The Soup Kitchen started on Thanksgiving 1984 as a meal for the Salvadorian and Guatemalan and Honduran refugees.
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Has continued since on every Monday; even on
holidays including Christmas
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It is open from 9:00am – 1:00pm starting with a limited breakfast, and morning coffee and pastries, and then a full meal.
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The Soup Kitchen consistently serves an average of 40 people.
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There are currently approximately 16 volunteers
(12 are regulars) working in the Soup Kitchen with many alumni.
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Most of the volunteers are WPPC members; however
there are also community members.
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The lead cook position rotates and they are
supported by volunteers with assigned roles.
- Through Food Lifeline, the ability to obtain donated food (meats, vegetables, bakery, etc.) from Fred Meyer, QFC, and Ken’s Market has enabled the Soup Kitchen to provide high-quality, hearty meals.
- The main dishes include pork loin, roast chicken, pulled port, ham and stew, and a vegetable, and potatoes or rice. A vegetarian dish is also prepared. Side dishes include green and fruit salads and desserts. Seconds on the food is given to those wanting it. Extra food is also given out; the volunteers pack any leftover food in plastic food containers for customers to take home.
The budget of $2,000 is used for some food purchases and discounted bus tickets from Metro. We count the meals served customers for Food Lifeline; it has been 2,000 per year. We serve about 416 meals for volunteers. We serve limited breakfast to about 260 customers, and morning coffee and snack to about 780 customers. We give the discounted bus tokens to about 1750 customers a year, or 35 tickets each Monday as long as our supply lasts. They cost us 10% of the face value of $2.75. We also provide donated toiletries, including toothbrushes and soap and shampoo and lotions. Customers can charge their phones at a new charging station installed by Tom K.
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The Soup Kitchen consistently provides high-quality meals for those in need; many of whom are “regulars.”
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It provides a much-needed place to gather,
mingle, get information – a real sense of community.
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All people are welcomed and valued without
judgment.
There is a great sense of team and comradery amongst the volunteers. Quotes from them include: “a community within the kitchen,” “lots of fun,” “highlight of the week,” “joy of service,” “doing something that matters once a week” and “this is our mission to serve marginalized people who are part of our neighborhood, neighbors in need.”
Average Day At the Soup Kitchen at WPPC 2020 thru March 9th.
Gordon and Dean drive at 6:45 am on Monday mornings to QFC
at Holman Road. Gordon drives his pickup
and Dean his Prius hatchback. We each take a
shopping cart in the back door and pick up banana boxes, or Dean brings some
that he has used before. Gordon goes to
Deli and Bakery to get things that are going near the best-by date; I cannot
take everything offered if we cannot use them.
Usually, I get a cart full. Dean
goes to the cooler, dairy, and then frozen meat, and then produce. Usually, we get very little meat, and a lot of
bakery goods, sweets, and little bread.
We usually don’t get much in dairy.
We usually get a box full of fruit.
Gordon and Dean sometimes are gone, and Len picks up the food. We
weigh the banana boxes on the tailgate of the truck.
We total up the weights and give
a copy of the report to the store.
Gordon and Dean drive over to the Fred Meyer at 85th
and 3rd NW. We bring carts
into the store, Receiving. First, we go
to the dairy cooler, and then the meat freezer.
Then we go to the produce cooler and then to the back of Receiving where
there is a shelf with bakery goods for donation and sometimes canned goods. Usually, we get a lot of frozen meat, bakery
goods, cakes, pies, and bread. We usually
get little fruit and vegetables, or canned goods. We usually get some dairy products, cheese, and milk, and yogurt. We take the food
out and weigh the boxes at the end of the truck. We total the weights by type of food and
write it down on a report and we give a copy to the store.
Then Dean drives to Ken’s Market on Greenwood and picks up a
box of vegetables and fruit.
Gordon at about 8:30 am goes to Church and takes 9 or more
boxes of food into the basement and up into the upper room, and vegetables, and
fruit to the kitchen. Dean arrives and
brings his boxes into the church basement.
Gordon puts the meats and foods for freezing into the two freezers, and
dairy into the refrigerator.
Gordon had arranged for the Food Lifeline to allow us to
pick up donated foods at Fred Meyer at Greenwood. He also has a food handlers permit and
notifies public health yearly about the kitchen. He reports our yearly meals total each July
to Food Lifeline.
Dean set up and arranged for Food Lifeline to allow us to
pick up donated foods at QFC, when we were not getting enough food from Fred
Meyer.
