Monday, March 11, 2024
Connected in story, connected in christ
Connection in the kitchen - sue Nalewajk
Tell us a Story about....
When have you felt really connected to the community, the world, the universe, or something greater than yourself? Share a story about that experience.
Kitchen Art
A story about connection and calling in the kitchen by Sue Nalewajk:
So, how can a pile of pots and pans be considered art? Let me tell you the way.
Let’s go back about four years to the start of the Covid pandemic. You may remember then - businesses were closing, people were hunkering down and St. John’s closed the kitchen for Common Table. The last meal CT served in the Thaxter Hall kitchen was mid-March 2020, just before St. Patrick’s Day.
Yikes! Wait a minute, no Common Table? What about the people that relied on the CT lunch for sustenance? Well, Bob and I felt called to continue cooking, but instead would use the kitchen in our house to prep the meal. So, our kitchen became the temporary headquarters for CT.
Now, cooking for 120 people is a challenge for most people and while Bob and I had a bit of experience in this area, we now had to accomplish this is in our kitchen – on a weekly basis. Our kitchen was certainly large enough, but we needed lots of large pots and bowls, 40 pounds of protein each week, gallons of oil to cook with, take-out containers for the meal and enough stamina to do this all over again next week.
I became addicted to surfing the web of cooking sites. Afterall, we couldn’t serve the same meatloaf each week. I shopped on Mondays and Tuesdays so we could start the prep on Wednesday. A typical shopping list would include (this is the list for the 3/21/24 meal): 320 slices pumpernickel bread, 40 lbs deli corned beef, 160 slices Swiss cheese, 3 #10 cans sauerkraut, 1½ gal thousand island dressing, 7 #10 cans diced potatoes, 2 #10 cans creamed corn, 5 lbs bacon bits, 2 stalks celery, 1 jar each beef and chicken base, 1 gal milk, 5 lbs sour cream, 3 lbs shredded cheddar, 4 lbs scallions, 14 qts heavy cream, 8C sugar, 12 lbs bread, 28 oz egg yolks, and 16C blueberries.
We were allowed (by Covid rules) to have two or three volunteers (thanks to Ann, Dawn, Conni, Suzi, Diane and others) to help us at our house on Thursdays – well masked and distanced in the kitchen as much as possible. We finished the cooking around 10:30 so we could package the entrees in boxes and then bag them. We included a salad or soup, a main entrée and side (a hot dish or sandwich), fruit, water, plasticware, napkins, and wipes.
Then all the bagged lunches were put in Bob’s truck and driven over to the parking lot at SJC. Nathan and others helped with distributing these meals to the line of cars that came through the parking lot. What was the weather like then? Well, if it was Thursday, it was raining! We were grateful for the mail carrier who regularly came through the line, thanked us for our mission, gave us a significant donation and left without taking a lunch.
Then, after all the lunches were distributed, Bob and I came home to clean the kitchen. This is like doing dishes after you just had a holiday party for 120 people, it’s midnight and you want to go to bed! Now comes the discovery of kitchen art. A few weeks into this project, while Bob and I delivered and distributed the lunches in the parking lot at SJC, Ann and Dawn stayed at our house and cleaned all the pots and pans, wiped down the counters and put things away. They came to know where everything was kept in our kitchen. When Bob and I got home, all we saw was a beautifully cleaned kitchen and a pile of clean pots and pans. That “pile” is kitchen art. What a gift – a pile of clean dishes. Thanks, Ann and Dawn, our dish washing angels.
We had many mishaps during the time we cooked at our house. We tried all kinds of take-out containers – styrofoam, compostable, plastic clamshells, you name it and we tried it. In one case the worst containers almost fell apart after the hot baked ziti was served in it – you know like the paper plate commercial on TV. We had our oven crash right in the middle of making lunch one day. That’s when we discovered that a full-sized sheet pan would fit in our BBQ grill, and so served as a back-up oven. We stored all the CT supplies in our house. Our frig and freezers were filled to the brim. The dining room table became our warehouse – stacked with three or four kinds of pasta in 20-pound boxes, cases of napkins and plastic forks, knives and spoons, #10 cans of marinara sauce, black beans and soups, bottled water under the table, and the list goes on. Then there were the times I went to the restaurant supply store and they had no inventory. The shelves in this store that had a walk-in refrigerator the size of Market Basket, had no meat. We had vegetarian chili that week. In spite of all these obstacles, we made it work. We didn’t miss a week.
By the end of 2020, the new stove was installed in the kitchen at SJC. CT resumed cooking at the church with outside service in the drive-through. Bob and I also got our dining room back when all those supplies were returned to SJC. CT had a regular rotation of volunteer cooks by then, so Bob and I had a break in our weekly cooking schedule, as well. Indoor dining resumed in Thaxter Hall in the fall of 2022, but the drive-through was kept in place. By the end of 2023, we were serving about 140 meals each Thursday – more than half were distributed in the drive-through.
We will be celebrating the fourth anniversary of CT’s drive-through lunch service on Thursday, March 21, 2024. The menu will include a grilled Reuben sandwich which was also served for our first drive-through lunch at CT. Please join us.
What practices, habits or disciplines do you have that help you feel connected to God? Share the story of your practice, in word, image, or art, via email to the Pastor Aaron at associate@stjohnsnh.org.