The pungent aromas of pumpkin and turkey filled the kitchen yesterday, as a group of Wake Forest students, faculty and staff worked with military precision to cook Thanksgiving dinners for needy people in the area.
Rows of pumpkin oatmeal cookies steamed on a table.
Plump, gleaming turkey breasts were cleanly sliced.
Green-bean casseroles were lined up in a refrigerator.
By the time Thanksgiving comes, the students will have made and delivered about 220 dinners as part of the fourth Turkeypalooza, said Shelley Graves, the coordinator for the Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest, a mostly student-run effort to feed the hungry.
Graves' position is full time, but most of the work is done by a roster of 64 students who plan, cook and deliver one or two meals a week to seven local agencies, including the Children's Home, the Prodigals Community and Azalea Terrace Senior Apartments. Faculty, staff and their families fill in throughout the year when students are gone.
"We try and create a space where they can try things and ask questions," Graves said. "And if something doesn't work, it doesn't work. We try something else."
Wake's Turkeypalooza was one of similar events taking place this holiday on 20 high-school and college campuses across the country that are affiliated with the Campus Kitchens Project.
The Project is a national student-run hunger-relief organization. Each of the Campus Kitchen programs receives unused food or food from local farms and then use on-campus kitchen space to cook meals for people in the community.
Wake Forest's Campus Kitchen began in 2006. It grew out of Homerun, which was started by Wake Forest alumnae Karen Borchert and Jessica Shortall in the late 1990s as an effort to feed the hungry.
Cooking is done three days a week in a kitchen in the school's Information Systems Building and deliveries are made four days a week.
Most of the food used in Wake Forest's program comes from food not served in the school's main dining room, Graves said.
Pat Fise, a freshman from Baltimore, said he has mostly been washing dishes, which he enjoys, but recently he went with students on deliveries.
"That was really cool," he said. "It was nice to meet the people."
Blake Briggs, a freshman from Knoxville, Tenn., said that he had done a lot of volunteer work in high school and that a stint as a baker at a bagel restaurant had whetted his appetite for culinary work.
"It helps me cook better," he said, "when you go in on an empty stomach."
mgiunca@wsjournal.com
727-4089
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement