Cooking with Love @lucyburdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Do you remember reading  Laurie Colwin’s classic memoir Home Cooking, A Writer in the Kitchen? I'm rereading it now--she was a foodie before the term even existed. She made cooking sound so easy and so fun. For a while, she volunteered cooking lunch for over a hundred ladies at her church. Her mother’s recipe for spaghetti casserole has always stuck in my mind.

Our MCC church in Key West, pastored by my character and also the real Reverend Steve Torrence, conducts a similar program called Cooking with Love every Saturday. John and I have donated money to this cause, and in one case I donated a percent of sales from a book signing. I also spent some time making sandwiches there for the homeless some years ago. (There is a scene in the first Key West mystery, An Appetite for Murder, taking place right at this event.)

Once a month for the past two months, I've acted as sous chef for a Saturday cooking event. My friend (and also character) Eric is the lead chef. How does someone cook for 150 people--inexpensively? In a small kitchen without any fancy equipment? 

Everything is enormous and heavy, from the pans to the ovens...

As the experienced member of the team, Eric chooses the menu and shops--a chicken and stuffing casserole, green peas, and frozen strawberries for dessert the first time, and a curried chicken salad the second. John and I (among a group of others) go the day before to help with chopping and opening cans. Saturday mornings bright and early the lunch is assembled, while other workers pack food bags to go out with the lunches.

At 10:30, the food is lined up and more volunteers rotate through with biodegradable containers to pack lunch for 150. Then volunteers swoop in to deliver the lunches and the food bags to the people on their route—mostly lower income senior citizens.

Natch, Hayley Snow will help her friend Eric with Cooking with Love in the next book. Why? I have no idea yet, but I hope it will come to me...

Cheree, our big boss

Let me assure you that if I harbored any dreams of becoming a professional chef, they are gone... it's not as easy and romantic as Laurie Colwin made it sound LOL!

Have you ever made dinner for 150 people? Any super-simple recipes to share?

Margaret Turkevich, you are the winner of Sherry Harris's A GUN ALSO RISES! Please send a note to her at sherryharrisauthor at gmail dot com.