Prayers for Pork Chops and Plenty Good Sides

My friend and I went to a volunteer orientation because we decided we wanted to try to cook dinner for twenty-five people staying in a warming room.

I’ve been planning menus in my head and have become fixated on pork chops, mostly because they are so cheap, but also because each person can have their own chop, and if the chops are good sized, that seems pretty hearty.

Vegan meals, someone added. Can we always have a vegan option? And I thought about that but not for long because it shouted tofu to me and I just had a half brick of tofu go south in my fridge. It’s not a taste one acquires in one’s seventies, I don’t think. Then there was the caution of chewing limitations, definitely a complicating concern.

And then I startled myself thinking what about gluten free. I don’t even know where to start with that. I was mostly thinking about smothered pork chops and my friend’s legendary cheesecake. And a lot of sides. I love sides.

The warming room leader said that their practice is that the people who cook dinner stay and eat dinner with the warming room guests. This is sweet to me and different and also means that whatever we cook, we will have to own it. We can’t drop off a bunch of trays and hightail it in the complete darkness that is Milwaukee at six o’clock now. We will have to hear the silence or the oohs and aahs, the pushing back of plates or the asking for seconds. Plus, there will be a prayer offered by someone, not me.

My prayer would be that they all like the pork chops. And can chew them.

I probably need a better prayer.