ORLANDO, Fla. – Through the Salvation Army, the effort of hundreds will ultimately feed thousands this Thanksgiving in Orlando.
The traditional feast — officially the Eric and Diane Holm Thanksgiving Meal, presented by Dave & CJ Harris — will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 440 W. Colonial Drive, Salvation Army Orlando Area Command. News 6 visited Valencia College’s Walt Disney World Center for Culinary Arts & Hospitality on Thursday to see the chefs, organizers and volunteers in action.
Salvation Army Captain Ken Chapman told us that the food isn’t just for folks in need, but for everyone. Even if you just want to show up, sit down and share a meal, you’re invited too.
“It’s not always people that are needy or financially needy or homeless. It’s people that are lonely, people who want to eat lunch with someone just to be around people,” Chapman said.
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From 4:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., the Thanksgiving Day schedule called for chefs to prepare stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. As this happened, 4,000 of around 8,000 total meals were to be loaded onto trucks at 7 a.m. for delivery to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints before teams began loading another truck for delivery to Salvation Army Orlando Area Command between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m., when volunteers must then prep the campus to serve their meals.
We spoke with Chef Alex Erdmann, who explained how his team was able to stay organized and get results.
“This is the third flood here. So, on the third floor we do stuffing and a little bit of turkey, so each floor is their own little part of the meal,” Erdmann said. “We break that down in segments. So, certain floors to certain segments, or parts of the meal. And then we have our volunteers, we have our staff, our faculty, our employees, and so we’ll come out together and produce those meals and then in the end it comes all together as a Tetris kind of style, or like here, and we serve it at the Salvation Army but also we serve those different churches in the area and they distribute it to the community.”
Into those meals will go around 2,200 pounds of turkey, 133 gallons of gravy, 1,600 pounds of green beans, 8,500 rolls and 1,500 pounds of cranberry sauce, just to name several of the gargantuan food totals that these teams are working with.
Chef Tom Kuchenreuter, who said he’s volunteering with the Salvation Army because the organization helped him in the past as a young dad, was at the center of “Operation Stuffing.”
“For each batch, we are making approximately over 1,000 pounds of stuffing alone with a whole lot of butter, two pounds of butter for each one of these cambros — and there’s going to be 34 of these cambros — so it’s a rich, good-tasting stuffing for these folks that, you know, you just want to help,” he said. “I got three kids that are now college graduates and back when they were little, in the strollers, we were a little bit, you know, not doing that great and we needed help. We looked all over and the Salvation Army actually helped us on one of our power bills. It was only this one time, but I always remember that and you know, it makes you really appreciate if you can do something. So we got a lot of people here volunteering and it’s just, you can be all about yourself or you can give back to the community and make somebody else’s Thanksgiving.”
Watch more from our kitchen tour in the video player at the top of this story!
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