Members of the Eventful staff rolled up their sleeves and decided to give back to the community that’s already been so good to us! We got our best planners, our best cooks and our best filler-inners and headed to the Ronald McDonald House.
There were some differing opinions as to the quantities we should cook
We knew that it was our civic duty to donate our time to those in need. But, what was the perfect cause? After some brainstorming on ideas for volunteer work, we decided a great way for us to help would be to serve dinner for children and their families who were staying at the San Diego home while they received treatment. We planned a dinner menu (containing food groups from EACH category of the food pyramid), went shopping and showed up to Ronny McD’s prepared to delight some palates.
This is about 1/100 of the fried rice that Cat made
Little did we know that there would be more than 180 palates that needed delighting that night!
They asked us to not eat any of the food while cooking – no one knew why
No matter! The more hungry people to show, the more good we can serve up. PLUS there were a few dishes that ran no risk of running out. Bring it on, Ronald!
Nothing like some home-cooked oranges
Or some home-distilled water
The plan was to arrive early – dinner was at 7 o’clock sharp – so we’d have time to get a feel for the kitchen and find out what each of our strengths were. Turns out that we had more people that qualified for the dishwasher role than for that of the cooks.
We put our more serious chefs on the grill
While others of us were given more menial tasks
But, we made do. Each person was assigned a valuable role in the event. There were dicers, slicers, timers, flippers, peelers. Each person was assigned a task. And once that task was complete, an Eventful-ier with actual cooking experience came through and redid the task – but correctly this time. Well-oiled machine. Us.
Crybabies
The line of hungry customers was starting to grow and we were still putting the finishing touches on the meal. There was talk of doing a song-and-dance routine to stall the crowd. The rest of us took a step back when one volunteer claimed to have some knife-juggling experience.
Believe it or not, there can be too many filler-inners
Thankfully no flying cleavers were needed. Right at the buzzer, the meal came together and we were ready to serve!
By the time the night was finished, we were all completely wiped out and just shy of 190 people walked away with their hunger satisfied. And we got GREAT reviews for our efforts.
“Best hospital meal I’ve ever had today!” – Anonymous diner
“Is Eventful.com a cooking website? It should be.” – Anonymous diner
“Sure beats a gas station burrito.” – Anonymous diner
All joking aside, all of the “Thanks!” that we received were completely unnecessary. The reason we worked as hard as we did to prepare and serve a delicious and nutritious meal was to make peoples’ lives just a little bit easier during such a hard time. It’s like the old saying goes: A good deed is its own dessert.
“These cookies are for dessert. That cookie fell on the floor.”