Community dinner

PORTALES - A little bit of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and cranberry sauce. A little slice of dessert. And a few volunteers.

Actually, make that a lot of everything above, and one dinner roll per serving. The recipe worked out again, as it now does every year in Portales' Memorial Building.

Organizers expected they'd serve around 500 free meals throughout the community on Thanksgiving Day. The outreach event is in its 18th year, with people eating on-site, volunteers covering all points in Portales to deliver meals and the west portion of the building dedicated to a coat drive.

"The volunteers were great," said Veda Urioste, one of the longtime organizers. "We had plenty of people to deliver. It worked out really well, like it always has."

Urioste said she had concerns early Thursday morning, when there was snow falling and most vehicles had a small layer of ice and snow. "The show would have gone on," in any weather, Urioste said, but she felt relieved and blessed things had warmed up a little bit.

Dolores Gutierrez was one of two volunteers manning the dessert table. She was eyeing a slice of an apple dessert for herself, but wanted to make sure everybody else got their pick of sweets first.

With her husband Adam across the building dishing out turkey slices, Dolores said volunteering at the meal is one of their favorite things to do around the holiday because of the people it helps.

"It's for the elderly," Gutierrez said. "They don't have anybody that cooks for them. We enjoy serving the people. When our family is somewhere else for Thanksgiving, we come to help."

Organizer Joe Parie had a simple method to determine how many meals had been served. Since every meal gets one roll, he counted the rolls remaining and subtracted it from the starting tally to reach his estimate of 500. He couldn't give a count on people fed, because some people are delivered multiple meals to cover the entire day and some of the dine-in guests come back for another helping.

The best part of it?

"All of it," said Ronnie Mitchell after finishing off his plate. "Every bit of the meal was just great."

Sherman Pope, visiting with Mitchell, concurred.

"Even the dessert was good, and I wasn't supposed to have any," Pope said. "They put on a good feast. I'm glad they can do it."