Thousands of Christmas Dinners
It’s a humid August day, but visions of sugar plums are already dancing through Ric Watson’s head. He’s the executive chef at the Ottawa Mission’s kitchen, where he’s led the team that provides three meals a day to the men accessing the shelter’s services for 17 years.
“I’m just working on Thanksgiving now and I pretty much got it [the menu] done,” he says.
On a typical day, the Mission serves 1,300 hundred meals — breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks — and whips up four holiday meals in a year. Watson needs to have Thanksgiving planned in September because nine weeks after that holiday happens, he and his team will serve up Christmas dinners on Dec. 16, as well as three regular meals on Christmas Day to Ottawa’s most vulnerable men.
A 2016 progress report by the Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa found an increase of 5.2 per cent more individuals in the city were accessing emergency shelters. It also found more men in Ottawa are using shelters, but their stays were shorter than in previous years.
An influx of people at the shelter keeps Watson and his team busy in the kitchen. The chef is passionate about creating a meal reminiscent of Christmas at grandma’s house. “It’s right down to a piece of parsley to garnish every single plate that goes out,” he says, but before his team chops the herbs, Watson has menus to plan, volunteers to co-ordinate and donations to accept.
He and his team are working with more than tablespoons and cups, they will be plating food by the hundreds of dozens and thousands of pounds.
“There’s nothing more rewarding than coming in on Christmas day and serving the guys their lunch,” Watson says. He has spent 14 Christmases at the mission plating meals.
Months of prep work, a small army of volunteers and many hours go into those moments of delivering holiday cheer. It usually starts by deboning turkeys more than a month before Christmas or Thanksgiving. Preparing more than 2,500 pounds of the bird would take away from the kitchen’s other work, so Watson depends on dedicated volunteers.
Jim Deyell, 77, spends two mornings a week volunteering in the kitchen. In the months before a holiday meal, he and other volunteers will dislocate the turkey joints and bones so breasts can marinate and a pot of necks, legs and wings can boil. Some meat will be saved for sandwiches and soups.
While Watson has praise for all of the volunteers, he calls Deyell, one of the best. Besides doing this prep work — Deyell estimates he can debone a turkey in a minute — Watson has entrusted him with another important task, teaching participants in the Ottawa Mission’s Food Services Training Program (a five-month course that aims to create employable cooks) to debone a turkey.
He spent a Monday morning with three students who are halfway through the course, teaching them different deboning techniques, so they can find a method that works best for them.
“He’s confident, but he’s only started this morning and away he goes,” says Deyell as he watches one of the students dislocate the turkey’s joints. “We need at least six thousand slices.”
Leonel Martinez and Samuel Robbins are two of the trainees in the program. Both have aspirations of making a difference in Ottawa’s culinary community after they finish their training. Martinez hopes to cook for a retirement home while Robbins is looking to take a job in a restaurant or a commercial kitchen.
“It helps to find a new chance of work and for me it’s also a chance to do something I really enjoy,” Martinez says.
Their final project is cooking the meal at the Ottawa Mission’s annual Blue Door Gala, a fundraiser for the different programs at the shelter. The food service program students have already planned the menu for the event.
“It doesn’t happen overnight,” Robbins says. “We have a lot of volunteer staff.”
While volunteer power allows the Ottawa Mission’s kitchen to steadily serve hundreds of meals everyday and create holiday memories, monetary and physical donations make up the majority of the menu.
“It depends on the year and the economic situation in the city, but Ottawa is a very giving city,” Watson says. “We’re purchasing [ingredients], but we’re using the donor dollars to do it.”
In fact, many of the turkeys Deyell has deboned over the years have come from donors.
“We get all kinds of sizes and shapes,” Deyell says. He’s prepped butterballs, first-class product and stuffed turkeys — which have to be unstuffed and the butter can make the knives slippery — but the Ottawa Mission doesn't turn any donations away. “We prefer not to see those, but we’ll take them.”
The sweet treats at the end of the meal also come in variety of colours and sizes, all 3,000 of them.
Josée Cowley runs Cupcakes 4 Christmas, a drive that collects green- and red-frosted desserts from home kitchens and bakeries, such as the Cupcake Lounge. She has run the drive since 2010.
Watson remembers getting a call from Cowley when she first pitched supplying cupcakes for the Christmas meal. She thought it would be a couple of hundred treats, but Watson says she quickly met the challenge and continuously encourages the community to donate 3,000 cupcakes to end the festive dinner.
For Cowley, the event has become a family affair. Her children come with her to the Ottawa Mission and help serve the meal alongside the other volunteers. She recalls volunteering in her pregnancy one year and going into labour that evening.
“It’s a really sweet thing that makes you feel really good every Christmas,” Cowley says. “I really look forward to it.” She says she was initially surprised how readily people donated, making it easier to collect the 3,000 desserts than she had thought.
For the volunteers and staff at the Ottawa Mission, Dec.16 is just as anticipated as Christmas Day itself. Many will arrive in the early hours of the morning to start creating the holiday magic. For Watson, that means getting into the kitchen at 4 a.m.
It’s a long and busy day, but as Watson says, “We’ve got it really well organized. After 17 years, the routine is busy, but comfortable.
Watson always makes the gravy, then spends the rest of the day supporting staff and volunteers. The turkeys Deyell and other volunteers carve, marinate, roast and plate the turkeys they deboned. Meanwhile Cowley will be on a hand to accept the dessert donations before placing them on serving trays.
They serve from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and those who sleep in the 21 beds at the Diane Morrison Hospice, part of the Ottawa Mission, eat first.
Lynn Landis, the director of healthcare services at the Ottawa Mission, says this is another way of supporting the people who will experience one of their last holidays.
“It might be their last time, but it’s sometimes the first time they may have been able to experience such an amazing meal,” Landis says. Some of the people in hospice care may not have had the financial means or living situations throughout their lifetime to splurge on a holiday dinner.
“It’s not just the catered meal, there’s a lot of thought and love that’s put into what is served,” Landis says.
For Watson, that love and attention to detail comes from a personal place. “It's people who’ve fallen between the cracks,” Watson says of the men seeking out the Ottawa Mission. When he was 14, he found himself homeless after experiencing a rough patch in his own life.
“Someone helped me and helped me get back to society and get back to school to become a chef,” he says. “It’s giving back, it is part of the reason I’m here.”
The Ottawa Mission
35 Waller St, Ottawa, Ont.
ottawamission.com | 613.234.1144
