For more than three decades, a Timmins kitchen has been filling more than plates.
This year, the Lord's Kitchen is celebrating its 35th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the group is hosting its biggest fundraiser to date.
Board president Dee Russell has been a volunteer with the group for about 30 years.
When she retired, a few friends suggested she might like helping out.
"I came and I got hooked. And when my husband retired I brought him in,” she recalled.
The Lord's Kitchen serves a free weekly meal.
The menu for the hearty food varies and can include stew, spaghetti, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, or roast pork served with mashed potatoes, and a dessert.
“It’s a good meal. It’s a very good meal,” said Russell.
The Lord's Kitchen formed back in the mid '80s.
At the time, Russell said Father Dan Bagley and few other members saw the need for a meal to help the underprivileged.
"When it started out, it was more workers than there were people, it just slowly grew and grew. For example, last week I think it was 242 people Thursday for supper,” she said, adding they likely served more than 400 plates.
“We don’t serve you just one plate, we let you have as much as you want.”
This past winter, the board saw a need again and added a Friday breakfast to its offerings.
"There was no breakfast being served and we saw a need for it for the homeless people on the street so we decided to try and it’s working well. If we have the staff, we’re looking at possibly another morning,” she said.
Behind the scenes, the volunteers enjoy a family-like comradery.
And they make sure the people enjoying the meals feel the same way.
Russell said they work to make people feel welcome and greet them by name. Servers are encouraged to pass time with the guests and not just plunk down a meal.
“We have seniors that come, not necessarily because they’re needy for food, but they’re needy for spiritual and friendship and fellowship. And they come and they sit at the same tables all the time, and they chat,” she explained.
Volunteering at the kitchen, said Russell has been eye-opening.
“When you first start out you say, ‘five or 10 years, you know, we’re going to get this problem all cleaned up. People are going to get a half decent wage, we won’t need the kitchen.’ It’s just snowballed, there’s more people,” she said.
The meals come at a cost.
Every year, Russell said they have to raise more money.
"It’s getting very hard out there too because there’s so many charities after the same dollar. And they’re all doing good work, so how can you fault them. So we’re all out there for a piece of the pie,” she said. “We do our best and we’ve been doing all right, hopefully we can continue.”
With a milestone anniversary, the Lord's Kitchen is having a European Cuisine Dinner and Fundraiser Sept. 29.
It's being served at the Lord's Kitchen located at 85 Spruce St. N.
The menu includes homemade perogies, cabbage rolls, sausage, and more. There will also be live entertainment by Paul Sebalj, door prizes and a cash bar.
“This is our first big venture out there to do something and we thought 35 years needed to be recognized because we were the first ones out there helping the needy and sometimes we get forgotten because we’ve been there so long,” she said.
“We thought this was our way of saying to people we’re still here, we’re still doing the same job.”
Tickets are $50 each, or $400 for a table of eight. To reserve a table or buy tickets, contact Aurel Monfils at 705-360-5097 or send him an email.
