Homeless Need Food Everyday Not Just The Holidays!
Years ago after speaking with Zane and Mary Lou they were supportive of
us volunteering at the local soup kitchen, and I am very proud to say we
all do at different times!
Well the third Saturday of the month finds me at the
Catholic Outreach Soup Kitchen in Grand Junction, Colorado,
preparing to feed 188 people who have through some way fallen on hard
luck. Mine is not to discuss the reason for their situation, I am here
strictly to prepare a meal from whatever was donated in the way of food,
so they might have one day without hunger!
Today I have about 20 hamburger patties, and another 40 pounds of
hamburger tubes that will go out of date Monday. Starvin' Arvin's resto
donated about 4 dozen buttermilk biscuits. (Arvin turned down 50K for
the recipe a few decades back, nice biscuits. Pineapples, grapefruit,
oranges, and grapes came in and plenty of greens today with tomatoes and
cucumbers! Not really enough, I really hate it right after Christmas,
everyone thinks they helped!
WARNING CHEF RANT ON:
OK folks lets just understand that a homeless person or poor person
requires food every damn day of their lives! They can not survive
thinking how good the turkey was the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas!
They need food everyday. And any of you who are out there reading this
who think you helped at Christmas and so you are good for the year are
kidding only yourself. If you are a religious type, please realize that
you are not fooling your god by dropping something off once or twice a
year during the holidays! I am assuming that anyone's god would expect a
commitment to helping gods poor people be a life skill, not a holiday
"nice to do" thing. So please, find your local shelter or soup kitchen
and either volunteer or make a commitment to drop off some stuff once
per month for an entire year. If you can afford it, drop off big cans,
it goes to say you feed more with larger quantities for the same money.
Buy bulk if you can and do it every month on the same day like clock
work. Make a group that takes a different week every month. And then,
when there are groups for everyday of the month, you will have solved a
small part of someone less fortunate's problem. Your god will like it, I
will like it, and you will feel better about your humanity and the human
experience you offer to the world!
CHEF RANT OFF:
To the storeroom, onions yes, special request from the director "Bob
please use green beans, we have over 500 cans donated!" A couple pounds
of bacon came in, and a couple cases of yams and sweet potatoes. Then
the curveball, someone dropped off two cases of pumpkin in the can and a
thing of dried onions. Carrots, celery, and peppers. Spices and sugars,
I got plenty, flour yep. 3 number 10 cans of something called spaghetti
sauce. (I'll bet it is served right out of the can in Boston's northend!)
Three 18 packs of eggs, milk and a strange donation, three cans of
Crisco.
Quick check of the calendar shows 205 fed the day prior, it is the
weekend so this will fall off a little. I am planning for 196 clients.
OK brain work! To feed this many on 45 pounds of burger is less than
0.22 pounds per person before cooking shrink! I like to see it up around
0.5 per person after cooking. So we will go with the only logical choice
IMO.
Meatloaf is versatile, and when made correctly the fillers are just as
enjoyable as the plain hamburger. So the menu is set, meatloaf with 63
pounds of fillers! A spaghetti sauce reduction for the top of the
meatloaf, finished with a nice brown gravy featuring dried onions, and
some reconstituted dried corn! Now that is a decent meal. Plus green
beans, and candied yams. Add a Fruit salad, and a tossed green salad
heavy on the cukes and the tomatoes and they have a fairly well balanced
meal.
No cakes went out of date Friday so we did not get a single cake, not
one from a single store! Looks like we also make dessert. Pumpkin, ok how
about a pumpkin cake with pumpkin pie inside. And what to finish it? Ok
a Crisco, vanilla (real imitation) and powdered sugar frosting.
This is what it looks like at 7 AM for the start!
I am in early so I will chop the onions, celery and carrots to make up
the bulk of the filling. But at 35 pounds the veggies are coming up
light on the filler side. So we will add 18 eggs to each of the three
batches as well as 2 dozen heavy biscuits. This will bring us up to
weight!
