Day 310: Beans and Bread

Today was an early morning as Nicole and I left the apartment at 7am to go to an Outreach Center in Baltimore. Loyola is affiliated with Beans and Bread, a program to help feed the homeless and less fortunate in Baltimore City. We took the morning shift, so our job was to prepare food. When we got there, there were two Loyola professors setting up the small kitchen for us to begin cooking. The director of the program told us we were making sausage, carmelized onions, and baked beans with bacon, maple syrup, and ground turkey. It was quite a process, so we had to be organized. I was put right to work, cutting onions. All 60 pounds of them. I have never cut so many onions in my life! I surprisingly didn't cry, since I usually cut one and I start tearing! I took some breaks, stirring the multiple pots of beans on the stove and cutting up the bacon on the skilletts! Nicole started tearing up, so she was put on turkey duty. There were large pans that she cooked the turkey in, and threw it into the bean pots. It was so interesting learning how to prepare enough food for 300 people with 8 volunteers in about 3 hours. I felt like we were on the food network show "Dinner: Impossible"! We did the preparation for the serving, but there was another group of about 30 Loyola students that came to help serve the food and get anything the guests wanted. After all the food was done cooking at about 11, we quickly cleaned up and headed on home (which was an adventure in itself since we were driving a Loyola car and couldn't figure out how to get back to campus with all the one way streets and city driving). This was a great experience and I'd love to do it again this semester!