About a year ago I realized I was, though happily working away in the studio, spending a little bit too much time with these guys...
and not enough time with real people... not internet people but real flesh and blood people, so the solution?
I decided to volunteer at one of our local soup kitchens. It would be great, one day a week, I'd go in, help cook up a meal and be back to the studio for a half a day of work. Well....
A year later, I am now the official food coordinator and one of the head cooks. What does that mean?
I now have to be very careful how much time I do spend away from the dogs and the studio. About once a month, I commandeer someone, my kiddos...
or husband to make a hour and half to Farmington New Mexico, where there is a Sam's club to do the shopping for the soup kitchen...
literally a more than one person job.
Like most soup kitchens, we are part of a larger charitable food bank network and get almost all of our meat and other goods donated by our local grocery stores...
And since we are right on the edge of the "bean capital of the world"...
we have beans, lots of beans. The below, called Anasazi...
found dried in ruins like these,...
but propagated and now grown and sold in local grocery stores.
We also get much our produce from regional growers, sometimes having to process pallets and pallets of onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes and sometimes things like exotic peppers...
Being a small town, with limited services, but high poverty both in the white, Hispanic and Native American populations, it's great when we all work together, the soup kitchens, the food pantry and the shelters.
It's a treat when local growers share their bounties, and they did often this Fall...
The end result?
Well last week, a hearty beef stew with Colorado grown potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots plus corn and green beans with a heart gravy for 130 people. And as the warm bowls filled the bellies of those who needed a good meal on a snowy January, I felt the same satisfactions I get in the studio when I am pleased with completing a piece of art....hum? Maybe I'm not as far away from the studio on the days I'm away from the studio?
I had a dream the other night that I had to make soup for 3000 people, and I was hopelessly unorganised. Of course I woke up in a panic. I see from this post that you actually do this, and make it look not only possible, but delicious and soul-satisfying. Congrats and thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have those nightmares as well, sometimes dreaming and sometimes not listening to my mother and trying something for the first time while cooking for 130 instead of trying it out at home first!
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