In the Kitchen

If only I'd ventured into Hell's Kitchen again, just to complete the triad. Ah well...


My Kitchen

This week's cooking adventure: veggie lasagna!

I've pretty much gone vegetarian...except for the random cravings for bacon or pepperoni or Boston Market chicken (which is odd, since I don't pass one on the way to work--I pass a KFC). I still eat dairy of course, but it's almost impossible to buy meat in small enough quantities for me to cook for myself with the limited resources I have. I'll build up to a double-day of cooking, then I'll make myself two weeks of food. 

But until then...

I got mom's good old lasagna recipe. Only four ingredients! I don't think I really appreciated that until I had to buy all the ingredients myself. 

Of course, plain lasagna is delicious but doesn't have too much health value going for it, so I grabbed some color: carrots, broccoli, and black beans. I also got sauce with mushrooms in it--not many, but my regular store doesn't seem to have fresh mushrooms (I haven't bothered looking for canned). They also didn't have cottage cheese in cost-effective quantities, so I went ricotta; and, much to my delight, wheat and regular noddles were the same price, so I went healthy. I also stocked up on extra cheese and forewent the milk, since I've been having horrible luck with it lately.

I realized that I had twice as many noodles as I needed and that the broccoli may not last as long as the carrots, so I figure I'll make another lasagna with slightly different veggies next week. Maybe I'll even do meat! 

I don't have a grater (it's the first time I've needed it, and I have no idea where I'd put one if I had it), so I used the potato peeler to shred a fat carrot. It all came together easily enough, and fortunately one of my apartment mates had tinfoil, so I took a bit--and later folded it, so I can use it next week. 

Once it was in the oven, it was time for dinner. I threw my leftover shredded carrots, crumbled broccoli, and the last of the embellished Cuban beans and rice from last week into a saucepan, filled a can with water to get the last 2 ounces or so of tomato sauce out, and added that to the pan to make a veggie-tomato soup. Everything looked good...until I tried to turn on the stove. 

Yep, apparently the lovely oven-stove combo in my apartment will not allow you to turn on the stove while the oven is on. Easy fix, if exasperating--I just turned the oven off, turned the stove on, and turned the oven back on. 

So I had my soup, and while I waited for the lasagna to finish, I used some broccoli to scrape the little bit of leftover ricotta out of the container. Yum! Maybe I'll grab a loaf of bread at the Union Square farmer's market tomorrow to sop up the sauce. 


The Soup Kitchen

For the past two weeks-- Wait, scratch that. I keep forgetting Fourth of July was in the middle. 

So for two weeks out of the past three, I've gone over the Saint Francis Xavier Church on 15th and 6th to help out with their Sunday soup kitchen. 

I heard about this through New York Cares, a volunteer organization I joined. Fortunately, it is very popular. Unfortunately, that means that most of the volunteer projects fill up very quickly. I wanted to get involved right away, and since the St. Francis Xavier soup kitchen is one of the largest in New York City, there was room for me to hop on board just three days out. 

It's a darn impressive place. The only other soup kitchens I've been to have been small and cramped. People were hustled to eat up and get out to make room for the people behind them. St. Francis has a Hogwarts-huge hall that kind of reminds me of a train station--wide  and tall with narrow metal pillars that have been painted light colors. There's air conditioning, and thank goodness, since we're required to wear full-length pants and closed shoes in case we work in the kitchen. 

I haven't worked with people too much yet. Both weeks I was put on tray duty--first sorting the eating trays (with compartments, like the ones you'd get at a high school cafeteria) from the carrying trays (just a plain try like at my college cafeteria) and stacking them, then this week rinsing the big trays, which don't get very messy. 

The first week was a bit slow. I talked to quite a few people while we wrapped plastic silverware in paper napkins, but the conversation didn't come as easily once it was just me and one other person doing the trays. I did get to talk to one volunteer who'd been there for years, and he asked if I'd like to go out to lunch with some of the others at the end. I couldn't--I met up with Joy--but I waited for this past weekend. 

It's a long day. I just come for the afternoon shift, which lasts from 11:45 to 3:15 or so, but there's also apparently a morning shift for food prep. It's pretty impressive, what I've seen of food made on an industrial scale. This past week there was salad. Five huge plastic storage bins full of lettuce and tomatoes and carrots and whatnot were set on a table for volunteers who mixed it all up with their (washed and gloved, of course) hands. There was just too much lettuce to do it any other way! 

But doing anything repetitive can get a bit dull. Time didn't exactly fly by when I was stacking trays, but tray washing this week was a bit more of an adventure. Remember the long pants? Well, mine were soaked from the knee down by the end. I talked through two and a half whole hours with the volunteer across from me, mostly about books and movies, while we washed trays, rinsed them, and handed them on to the dryers. I ended the day in defense of fanfiction, though it's a tough sell when the only thing your audience knows about fanfiction is that Fifty Shades of Gray was originally in that category. It didn't help that the person I was talking to preferred books about philosophy and ethics--"fiction" is kind of a key part of the word. 

It was so great to talk, and I've met some interesting people. This guy was waiting tables and volunteering while he looked for work. Another was volunteering during the summer between college semesters. One was an older teacher from Columbia University, three were from NYU, one was in high school studying Japanese and hoping to travel abroad, one came on and off whenever she had time around other volunteer opportunities. 

My gloves did next to nothing for me, since they don't come up past your wrists. By the end of the volunteering hours, they were as wet inside as outside, which made it impossible to take them off the proper medical way that mom showed me. 

After that, it was out to lunch with four long-time volunteers. They were a great group, though we kind of realized after the fact how much younger than all of them I was. But they go out to lunch after volunteering every week, and it's a habit I'd like to see if I can get in on. We walked up to the Old Town Bar, one of the oldest restaurants in New York City, renowned (at least in this group) for its massive marble urinals. The guys scoped out the restroom and made sure I got a look...and they weren't kidding! These urinals were the size of refrigerators!

I had lemonade, a delicious grilled cheese with quality cheese, lots of mushrooms, dill pickles, and a generous side of coleslaw. There was plenty I didn't know about, of course--group newbie, after all--but I had plenty to say on the topic of Star Trek, running, and enough to chip in about the ethics of volunteering (Aundy trained me well). Everyone seemed to agree that St. Francis wasn't quite enough. They all had more hands-on, person-to-person volunteering they did as well, to balance the frequent impersonality of a massive soup kitchen. 

To cap it all off, when I reached for my money, the group said they'd be paying for me, since it was my first time out with them! Very nice. I hope I get to hang out with them some more, and I'm already signed up to volunteer again this week. I just hope I get a break from the trays this time...