First in is a new volunteer, since I am making a cake type thing might
as well get that going since we have to cool it prior to using a crisco
frosting. Robert tells me he likes to run the can opener, so it is his
for pumpkin, green beans, and yams. Plus the three, ah, spaghetti
sauces.
He is flying through the cans and so I start to get the mixer fired up
for the pumkin cake with pumkin pie center. And away we go.
And so it begins, the work to feed 188 souls who have lost their way a
little, some will recover to stand up and give back, others, who face
untreated mental illnesses and other addictions that have gripped them
into a spiral, will depend on the decency of people for the rest of the
lives!
I direct the mixing of the meatloaf while attending to the cakes and
green beans. The yams can wait a little as they are canned so heat,
season, and serve. And the kitchen begins to fill with volunteers.
Having the menu in my head prior to the arrival allows for efficient use
of volunteers I keep a check list in my head of what needs to be done
and in what order. As they walk through the door they are assigned a
task and then I only need check up on the progress. This allows a lot to
be accomplished in a short amount of time. Since most volunteers show up
around 10 AM and we feed at noon.
Happy to help, been with me a year now.
A married couple and their son, she comes to see how we do stuff in a
commercial kitchen. He comes to help out every month. They also bring
their daughter who helps with the milk serving line and cleans up.
Two high school seniors who have also been with me a year now.
And eventually the place is packed and the kitchen is humming. And it
starts to smell pretty damn good. I take pride in the fact the Sister in
charge of the place now makes it a point to come see what I am making,
tasting and talking, actually a quite delightful lady!
Cakes have cooled down outside and for this one I decide to layer it
three high and make two three high layered pumpkin with pumpkin pie
center cakes. They are iced, then cooled, then cut.
Of course young adults still act like kids sometimes. I run a light
hearted kitchen so with Meynard's Jazz blaring in the background they
get a little rowdy sometimes.
I think most have fun working with me in the kitchen. They keep coming
back save for the few I asked not to come back.
Of course I create a lot of dirty pots and pans while cooking like a
fiend and monitoring my prep staff to ensure at high noon the line is
ready to feed its clients! And feed them well! So I occasionally forget
something and scorch a pan. (My name is Bob Ballantyne and I have burned
quite a few dishes over the years!) Anyway the early dish pit is good,
cause you are done and only need do the pots and pans, but that does not
stop the reaction when you drop in with a carbon 12 experiment that
needs removed from the bottom.
One of the other things I have to remember is we have take out lunches
for some of the more disturbed clients. They are antisocial or can not
stay sober long enough to get into the building. But we still feed them.
Just have to ask them to stay out of the facility while we prepare and
hand out the take out dinners. And so I always assign one or two of the
students to plate up the take out.
They all have so much fun doing this! Meanwhile I pan the green beans,
and the yams. Yams were easy, yams, onions, molasses and some powdered
magarine.
This is a picture of a device called the tilt skillet, which I did not
get one for Christmas as I asked Zane for! This is such a cool piece of
equipment. I mean it does it all!
The last thing to deal with is the portioning, I do not let the
portioning up to the volunteers, so I cut it all and then send it to the
line for service.
And then we serve. This is the last two coming through the line!
And so we find ourselves having fed 188 souls today, with luck they will
return Monday for another meal! I go out front to speak with as many as
possible, they are people just like you and me after all!
If you are looking for something to do, if you find yourself like me,
children about to go on their own, empty nest they call it, realize you
need to have things to do to keep busy, I would suggest their are a lot
worse hobbies that volunteering for a day every month to feed those who
will never have what you have and probably can not even dream that large
anymore!
'Til we talk again, while going down that grocery isle, put a couple big
cans of beans or taters or fruit in the carriage and drop it off at your
local mission! Two for one chicken works well too! You will feel better
about yourself breaking the hypocrisy of Holiday helping, the homeless
and destitute will eat better, and some volunteer like me will turn it
into a meal they talk about and, if only for a few moments, forget the
struggle they face making it through another day!!!!!
Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering, LLC Grand Junction, Colorado, USA
