Preparing the Meals

On Monday, November 20th, we had the cooking shift to put the final touches on our Thanksgiving-themed meals. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult since we spread out the work load over the previous week.


For the protein section, we had the turkey already prepared. For the vegetable portion, we used canned corn. For starch, we had either mashed potatoes or canned sweet potatoes. All we needed to provide was a dessert. To make the meals even more festive we used a surplus of canned pumpkin and graham cracker crust to make pumpkin bars.


This was a great activity that the volunteers seemed to really enjoy. After these were finished and cooled, our meals were complete and ready to go!

The next (and final) step was to deliver the meals to our clients.

Turkey Pull

On Saturday, November 18th we had the 2nd Annual Turkey Pull at Gonzaga College High School. At this event we carved the turkeys and pulled the meat off of the bones. The pieces of turkey were placed in a big container for the big TurkeyPalooza event.


The event was very fun and all of the volunteers seemed to enjoy the process. One of the more difficult aspects of this job has been ensuring that there are enough Gonzaga volunteers to show up on Saturdays. This event was about par for the course, with three in attendance out of the five volunteers that signed up. Regardless, we filled an entire pan to the brim with turkey in less than two hours.


After finishing carving the turkeys, I saw the wishbone and couldn't help but think about Robert Egger's speech from the Student Leadership Conference. He spoke about the wishbone vs. the backbone, and how using each produced different results. If there's one definite of this entire TurkeyPalooza event, it's that it definitely requires the backbone (although the wishbone helps, too.)


After completion of the turkey carving, we were almost ready to deliver the meals. The next step was making desserts and packing them up.

Cooking Turkeys

In addition to the regular meals we made for our meal preparation shift, this past Thursday we also cooked eight turkeys for our big TurkeyPalooza event. Having never even attempted to cook a turkey before, this was a pretty big deal. There were four major steps to cooking the turkeys: 1.) defrosting 2.) cleaning 3.) seasoning 4.) cooling.

Getting things started.

Since they had been defrosting for a few days, the first step was to clean the turkeys. We had to remove the neck and giblets, which scared away some of the volunteers. The majority of volunteers weren't interested in having any part of this process, but one leadership team member stepped up to the plate.

Washing out the turkey.

After the turkeys were patted dry, the next step was to season them. We used poultry seasoning and oil and had the volunteers spread it all over the turkey. One mistake we made was not folding the leg under the bird prior to adding the oil. This made the leg very difficult to stay in place.

Seasoning the birds.

After all was said and done, it took about 8 hours to cook the turkeys, wait for them to cool, and then store them properly. The turkeys looked and smelled delicious.

Almost ready to eat!