Caritas

Servolution continues with Caritas, the soup kitchen! I had always wanted to work in a soup kitchen, and David had the day off, so I left him home to get the kids to piano lessons, and I spent the morning at Caritas. First, it was one of the hardest days of my life! But, it was very rewarding. I got there around 9am, got my hairnet on, no looking nice in the kitchen! And proceeded to make 420 ham sandwiches. Then about 10 peanut butter and jelly for the (rare?) homeless vegetarian.

There were trays of lasagna already made, but our team chopped bell pepper, onion, garlic and cabbage for the ginormous pot of soup. Then we chopped a ton of tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots for the huge containers of salad. Then we set up our line, starting off with their choice of soup or lasagna, then I added a dessert (these are donated by grocery stores, there were sheet cakes, cheesecakes, brownies, anything that was about to expire) and I was also the "sporker" (I put a spork on each tray) and then each person got a ham sandwich, a portion of fruit salad, green salad, and a cup for juice or water.

From 11am till 12:30, we did not stop, it was constant scooping/slicing/sporking. After all was said and done, we fed over 330 people. We went out to the dining room to clean up, and there were some stragglers at the door, so we brought out leftovers to them also. And helped them bag some stuff up to take with them.

Then it was clean up time, and we left at 1, exhausted, sore in places I didn't know I had. But so many people stopped to thank us for taking the time to go down there and serve them, so it was all worth it. I am so glad I went, and it's hard to believe that someone does that every single day. Ms. Vera was in charge, and that woman runs a tight ship. Every once in a while we would hear her yell, "MORE FRUIT!" or "LESS LASAGNA!" She is IN control of that kitchen!

Here's one of the giant bowls of salad we served:


Here's the line, ham sandwich, fruit, salad:

And this was my section, spork and dessert.


Those ham sandwiches looked good. That's my favorite leftover after Thanksgiving, a ham sandwich on soft white bread. Yum. Even after 420 of them, they looked good!