My Pro-Kitchen Thanksgiving

My wife Joni loves working with Bono (not THAT Bono, the chef Bono, pronounced Bone-Oh) and Georgia, owners of Cielo Blu Restaurant in Carlton. Once again this Thanksgiving Cielo Blu was dedicated exclusively to serving Turkey Dinners with all the handmade trimmings, free to all comers, with donations cheerfully accepted to benefit Joseph's Storehouse and Share and Care -- two local food banks serving families in need in the towns of Yamhill and Carlton.

Executive Chef Bono was in the kitchen before sunrise, seasoning and roasting a plethora of plump poultry. There was hand made cranberry-orange sauce, freshly mashed red potatoes and toasted walnut & cranberry & apple stuffing. For desert -- the most amazing pumpkin pie ever, baked and donated by Tony of Quetal Creations (tonimacaroni123@msn.com).

My role in all of this: washing dishes. Lots and lots of dishes. And pots and pans -- including the ever popular "hotel pans" (like a casserole pan, only the size of an eastern seaboard state with baked-on foodstuff. Think Rhode Island that's been simmering gravy all afternoon). And glasses, coffee cups, silverware, ladles, cutting boards, and all the other various Land-Of-The-Giants cooking implements that are part of everyday pro-kitchen life in a real restaurant.

The last time I did this kind of work professionally it was legal to smoke in restaurants, so I was happy at least to find there were no cigarette butts on the plates buried in the leftover mashed potatoes.

We really didn't know how busy we would be, so Bono's regular crew was standing by, donating their time, letting us volunteer amatures trip over each other, but in case we got really busy, they could snap into action. Caesar, the regular dishwasher, turned over his space and let me figure it out, and maybe there was just a little twinkle in his eye as he was dropping off piles of dishes he didn't have to wash. He gave me a hearty handshake at the end of the evening, after I'd scrubbed the bejesus out of all those hotel pans and put them back where they belonged. There was a twinkle in his eye then, too, so maybe I did OK.

By closing time, $622 was raised for the food banks, a good time was had by all, and my delicate DJ hands could use a little moisturizer.