Len arranged twice a year to purchase discounted bus tickets
from Metro so we can give one ticket to each customer each Monday. Len
reports the pounds of donated foods that we pick up to Food Lifeline, on the
computer.
Tom K. has started at about 7 am, making coffee, tea, and starting to
set up tables and chairs and starting to cook the days' meal. (Sometimes he starts on Friday or Saturday to
thaw the meat or cook the meat. And
often he buys needed food for a recipe he is making.) Tom sometimes has to scrape snow or scatter
ice melt on the icy pavement in front of the church. Sometimes he has to try to get a stopped up
toilet going or sink plugged to work. If
there is an accident he cleans up the floor.
Lee came about 8 am to help Tom prepare the meat to cook and to cook the vegetarian meals we serve to a few customers each time.
About 8:30 am Gordon and Dean come back and bring in boxes of food. The fruit and vegetables go to the kitchen and yogurt, milk, coffee creamer, the juice from the morning, and put out for the limited breakfast for the guests. Frozen meats and other food brought to the break room and put in the refrigerator and two freezers. Other foods are put on storage shelves, or containers.
Customers come in starting at about 9 am, and they have coffee
or tea. There are usually pastry or
cookies to have with them.
Sometimes Judy cooks the meals, Betty occasionally makes a goulash
stew.
Often Len or Judy go out to buy foods for the meals if we
are short of those items. Often fruits
or vegetables.
Len and Judy come about 9 and bring volunteers that they have picked up: often Marylouise and Angelina. Neola sometimes comes and Judith has been coming each Monday.
Angelina usually processes and cuts up the fruit for a fruit
salad. This is a two-hour process and
others help including Gordon, Joy, and others. The
salad is about ten quarts. It is covered
with clingwrap and carried up to the refrigerator in the upstairs kitchen.
Marylouise makes a green salad with lettuce, tomatoes,
avocadoes, or other vegetables. It is
about ten quarts and covered and carried upstairs to the frig. She gets help from Judy, Joy, or others.
Janet comes in with pastries from a Ballard bakery, that Northminster Pres. had used for coffee hour, but some were leftover. Janet set up the sweets on plates for dessert for about fifty people. She cuts pastries, pies, cakes, and puts out cookies.
Joy washes up the pots when needed. She helps cut vegetables for the meal. Judy and Marylouise cut up onions and cuts up
vegetables.
About 9:30 am Joy comes in and brings pastry from the coffee
shop on Greenwood if they have some leftover from the weekend.
Gordon or Tom G. butter bread and put on a serving plate.
At 10:00 the staff can sit upstairs on the old stage and
have coffee and a pastry.
Betty comes downstairs from the office and wraps up
silverware for fifty people. They are
wrapped in a napkin. She asks what
utensils are needed for the meal that day.
About 10:30 Janet goes home after setting up the desert.
At 10:30 Gordon goes upstairs to the office to get the
packet of bus tickets, then to the Social Hall and gives bus tickets, one to
each customer, and writes their first name down to show metro that we are not
using them for ourselves. He finishes at about noon. After 1 pm he returns the
packets to the office.
Tom G. and Roberta have gone to buy flowers at a store and
make small bouquets in jars of water.
These are stores in the upstairs refrigerator and used for coffee hours
and soup kitchen. They last about two
weeks. They work in the kitchen every other
week.
At about 11:30 we get the meal ready in the window of the
kitchen to serve at noon. Customers line
up for the meal.
Usually, Len asks grace.
Neola, Joy, Roberta, Judy, Marylouise, and others serve the
meal. Gordon or Roberta count the
customers for our log of the daily meal.
About forty people are served, sometimes 32 or 55.
Dean, Len, and Tom G. Gordon set out deserts and toiletries donated
from Roger Lee and Lee Bennett, and others.
Some come from the stores and are donated.
Sometimes we have guests for lunch; Gladys and her friend
sometimes come. Gladys is 95 and likes to treat our customers to treats,
magazines, and clothes. She hugs the
customers she knows and talks to them all.
She was a volunteer until three years ago.
Gladys’ friend Joyce brings some canned foods sometimes for
the kitchen.
There are usually late customers and sometimes we have run
out of food, and have to heat a frozen meal or make a sandwich for them.
Tom G. or Neola usually runs the dishwasher to wash the
plates and silverware and cups. Joy
usually washes the pots and pans. Sometimes
Tom K. does the pots and pans.
