Track Team Members Run Delivery Shift

Recently members from Gonzaga's Track & Field team came to the Campus Kitchen to participate in a delivery shift. Oddly enough the shift took longer than usual!

Three Schools Combine for Many Meals

This week the Campus Kitchen used the help of three schools, George Washington University, Vanderbilt University, and Gonzaga College High School, to produce double meals.

In addition to the usual Monday and Tuesday shifts, the Campus Kitchen welcomed volunteers from George Washington's HMSR 152 class for a special Saturday cooking shift. Alongside their professor, Honey Nashman, the group made bread pudding and helped assemble meals for our Tuesday delivery shift.

Two days later, seven students from Vanderbilt University volunteered their time at the Monday cooking shift as part of an Alternative Spring Break trip. The group helped to make another 55 meals for our clients.

For the entrées in these meals, the Vanderbilt group made taco salads for our child-friendly location and chicken Caesar salads for the elderly locations. The lettuce we used was purchased, but everything else in the salads was donated from two local law firms.

The students even helped to make home-made croutons out of donated bread. We used this recipe, which was quick and easy, to prepare them.

Vandy Volunteers Showing Off Croutons
Finally, the many meals were ready for delivery on Tuesday. With the help of students from the Social Justice class at Gonzaga College High School, we delivered the meals to the client agencies around the school’s campus.

With three schools colluding for the Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga College High School, we were able to produce more meals and involve more groups!

Bread Pudding with Apple Recipe

Bread pudding is one of our regular desserts at the Campus Kitchen. We receive a lot of bread from our donors, so we try to put it all to good use. Since we serve it frequently (about once a month), it can get repetitive for both volunteers and our clients. Therefore, we try to spice it up with cinnamon, raisins and/or apples.

During this particular meal preparation shift we had extra apples so we searched for and found an on-line recipe for Apple Bread Pudding. This particular website is a great place to find recipes on the quick. They even have an ingredient search which is very helpful!

Ingredients:
8 cups of bread cubes
3 apples
1 cup of white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 cup of half-and-half cream

(We made two pans, so we doubled everything.)

Prep Time: 30 Minutes
Cook Time: 45 Minutes
Makes about 20 servings

After preheating the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, I had volunteers cut up the bread into small cubes. They then peeled, cored, and cut the apples into small bits. After everything had been properly cut, the pieces were spread about the previously greased baking pan.

Volunteers then added the rest of the ingredients (sugar, eggs, milk, cinnamon, and cream) to a large mixing bowl and stirred thoroughly. We don't have a blender in the kitchen, so this can take quite a while. After it was well mixed, the mixture was poured over the bread cubes and apples.

Finally, we baked the desserts at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

The bread pudding turned out very well! I would only make two changes when we make it again. First, I would have cut the apples into smaller pieces so they would turn out a tad bit softer. Second, I would have included the crust of the bread. This would have given the dessert more texture. Other than that, everything turned out well. We added the bread pudding dessert to our meals, which consisted of spaghetti with sausage, and mixed vegetables.

This recipe for bread pudding is fantastic for three reasons. First, it keeps volunteers interested in the meal preparation shift. Also, it helps use all of our bread surplus. Finally, after all is said and done it looks, smells, and tastes delicious.

Tuna Casserole Recipe

One of the meal staples at the Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga College High School is tuna casserole. This is one of the first recipes we turn to when we have a shortage of protein. It is very easy to follow, requires only items we regularly have, and doesn't need to be baked at the kitchen.

Ingredients:
2 cans of sweet peas, drained
6 cans of tuna, drained
6 cans of cream of mushroom soup
Elbow pasta (or egg noodles)
One bag of potato chips
Makes about 40 servings

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain. Since we aren't going to bake the casserole (the clients will do that themselves!), we need to run cold water over the pasta after it is finished (1).

The next step is to add the remaining ingredients to the mix. Return the cold pasta to a bowl. Add all of the cans of tuna, sweet peas, and cream of mushroom soup to the bowl and mix it up.

The secret ingredient for this recipe is a small bag of potato chips (2). Have a volunteer crush them in the bag and lightly spread them over the casserole. Once this is done, scoop a healthy serving into each clam shell container. Add a serving of vegetable and dessert and the meal is ready to go(3).


This recipe is a lot of fun for volunteers to follow. It keeps them entertained and busy, and the resulting meal is really delicious.

Gravy Train With Biscuit Wheels

We haven't been getting the usual amount of dessert from our donors recently, so we've had to bake cakes, brownies and other assorted desserts to make up for the shortage. Out of the box mixtures are easy to follow and are fun for the volunteers to make in groups.

During a recent cooking shift, our group of six volunteers made pound cake from one of these mixtures. Pound cake needs to be stirred and beaten longer than the cake mix and it gave one volunteer a workout when he stirred for five consecutive minutes.

Sticking to the strategy of making the most of the kitchen, we have been keeping our volunteers busy with many jobs during cooking shifts. At this particular shift, we decided to get creative and spice up donated food with our own creation. Relying strictly on donated food doesn't produce the best meals possible, so we like to add our own touches to make the meals better.

During this shift, we made gravy from packets left over from our TurkeyPalooza extravaganza. They only ingredient volunteers needed to add to the mixture was milk. After it cooled, volunteers poured the gravy onto soft biscuits donated from a local law firm.

Once the gravy was added to all the meals and the pound cake had properly cooled, volunteers cut up the cake and placed pieces in the meal containers. Food that was donated to us included chicken, biscuits and snow peas. By adding corn, gravy and a small piece of pound cake, we made all 64 of the meals better and more attractive.

The clients that we serve definitely appreciate the extra effort that goes into our meal preparation shifts. One of my favorite parts of this job is when clients tell our volunteers during delivery shifts how much they enjoyed the food.

Although these longer cooking shifts are starting to creep past the two hour mark, volunteers don't seem to mind because it's a lot of fun and the resulting meals look better than ever.


The final product.

Let's Bake a Cake

As we get back into the swing of things at the Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga College High School, one of our goals is to continue to cook and bake. This keeps things more interesting for volunteers and provides more fresh food for our clients.

Earlier this week we baked two cakes for dessert for our meals. I let the six volunteers split into two groups and make the cakes on their own. They were excellent at following the recipe.

The volunteers added everything in the right order and stirred until the batter was thoroughly smooth. It turned into somewhat of a competition between the two groups, and both cakes turned out wonderful.


After the cakes were finished cooling, the groups added icing and sprinkles for presentation. We cut them into small pieces and added them to all of the meal containers. The pieces of cake were a great addition to our meals, which also included fresh salad and lunch meat sandwiches.


One of the difficulties in cooking is the unknown of volunteer cooperation and enthusiasm. It takes a while to prepare and bake two cakes, and it could have been a long cooking shift if the group wasn't as dedicated and interested as they were. This particular group was fantastic at following directions and working as a team, and as a result our meals turned out excellent!

A job well done.

Delivery Day

The final part of the TurkeyPalooza event was delivering the finished meals to our clients. The day of delivery, I found out that there were extra bags from the McKenna Center's Thanksgiving event that we could deliver to our clients in one location. Also, one of the art teachers at Gonzaga gave us Thanksgiving cards that we delivered to another location. These extra items made the event much bigger for the clients, which was something I was a little concerned about.


The bags contained many items that the clients could use to make their Thanksgiving meals even better.


The cards were a great way to engage the clients upon delivery. It gave the volunteers a way to talk with them moreso than usual.

Great success!

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!