A Cold Night for Hot Chicken

Seattle is experiencing record low temperatures. Hopefully our meal on Friday gave customers some comfort before they headed back out into the elements. One guy said he was going to ride the train and I asked him what he’d do when the trains stop running at 2AM and he said “get on a bus, I guess.” Our organization also provides hats, socks and hand warmers, plus referrals and transportation to shelters, of course.

The good news is that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority expanded cold weather shelter capacity to 200 at the Seattle Center and 185 people took advantage of that on Friday, and Sound Transit opened up Union Station to be used as an emergency shelter through January 16. The lobby of a giant train station is definitely going to be drafty but it’s much better than risking death by being outdoors.

The last time I was at Union Station (recently deceased) Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen was playing guitar at a Christmas party for one of his companies. The guy could shred, but was not great at business. If he had held on to his Microsoft stock instead of diluting his holdings to create “Paul Allen’s wired world” his sister, Jody, would now be the second richest person in the world or close to it. Jody was in the news this week because she fired Mike Holmgren, the 72-year-old coach of the Allen-owned Seattle Seahawks. Mike (all us rich and fabulous people are on a first name basis) took the Seahawks to two Super Bowls and won one of them.

Some of our customers for dinner service live upstairs in our senior housing. They have two kitchens up there too.

For this meal I trimmed chicken thighs the day before and marinated them in garlic (the kind in a jar - we take what we can get) and spices in the bus tubs I use for food bins. We get a lot of chicken thighs (the most undesirable part of the chicken, in my opinion) and two 40 pound cases came out to 150 pieces (the number of customers we serve each night) plus another 25 extra pieces. I made my famous jo-jo potatoes and dusted them with curry and chili powder this time. Found some pre-cut bok choy mix at Food Lifeline and heated that up in chicken broth to make sure it was safe. We had fruit salad and when we ran out of that fruit cups. Plus our usual assortment of donated/expired cakes, cookies. We also usually give out sandwiches for people to take with them.

Comfort food is a small comfort when it’s ten degrees outside.

—Alex

UPDATE: I didn’t ask for Substack to put a “pledge your future subscription” button at the bottom of every email post and I think I fixed the problem. Nirvana Wok is free and will always be free.