And can you post some brief recipes of a particular soups and other food items that you find tasty?
Edit: Yes I know soup kitchens are for indigent people. But sometimes even such foods can be tasty. At least here in Bangladesh in some similar situations sometimes the food served, although very simple, is still very tasty and filling.
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Not in my locality, but I worked in a soup kitchen in Mississippi a few months after Hurricane Katrina. A lot of people had everything they owned washed away and lived in a FEMA trailer if they stuck around.
We made a variety of dishes. Spaghetti with meat sauce was pretty popular (and extremely tasty). We also did stir fry. For breakfast we did eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns. For lunch soup and sandwiches were popular because people could come and pick up what they needed, then take it home to their families. We tried to change it up throughout the week.
Unfortunately I don’t have any specific recipes, but spaghetti with meat sauce is pretty easy without one.
Do you mean soup kitchens as in free food for people that are indigent?
I volunteer at a place that does that. We usually make a ton of sandwiches and occasionally do a potluck with a lot of casserole type dishes like shepherds pie, lasagna, baked pasta, some chicken dumpling type casseroles.
But mostly the place is a food pantry. We take in excess food donated from local groceries, Walmart, Dollar General, and a local USDA food assistance center. Almost everything is given away unprepared to people that come in. But a couple times a week the pantry prepares hot food in order to feed anyone that comes in.
So we use the donated food to make the dishes. That means there isn’t really a recipe, it is just putting what we have on hand to use.
**Seeing your edit:** yeah we make stuff that is filling and easy to serve in bulk. It rarely is soup. It’s mostly casseroles made with the donated items given to the food pantry. Shepherds pie, lasagna, pasta bakes, spaghetti and meat sauce or meat balls, vegetable casseroles, big trays of cooked and spiced vegetables, we try to include good protein in everything which ranges from bone in chicken to ground beef, essentially never seafood just because it spoils too fast to get donated and it’s more expensive so it isn’t likely to get donated.
Shepherds pie is my favorite to make and it’s always a hit. It is basically ground beef (technically should be lamb but that’s rare in the US) or ground turkey, seasoned and mixed with frozen peas and corn or any canned veggies we want to use, topped with mashed potatoes made with a metric ton of butter, and if we have it shredded cheese on top.
I don’t have an official recipe because I just kind of “make it right” with what we have but you can definitely look up a million shepherds or cottage pie recipes. They’re all pretty similar and you can adjust it however fits your needs.
My local food banks/soup kitchens never have a set menu, what they have available is reliant on donations and what they can get. That said, meals that can stretch or are easy to make in bulk are common, like spaghetti or… soup.
What do you think a soup kitchen is? How many people here do you think are dependent enough on soup kitchens to have an opinion on the food they serve?
…..soup…..lol
I’ve volunteered at homeless shelters before and it was spaghetti w meat sauce, garlic bread, brownies. Filling.
The shelter in Indianapolis has an open daily lunch. Its usually something cheap and you can make a lot of. Spaghetti or some type of noodles, soup, sandwiches. Some type of bread like rolls or Texas Toast.
The only one I know of locally serves a wide variety of things – it depends on what the volunteers and local restaurants donate. Sometimes it lasagna and bread and salad. Sometimes it’s ham and mashed potatoes. Sometimes it’s brats and chips. It could be just about anything, really, except a pot of gross mush or garbage.
The local food kitchen here serves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’m sure they serve other stuff, the one time my son volunteered to help I think they made spaghetti, but their billboards say things like “PB&J and hope” and things like that.
Like mom and pop recipes in the local diners, lets see a pattymelt, BLT, hillbilly hash, chicken fried steak, pigs in a blanket, breakfast burrito….god there are so many