Pasta with Bacon & Peas Recipe

This past Monday we had a dilemma in the kitchen. We needed to make 50 meals and the only available protein was a full pan of bacon. Since the only ideas we could come up with involved a breakfast-y sort of meal, we turned to allrecipes.com for advice, and the site gave us the solution to our problem: Pasta with Bacon and Peas.

One of our gracious donors provided us with a slew of already-cooked bow-tie pasta, so we used that instead of the recommended spaghetti. The McKenna Center staff let us use three of their onions and we used canned products for just about everything else.

Ingredients:
2 Full pans of pre-cooked bow-tie pasta
1 Full pan of pre-cooked bacon
3 Large onions, chopped
5 Cans tomato sauce
5 Cans whole tomatoes, drained
12 Cans of peas, drained
Garlic powder
Pepper

(The recipe called for grated Romano cheese, but we didn't have any or a suitable replacement.)

Although we didn't really cook anything, there was a ton of preparing to do. We had to chop the onions, open and drain the cans of peas and tomatoes, as well as cut up the bacon into smaller bite-sized bits.

We added all of the ingredients to the bowl and stirred until there was a nice mixture. We then put the sauce over bow-tie pasta in the meals.

For the other components of the meal, we used donated salad and muffins. The small dressing cups we had leftover from spring break came in handy again because we added a cup of Ranch dressing for our clients. This really helped put the finishing touches on a delicious meal.

Senior Steve Aro shows off the final product.

Summer Season 2007

Planning is well underway for summer 2007! The board outside the Campus Kitchen office has information, sign-up sheets, and applications for interested Leadership Team members.

Our goals for this summer are to:

• Continue regular meal deliveries


• Teach nutritional education lessons


• Coordinate at least one food drive


• Schedule regular training sessions for new volunteers

And as always to have fun in the kitchen!

Spring Break 2007 Slide Show!

Spring Break Delivery # 3

The last step in a very successful mission to keep the Campus Kitchen open during spring break was the final delivery of meals.

Sophomores Marty Ellsworth, James Scheib, and Roger Lalle returning from a delivery route.

Volunteers, such as Marty, James, and Robert, were instrumental in keeping the Campus Kitchen going during spring break. During the 10-day break, 14 volunteers logged just over 60 hours total while preparing 149 meals and delivering them to people in the area!

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!