Christmas In The He Cares Kitchen

Tonight I found myself elbow deep in chicken parts. Literally.

It's the He Cares' Christmas party tomorrow and, as always, our huge army of cooks and kitchen helpers was kept busy until late this evening chopping and dicing and cooking and cleaning...

Huge army, in my dreams. But Kuya Joe Dean, Juwip, Mang Sauro, and I managed to get the job done, thanks as well to Manang Lilia and the Montalban mothers who did a lot of the prep work throughout the day. Earlier this morning I was reminded of what Mother Teresa said about her vocation: to do ordinary things with extraordinary love - a mantra that kept repeating in my head when my fingers started to painfully cramp up after slicing and squeezing 3 million calamansi, which would go into 426 pieces of chicken, tediously counted out first by myself, and then by Kuya, with salt, pepper, and horrors - but I was too tired to object - monosodium glutamate a.k.a. vetsin, which I hand-tossed over and over again until I thought my fingers would bleed from the jagged chicken bones that kept assaulting my delicate digits (although my blood would probably add to the unique flavor of the dish, mwehehe...) Charing, delicate - good thing they were previously numbed to some extent by the ice chips I had to fish the chicken pieces out of. Thank God for asbestos hands.

Anyway, at the end of the night, it was kind of funny cleaning salt and pepper out of my armpits. Kiiiiiddddingggg!!! Good grief, I should never put our health and sanitation practices in doubt. But I did find a lot of spices higher up than my elbows after all that halukay in chicken batter - Kuya was so amused that he wanted a photo taken of my efforts, I was spared the indignity, thank God for small miracles.

One blessing is that a major department/supermarket chain has designated He Cares as a daily beneficiary of near-expiry-but-still-immediately-useable perishable goods, which go a long way in supporting our mission. Now I have to figure out how to "recycle" food that will go bad very soon, how to jam and preserve and pickle, and how to make everything still taste fresh and new. Hmm, interesting challenge; this is something I can definitely take on. :-) Stay tuned...