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!

Take Your Turkey to Work Day

7am turkey call.
Today we celebrated Take Your Turkey to Work Day at Gonzaga! It has been a smashing success so far as we've received more than the number of turkeys we were initially looking for.

Three tiers of turkey.
Here's to hoping that everything else during TurkeyPalooza runs as smoothly!

YouTube Turkey Video

Peel Sessions

Sign up board outside my office.
Today was the first day of actual preparation for TurkeyPalooza. We won't deliver the Thanksgiving-themed meals for another week, but it's important to start work on some projects as early as possible to make sure there isn't a time crunch towards the end.

During today's cooking shift, we had more volunteers than usual. I had the group of six split into two groups of three. One group did the normal food preparation while the other group peeled potatoes.

Peeling the potatoes
The work that went into this was pretty intense. The groups switched places once to keep everything from becoming stale and boring. Everyone seemed to be a good sport about the process and we finished an entire bag of potatoes in one shift.

Before and after...
The turkeys won't be dealt with until Thursday. In the meantime, they were defrosting on the sidelines. This week is sure to get very busy, so it will definitely be helpful to get simple jobs like peeling potatoes out of the way.

Almost turkey time.

Capital Food Fight

There's a nice preview of the Capital Food Fight, DC Central Kitchen's annual event, up now on DCist.com. They give the event some really nice exposure, especially by writing:

More than the food and networking, however, it's a great fundraiser for the Central Kitchen, which helps Washington's homeless community by providing both fresh food and job training for work in the food industry.

The big event takes place one week from tomorrow, and I've heard it's always a blast. For more information on the event, check out the official site.

TurkeyPalooza 2006

TurkeyPalooza... it has begun.