Meat of Mystery
Working in a homeless shelter, as I do until I can escape, I see some strange and intriguing sights on a daily basis. This includes the food served here.

Generally, I'm impressed by the quality of food. Granted, it is homeless shelter food. No way around that. But we try to treat our homeless clients with the utmost respect here, and that includes serving food that is respectable. If nothing else, we hope each person comes away from here having a decent meal, thoughfully prepared for them as something edible.

One of the 'perks' of working here is that staff can eat meals here as often as we like. Now, you may think this is horrible. How can we take food from the homeless??? Get your own food, you greedy paid employees!! Calm down. Let me explain. The food we serve is almost entirely dependent on donations, mostly from the large local food bank, some from other vendors, and the rest we pick up here and there when cash allows. Now, understand that donated food is often food in bulk, nearing the expiration date. People only donate things, including food, that they either don't need or can't use. By the time it gets to us, it has very few days left on its Health Department approved shelf life. It often comes in large quantities, usually from a store that has rotated out old stock that didn't sell, etc. and they therefore shipped it over to the food bank or directly to us, and we must then attempt to serve it before it goes bad. So by allowing the staff to eat the food here, we help the joint effort to not throw away any food. We take great care to not let anything go to waste.

Now, don't get the impression that there is tons of food rolling around your local homeless shelter, and therefore you don't need to worry about giving when you get those nice letters in the mail begging for your pennies. There is always a shortage of properly balanced food items in your local homeless shelter. When I say 'large quantities', picture all the stuff in the grocery store that you would never think of buying because it either doesn't interest you, or it's a weird flavor that you assume must be experimental, or you just have no idea what it might be. This is the majority of the stuff we get. We see flavors of Doritos and softdrinks and other 'drinks' that the general public has no idea even exists, and will likely never see. We also get bulk items of stuff that just can't easily be served. For instance, a few weeks ago we received a large shipment of giant canisters of parmesan cheese. But, no spaghetti came with it. So, while our shelves were full of parmesan cheese just waiting to be eaten, we really couldn't put it to good use very quickly, and we also couldn't use the shelve space for say, boxes of spaghetti noodles. See the dilemma?

But, even though staff is allowed to eat in the dining room for meals, not many of us do. The food isn't great, even when great care is taken to come up with well-balanced meals. It's just difficult to prepare gourmet meals with donated food items. So some of the staff prefer to lunch elsewhere, and they will likely live longer than the rest of us because of their choice. But, I choose to eat lunch here most days. For two reasons. One, because I'm not paid well enough to afford food elsewhere, so I choose to take advantage of the food 'perk'. And two, it shows respect to the men who are our clients. When they see that staff members are willing to eat the same food they eat, and sit in the same room with them to eat, it gives them a little confidence that we value their presence. Even though we are not in their desperate situation, we are not above sharing a meal of donated food.

See, I do have a heart after all. Somewhere.

So what about the meat? Day after day of seeing the experiments that come out of the kitchen for lunch, I've seen many interesting concoctions, mostly pertaining to the meat variety. Meat is always hard to come by, but it's the most important part of the meal. It's important to serve as much protein as possible to these malnourished people. However, one can only hope the 'meat' we get is actually at least part meat. I've seen some questionable meat type entities.

Sometimes we get lucky. There was the Great Chicken Donation of last spring, in which we were awarded 1,000 pounds of chicken. All at once. We had chicken everyday for weeks. The freezer was full of little frozen chicken parts. We had fried chicken, baked chicken, fried chicken, chicken soup, fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken. And some experiments I'd rather not speak about. One thing I will say, the kitchen crew became very skilled in the art of frying up a greasy batch of chicken.

Then there was the Sausage Jackpot, also last year. The kitchen people called them sausages, but they more closely resembled hot dogs. Thousands upon thousands of them. Same situation. We had a variation on sausage everyday for weeks. I have to admit I couldn't make myself eat the sausage everyday. But the men sure enjoyed it. Especially chili cheese dog day.

However, sometimes even the kitchen crew is stumped. This happens often when fish is the meat of the day. Most of the time, I don't ask what it is. And I usually steer clear of fish served here. I've been told the fish of the day is catfish, perch, salmon, whale, and shark. I'm not sure what local food bank has a stock of donated shark meat. But apparently we were the proud recipients of this delicacy on more than one occassion. Or else the pesky kitchen crew is telling tall tales.

Yesterday, the Meat of Mystery was a complete mystery to me. It was a brown patty-type thing. At first glance it looked like it could be chopped beef. But upon second glance and every glance thereafter, I was convinced this was not beef. The kitchen crew told me it was buffalo. Then they said is was beef. I didn't know what to believe. They tried to 'fancy' it up by adding foreign objects to it before cooking it. I could identify onion, but the other objects were too foreign even for my trained eye. I cautiously tasted a small bite, but alas could not determine the variety of meat. I tested a few more tiny bites, but after not being satisfied with a safe conclusion, I gave up on the Mystery Meat of the day. This one I just couldn't stomach.

Who knows what Meat of Mystery awaits me today. Perhaps some parmesan cheese will help.

C.T.