We helped out with Ora’s monthly luncheon for September – always the third Monday of the month. This was a big one for her and her San Fernando Seniors because September is Independence Day month and for 16 years now, each September she makes a real treat for them:  Chiles en Nogado – you can imagine how hugely time consuming the task of making 200 individual stuffed peppers could be!!!  All five of us got in on the fun this time…We met her at Costco on Sunday morning to help pick up the food donations and got to work preparing the meal for the luncheon the next day.

So we’re all loaded up and ready to go, and Ora’s car won’t start… we all have a good chuckle about it – can’t quite believe the timing of it – there is so much work to do and really no time for car troubles – Juan really thought it was super funny!   We pulled up our van and pulled out our jumper cables to see if we could get the battery going, assuming that was the issue… and it started right away!   Was a quick easy fix, thankfully!

We started by washing and preparing the boxes and boxes of donated strawberries and raspberries for the luncheon dessert.

The bin of green “stuff” on the table we’re sitting at is called Nopal (cactus), a Mexican staple.  It has been chopped and cooked.

Mansell and Linda, a fellow Canadian from Calgary, got the “awesome” job of peeling the charred Poblano peppers – each time they finished peeling a bag Mansell would ask if there were more… and after a while, he was afraid to ask… Ora continued to produce bag after bag of rested peppers to peel…there were 200 people to feed peppers to the next day!!

“Caught you red handed!!”  The kids had fun with the red stained hands they earned from all the berries they prepared!

Chris (another fellow Canadian from Calgary!) and I were lucky enough to learn how to prepare the peeled peppers to be stuffed.  We had to open a seam and pull out the seed bed and any “veins” (pith) with seeds… this is the stuff that makes the pepper so spicy.  I have learned that if you like a little spice in your dish, leave a few seeds… If you take them all out, the peppers themselves do have a bit of a kick, but are pretty mild.

Those of us taking out the seeds wore gloves just to be on the safe side to avoid burning skin.

The big pot is filled with the filling to stuff the peppers – Ora fed us lunch once the work was done – we got to try her Chiles en Nogado – they were delicious.  Ora’s were far better than the ones we had at the hotel in Valle de Bravo.  We had spent the day working and needed to get the kids home to finish a bit of homework and prepare for the upcoming week – but she wouldn’t let us go until she’d fed us!   🙂  (Not exactly a hardship as she is known to make better Mexican food than most Mexicans!  🙂   )

Here we are on the Monday at the church in assembly line serving the food.

 

The meal consisted of: Chiles en Nogado (the pomegranate and parsley topped bottom left corner of the plate), Nopal, Pesto noodles, broccoli, tuna.

Ora lights the candles for each of the Seniors celebrating a Birthday in September.  The whole church starts to sing  and they blow out their candles with a wish… was very emotional how important this part of the afternoon obviously is to them.  Ora always gives the Birthday “boys and girls” a gift and everyone enjoys cake!

 

The Seniors always go home with a bag of food (usually breads, drinks, fruit or whatever else is part of the donated food items that month).   Once we are all done and packed up, Ora delivers plates of food from the luncheon to all the security guards in her gated community.