Gordon, Tom G., and others pick up the plates and silverware
left on the tables and put away the chairs.
Some customers help fold up and put the fifty chairs away.
We try to finish the clean-up work and Tom takes out the
garbage. We try to finish and leave at 1
pm. Tom sanitizes the tables and folds them up and puts them away.
Foods served at the Monday Feeding Program at Woodland Park
Presbyterian Church
Coffee, tea, juice, water, ice tea, cocoa
Donuts, cake, and pie
Bread, buttered, and not buttered.
Fruit salad: grapes, berries, oranges, apple, pineapple,
melon, as available
Green salad: tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, onion, dressing, broccoli,
sweet peppers, avocado, as available
Main Courses:
Meatloaf and baked sweet potatoes, or regular potatoes
Spiral ham and baked sweet potatoes
Goulash with meat
Pork chops with baked vegetables.
Baked chicken and rice
Spaghetti with meat and vegetables
Pasta with baked vegetables
Baked pork loin and stuffed baked pork loin and rice
Turkey Casserole
Roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy
Sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls
Mac and cheese and roasted sweet potatoes
Beef stew, with optional cheese
Barbecue chicken
Mexican Delight
Chicken Tetrazzini
Enchiladas
Soup Kitchen News
2017 (?)
Monday morning four young
Spanish-speaking men came to our building for help as they saw the “Refugees Welcome”
sign. They ate the noon meal with
us. We have served this Monday noon
meal for 32 years; it started as a sandwich program for Central American refugees. It is now a filling meal.
We have been serving an average of 40 lunches to customers a
week. We serve coffee and snacks from 9
am until noon. At noon we serve the meal for about twenty minutes until
everyone is served. We have about
fourteen volunteers to help prepare the food and
serve it. From our congregation we have
Tom, our church maintenance person, Gordon, Len and Judy, Neola, Nancy, Dick
and Joyce, Dean, Mary Louise, and Betty, Ke sometimes cleans, and Janet from
Northminster Pres., Lee from the Taoists, Angelica and Gladys, and Dan from the
community (Dan drives from Shelton, and starts the coffee, and sets up tables
and chairs).
Our collections of donated food from the food rescue program of
Food Lifeline from Fred Meyer-Greenwood is going well. We are getting a box of vegetables and fruit,
a box of meat, a partial box of milk or juice or dairy goods. Sometimes we get a box or so of bread or
rolls. We used to get cookies and
desserts but have not been getting any lately.
Gordon and Dean do the pick-up.
We get a box of donated fruit and vegetables from Ken’s
Market, and have for many years.
We have to purchase canned goods and staples like potatoes,
coffee, tea, rice, tomato sauce, sugar, salt, cooking oil, flour, corn starch,
bullion. Sometimes we have to buy
fruits and vegetables like green peppers.
On the last Monday of each month one of our volunteers,
Angelina makes egg rolls for everyone.
She also occasionally takes our leftover buttered and unbuttered bread
and makes sandwiches for homeless customers downtown.
Of our customers: most are homeless
and walk and take the bus to us. We have
about five women, four people have homes; four live in their cars. We have up to nine men who speak Spanish, refugees from
Mexico. We have an African and pretty
large elderly population. One is a
member of our congregation, a refugee.
We have a number of disabled customers.
Customers come from Beacon Hill, Ballard, Downtown, Lake City, Phinney Ridge,
Wallingford. Some walk up to six miles
to get to our meal. We give them one bus
ticket to get home. They help us set
out the chairs and pick them up and put them away at the end of the meal. We do not have a problem with the safety of
customers or volunteers. Some of our
customers have been coming for over twenty years. (Their own community meets at
the various food programs and most know each other well). We are proud to serve them and they show
their appreciation for our efforts. Some
mention our extra effort, such as the quality meats we serve now.
We were forced to stop our services after March 16, 2020, due to advice from the CDC. The COVID-19 pandemic caused us to offer one final meal of take-out only, and we found it very labor-intensive and cold to provide sandwiches and soup and coffee in the out-of-doors. Most volunteers declined to be exposed to others, and we had to stop completely. We hope to reopen when it becomes safe to do so again.
One regular customer is 79 years old, and he has been coming for 20 years. He kept coming three Mondays after we closed and Tom K. had to explain that we had closed for the foreseeable future. It has been difficult to stop our service now. Our guests feel bad about it and the volunteers feel bad about it.
We had a lot of foods stored in our freezers. We took a truckload to the Ballard Food Bank so that it would not go to waste.
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