The Club House has been a hub of excitement and activity! We’ve been noodling around! grin/giggle
Our church participates in the annual Lenten Luncheon series every year. The first year we moved into this community the ladies’ group chose to make Sloppy Joes for the meal they prepared. When beef prices skyrocketed and buns became too rich for our blood, the menu was changed to chicken and noodles.
Every year, Delilah, bless her heart, would purchase and boil up chicken breasts, cook up all the noodles and package everything into plastic bags. On the day we served, all the church ladies would descend on the local Baptist Center’s kitchen and heat everything to perfection, lay out a collection of salads and host the ‘party…’
Delilah left us not so long ago so The Normanator and I took up the mantle. We planned to buy the meat a little at a time so as not to assault our budget. You can imagine our delight and surprise when we answered the door one evening to find that a Good Samaritan was bringing us FORTY POUNDS (40#) of chicken thighs, compliments of his generous heart.
We stashed the gift in our freezer until last week, when we thawed the chicken and began to season and roast it. We filled a 7 quart roaster, a 4 quart roaster and a 3 quart roaster. Each layer was carefully seasoned with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning and roasted in the oven for hours on end. The house smelled of Thanksgiving and we thanked Delilah and our benefactor. When everything was cooked and cooled the meat was taken off the bones and packaged into one quart plastic bags. They were packed into the freezer one more time!
In Delilah’s absence and to honor her memory, The Normanator and I took on the challenge of cooking all those noodles. Someone shopped at Sam’s Club and brought us three great ginormous bags of dry noodles. We giggled at the industrial size of them. And then we boiled water, broth and more of both to get them cooked! It was a marathon!
Prior to serving the meal, we’ll thaw the meat, add it to the noodles, along with more broth and a big bag of frozen peas. There will also be some sauteed onion and celery pieces. The offering will fill a large roaster with amazing flavor, color and texture. It will smell divine! This will provide the main dish and there will be an array of salads to accompany it. Our ladies are amazing cooks and they will do us proud!
It was a good call, changing the menu. Even in quantity it is an easy meal to prepare and carry to the venue. It is simple and filling, yet nourishing. Many of the people who will share this meal are elderly. Meat can difficult for them to chew, that age group does not want large portions and it is a menu that creates winners all the way around. We will leave it to the ministerial association to nourish our souls.
People who depend on Public Assistance for their food dollars must rethink their menus because of costs or availability…if you hold an EBT card for WIC or SNAP you know this all too well. If you use food commodities you are probably clever at adapting meals using what’s on hand. Stretching food dollars and food budgets is no easy feat, especially if you are using Public Assistance. *That’s why this blog came into being. We want to help any way we can. We love hearing from our Members at foodstampscookingclub@gmail.com
Connie Baum
