If you smell something delicious while travelling past the Dew Drop Inn this weekend, it’s probably the 196 pounds of turkey cooking in the basement of St. Andrew’s church.
Eleven turkeys and four or five hams are being prepped for dinner this Easter Sunday at the Dew Drop Inn along with mashed potatoes, vegetables and all the other turkey dinner fixings including pie for dessert.
“It’s a three-day process,” said Nikki Burns, board of directors member for the Dew Drop Inn.
“Our executive director Terri Favreau has already cooked five turkeys,” Burns said Friday morning. “She’s cooking another six. She has four or five huge hams that are defrosting right now. Everything will get sliced on Saturday and the hams cooked on Sunday morning.”
For the holiday meals the soup kitchen serves, they usually get around 300 people.
And this Sunday, the meal will be served to people at their tables.
“We believe that these are special occasions and that everybody deserves to be able to have a wonderful meal and have somebody serve them once in a while and so it’s nice to be able to do it,” Burns said.
The response from patrons is often humbling, and not just for special meals, Burns added.
“On a day-to-day basis they are very grateful for the service we provide and we are grateful to be able to provide it,” she said.
It takes about 15 to 20 volunteers just to prepare the meal and the Dew Drop Inn can always use more volunteers to help serve the meal on Sunday. Anyone looking to volunteer can show up Sunday at 2 p.m. and be put to work.
“The Dew Drop Inn could not survive without the volunteer base we have. It’s groups, church groups, clubs, schools. We operate totally on volunteers,” said Burns.
Easter Sunday dinner will be served starting at 2:30 p.m. and runs until there’s no more food left.
