Roanoke’s homeless get special meal

Rummaging through the Roanoke Rescue Mission's pantry full of donated day-old bread and big cans of beans and soup, David Faulds struck gastronomic gold.

A collection of spices, including cilantro and herbes de Provence, is "everything you need for a rich Caribbean sauce," said Faulds, executive chef at Lexington's House Mountain Inn. He set about concocting an Epicurean adventure to pour over mixed vegetables.

"Some people give away spices like these because they don't know what to do with them," said Beverly Allman, a cooking instructor at Salem High School, working in the mission's kitchen with Faulds.

Faulds and Allman were among two dozen chefs and cooks, mostly Western Virginia-area members of the American Culinary Federation, who volunteered to fix dinner one day recently for 300 homeless people at the mission.

Times are tough and fewer people are eating out, but John Schopp, owner of Center Stage Catering in Rocky Mount, was among the guest cooks who weren't feeling sorry for themselves. "Some of us are feeling the pinch in this economic downturn, but to be able to make something special for people who need it gives you a feeling of love."

They prepared a meal from donated food, working in the mission's unfamiliar kitchen for nearly six hours.

"This really takes the pressure off our kitchen staff," said Lee Clark, the rescue mission's director of development. His cooking help usually consists of a supervisor and several volunteers from the ranks of mission residents. "When you're serving as many meals as we are, about 300,000 a year, this really helps."

The guest cooks added a bit of variety to the mission's menu -- such as the moo goo gai pan, a stir-fried Chinese chicken-and-mushroom dish prepared by Charles Chang, owner of Fiji Island in Roanoke.

Chinese food is "kind of unusual" at the mission, Clark said. Typical fare is fried chicken, ham, green beans and desserts such as cookies and pie. "Anything that's donated," he said.

Tameka Smith and Crystal Ford, both second-year students in Virginia Western Community College's culinary-arts program, sought to elevate the quality of ordinary foodstuffs. "We're making a bread pudding using hotdog buns," Ford said.

Starting about 1 p.m., the visiting chefs swept into the mission's modern kitchen and quickly grabbed pots, pans and knives. Potato peeling was one of the day's first duties, and no one was above the humble task. "We're all in it together," said Derrick Beverly, owner of the Cake & Dessert Pantry in Ridgeway, near Martinsville.

Beverly brought along a special creation baked ahead of time: a chocolate sheet cake with vanilla icing sliced into 104 pieces. Other desserts included an apple cobbler prepared by Lindsey Housman, a chef at Center Stage Catering, who lavished attention on her special recipe for oatmeal topping.

The feast was much appreciated by Mary Sutphin, 34, who has been living at the mission for seven months. "I never had a pumpkin scone before. That was special," she said. Another highlight for her was the garlic mashed potatoes.

For Carter Worsley, a seven-month resident of the mission, the marinated roast pork was a highlight, but there was more to the meal than food.

"You might expect a bunch of chefs to be sort of snobby, but they were just regular people," he said. "I saw one of them mopping the floor. I liked that."