Vegetable Lovers

Down to the last lasagna: Rob, Jim, Kay, and Marge.

When it’s our church’s turn to serve lunch at the community center in Redwood City, I’ve been making salads. No, I’m not a nutrition freak, and yes, many of the people to whom we serve a free hot meal bulk up on the doughnuts and pasta, but as one of our customers said to me, “They [the food charities] always give us the sugar.” There were more vegetable lovers among our clientele than one might suppose. But this is the Bay Area.

Salads are easy to make: I wash and chop a package of romaine and cover the greens with a layer of bright red cherry tomatoes. If I’m not too lazy, I’ll dice an onion and grate some carrots and/or cheese. Three other people brought salads. Once again we ran out of salads first, then the lasagna.

Forty people were waiting by the gate when we opened, and the gentlemen and ladies helped us unload the cars. We were a little shorthanded this Labor Day weekend and were slow in setting up, but no one complained. They knew that we weren’t getting paid—at least monetarily—for our efforts. The count rose to sixty by the time we were done. We ran out of everything except the doughnuts, which we dropped off at the Catholic workers’ house a mile away. A nice quiet Sunday afternoon--it was certainly less eventful than one year ago. © 2008 Stephen Yuen