Our church supports Family Promise, an organization that helps homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence. Ben and I have prepared several meals over the past couple of years for the families staying in our church. The program in our area had to stop operations a couple months ago due to a lack of funding. The hope is that it can be started again after enough funds have been raised to sustain it successfully.
Tonight we competed in a Comfort Food Throwdown to benefit Family Promise. Individuals in the Family Promise network paid $15-20 to attend the meal. And then we, along with 9 other churches or individuals, prepared our favorite comfort foods to serve to the masses. We volunteered to bring spaghetti, using Ben's family's secret spaghetti sauce recipe. We were supposed to be able to feed 100 people, so we made three batches. It took us all day to prepare the sauce.
We took dry noodles and a large stock pot with us to the hosting church and cooked the noodles there. It was a little chaotic and a large burner was not immediately available for us to use when we arrived. The noodles were finally done cooking just as we were supposed to start serving. We chose to dish up the plates of spaghetti in the kitchen and bring them out to the serving table. It worked okay while people were getting their first servings. But then, the pasta just sat on the table, waiting for people to want it. And, it got cold. I decided to make up a new batch of noodles and then serve on demand at the table. It worked better and everything stayed warmer. Oh, and I garnished each dish with a parmesan crisp that I made earlier today.
We did not win, but we were beat by an young gal with an excellent chicken soup from Guam. Money was raised for Family Promise and the people were fed. It was a good night. Katie spent half of the evening on my back in the Ergo carrier and then played with two cups of water instead of eating for the second half.
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