Rice? Yes



OK the menu will be:



Stripped chicken burritos

Black Beans and Posole



Fruit salad

Garden salad



Dessert would be? Ah gallon cans of peaches, peach crisp it will be!





So I organized four of the kids into a stripping party and they ripped
the meat off the birds, and cross diced it .75 X .75 inches. Meanwhile I
fired up the new tilt skillet. Nice piece of equipment. Earlier in the
morning I had diced up my onions and celery along with a little garlic.
Laid down a lot of oil in the skillet and started to sweat the veggies
out. Chili powder, red pepper, cumin, and a bunch of other spices and
the background was ready.



The Young adults started pouring the cut chicken into the Tilt skillet
and it filled and filled. And as it started to cook I kept adjusting the
seasoning to keep in front of what would turn out to be 85 pounds of
chicken.



Meanwhile a couple of the others were opening posole and sweet corn and
black beans to get the side dish up in the ovens. Another one shredding
cheese for them, another emptying refrieds into the 6 inch hotel pan
with a little onion and cheyenne.



An older gentleman monitored the salads, had another father of one of
the children start to build the peach crisp. He said he never made this
stuff. I told him it was easy. He lined out 6 of the 2 inch hotels with
peaches from the can, laid in 3 cups of sugar. And then we hit a snag.
No butter? So I found powdered margarine. I never used this before but
it suppose to be a fat so it should work? While I am cooking chile verde
and the chicken I walk the guy through what I hope will make a peach
crisp. One quart of brown sugar, toss it with a gallon can of the dried
margarine, then add in one gallon of oatmeal. toss it all, and spread it
onto of the peaches and sugar. Oh add a little Imation vanilla to those
peaches and stir before you put the crisp on it.



Looks kind of dry with all that dehydrated topping? OK foil the top and
lets steam the dry stuff with the peach juice. Then we will uncover and
finish the baking after it is all hydrated from the steam of peach
juice.



Meanwhile I have two of the young ladies helping get the tortillas out
and start to warming them. When they are done we set the build line up,
Tortilla, Mexican rice, refried beans, cheese, chicken; roll them and
place on sheet pan. Weigh them, .65 pounds, nice! Into the warming oven.
They assembled 280 or so, assembled them in 25 minutes. And all with no
prior food service experience, nice work crew!



Time to set the line, burritos check, posole check, salad greens check,
fruit salad check, desserts, check.



Let them in lets get these people fed. And two hundred people later
there would be 8 burritos left, a little posole, and absolutely no peach
crisp. This was a lot of fun I can not wait til the third Saturday of
next month to do it again!



Folks, some of you are retired, some of you are not on a full time
schedule. If you get the urge to clatter around a kitchen, check out
your local soup kitchen they really appreciate your experience and it
helps untold numbers of people out of a tough situation.



As a for instance of experience, I took all the chicken carcasses and
boiled them down with veggies to make stock, strained them off, had the
kids pick the bones over for the meat and created 40 gallons of chicken
Egg Noodle soup with vegetables for Monday's crew, out of what the lay
person would throw away. This is the kind of thing an experienced chef
can do for a kitchen! Anyway, if you are thinking you would like to get
into a kitchen and do some cooking, believe me the soup kitchen will
welcome you with open arms!



Til we talk again, purchase some extra groceries and drop them by the
local soup kitchen, they will put it to good use!



Chef Bob Ballantyne

The Cowboy and The Rose Catering

Grand Junction, Colorado, USA