Spring Break Meals # 3

The Cooking Club came in again and volunteered for the last cooking shift over spring break. The collaboration resulted in yet another fabulous meal!

The contents were sliced ham for the protein, macaroni and cheese for the starch, spinach as the veggie, and pound cake for the dessert. This combination of food has a good variation of color and texture, so I'm positive the clients appreciated the work that went into preparing them.

One new thing we tried during this shift was wrapping the dessert, the pound cake in this case, in small bags. Some times the various food items will shift in the meal container and spill on the dessert. We tried our best to keep that from happening by wrapping the dessert separately.

Gonzaga Alums Help Deliver Meals

While the school was on spring break, three Gonzaga alums helped out delivering meals with the Campus Kitchen.

Alumni in front of St. Aloysius

(L-R) Liam Hardy '02, Matt Cullinane '02, and Brendan O'Boyle '02 all pitched in with the delivery shift.

Delivering the Meals

Volunteers walking up North Capitol Street.

Even with all the hard-work that went into the cooking shift, the real job was only half-way done. Volunteers helped deliver the meals they made the following day.

One new idea we've been doing at the Campus Kitchen is distributing reflection hand-outs at the end of each shift. These are helpful in figuring out what volunteers got out of the shift. Some reactions from this shift:

"It was nice to meet some of Gonzaga's neighbors." - Anonymous

"I am starting to see a DC community instead of separate residents." - Tom Mason '07

"The general image is that [the residents] are mean, but reality set in when people chatted and said hellos." - Melissa DeLoach

Spring Break, Cooking Club, and the Campus Kitchen

This week Gonzaga College High School is on spring break, but that doesn't mean the Campus Kitchen is slowing down! With help from the Cooking Club, a group that has cooking sessions to teach students culinary skills, we continued our usual output of meals.

We've tried our best in the past to make cooking shifts fun and educational, but they haven't always been both. Luckily, the moderators of the Cooking Club brought expertise and excitement to the shifts! For our Monday cooking shift, we prepared over 100 meals for delivery on Tuesday and Friday. The Cooking Club graciously donated almost all of the food for the spring break.

The contents of the first meal are:

Protein: Orange pork chops
Vegetable: Green beans
Starch: Cheesy mashed potatoes
Dessert: Brownies

(We also provided after-dinner mints for our clients.)

We cut the bones out of the pork chops with kitchen shears and then proceeded to glaze them with orange marmalade and honey dijon mustard. Volunteers sprinkled chives on the pork in the frying pan. We received a shipment of baked potatoes from one of our donors, so we peeled them, and added sour cream, milk, and cheese to make cheesy mashed potatoes. We had a difficult time mashing them up but it all worked out in the end!

Senior Tom Mason helps cook the pork chops!

We usually would have stopped with one set of meals, but we were having so much fun that we plowed ahead with a super-sized cooking shift and made double meals!

The second set of meals we made included:

Protein: Chicken cacciatore
Starch: Egg noodles
Vegetable: Salad
Dessert: Cookies or eclaires
Dressing: Ranch or Italian

(After-dinner mints were included, too.)

The recipe used for the chicken cacciatore called for green peas, so volunteers added them to the chicken cacciatore and spooned everything over egg noodles for the entree. For the salad, we used two bags of shredded lettuce donated from our donor, Brock. We also had celery donated from our other donor, Venable, but not much else. We added shredded carrots and cherry tomatoes the day of delivery to complete them. Previously when we've made salads (and we've made them many many many many times), we didn't put dressing on because it would make the lettuce soggy. The Cooking Club moderators brought in tiny plastic cups and tops to put salad dressing in. When we delivered the meals, we gave clients a choice of ranch or Italian dressing. Brilliant! For dessert, to top everything off, we made a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Senior Tom Mason and sophomore Martin Ellsworth making cookies.

After all was said and done, the Cooking Club prepared over 100 meals of exceptional quality for delivery. The skills that volunteers learned, including cutting and frying pork, are ones that we have not taught before. Volunteers seemed happy to have so much actual cooking to do. This Spring Break cooking shift was very successful and hopefully the Cooking Club and Campus Kitchen can collaborate again in the future.

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.