Story Photos
 Vera Saverchenko slices vegetables for a Russian dish she's making for the fundraiser dinner at the Victory Center in Kelso. Monday's meal includes Russian salad, borscht, plov, mashed potatoes and tephtely. Photo by Greg Ebersole / The Daily News.
|
Offering plates: Fundraiser to help Kelso ministry continue nourishing body and souls of area's downtrodden
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11:40 AM PST
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleYou can feed the body, you can feed the soul, and sometimes you get to do both at the same time. That’s the goal Monday at the Victory Center in Kelso.
The Christian mission will serve an evening meal of authentic, robust Russian food to help support its goal “to reach the lost and broken-hearted in our community,” as a flier for the dinner says.
“We offer food and shelter for an hour of so,” said Mark Larsen, who runs Victory Center with his wife, Rochelle. “Kids come in here after school to play basketball. Adults come in for a cup of coffee and a hot dinner.”
From 30 to 40 people drop by for a warm meal from Tuesday through Sunday, Rochelle said, with Fridays often drawing 60. Twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, the Center holds “denomination-breaking” worship in front of its stark sanctuary wall, painted with two huge images of Christ’s open hands gushing blood.
Victory Center’s name and mission focus on the homeless and addicted.
“Our aim is to restore the lives of people on the street,” Mark Larsen said, “and give them hope.”
Feeding the hungry takes money, and the Larsens’ work is paid by donation.
That’s why the Russian dinner won’t be free.
The Center needs to let its Kelso neighbors, including church and community leaders, know what it’s doing, said the Larsens, who took over leadership after two other couples bowed out over the five-year history of the storefront ministry.
The cavernous facility, with a kitchen along one side and sanctuary on the other, has enlisted the culinary talents of member Vera Saverchenko, who with her relatives will cook the menu for the Victory Dinner: Russian salad, borscht, plov, mashed potatoes and tephtely, and an intensely flavored fruit drink.
Saverchenko grew up in northern Russia and southern Asia, in a family of seven boys and seven girls. She learned to cook from her mother, Luba, using whatever the family had grown, canned or dried.
She still cooks every night, although most of her own nine children are grown up now, Saverchenko said.
“For borscht, I use beets, cabbage, carrots, onion. Meat, it depends.”
If she’s making plov, or rice pilaf, “I always take a chicken and bone it, Saverchenko said. “I use the bones for the broth and the chicken for the plov. You don’t have to have meat everywhere.”
Some cooks like a sweet-and-sour taste to their borscht, so they might replace fresh cabbage with sauerkraut, the Longview woman said. “Ask every Russian woman, she’ll give you a different recipe. They use whatever they have.”
In the United States, she added, ingredients are available year round. “Over there, once you run out of fresh,” you use whatever’s at hand.
In Russia, Saverchenko sliced ingredients by hand, “and tried to keep it nice.” Now, she’s proud of the sturdy, manual slicer she found at the Goodwill, brand new and in its box, for $5.
Deep red beet sticks and delicate slivers of cabbage fall from the slicer.
“It’s beautiful,” Saverchenko said. “I love it. With your hands, you cannot make it all even and nice.”
Tephtely, which is served with mashed potatoes, is a meatball dish made from rice, ground beef and spices, including salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes, she said. A tomato sauce made with heavy cream goes over the meatballs and potatoes.
Saverchenko said she cooks with bay leaves, peppers, dill and parsley.
“It makes it beautiful, I think, all that green.”
The salad, which goes by the name vinaigrette, is another hearty staple containing cabbage and boiled beets --- along with potatoes, peas, kidney beans and pickles.
“We didn’t have much of celery, spinach and soft green lettuces over there, but I think now it may be changing” in her native country, Saverchenko said.
For a winter pick-me-up, she will boil fruits, including fresh apples and pears, frozen berries, and plums she froze from her own fruit trees. Saverchenko adds a little sugar and cools the homemade drink. “My family prefers it over any juice or pop.”
She said her sisters-in-law will help cook Monday night,
She’s happy to do the work, Saverchenko said, because she’s moved by what she sees at the Center.
“My life changed completely when I came here,” she said. “I see more the need of this community. These people on the street are precious people. They are just lost and they need help. Every time I see it, it makes me cry. And I want to spend more time here. ...
“It is my worship place also.”
Monday evening’s fund-raiser will include a one-hour service followed by the meal, for a suggest donation of $10 per person. The Larsens, who have a two-month-old son, Josiah, said their work at Victory Center is their only job, so they are also hoping to meet church groups or individuals willing to donate monthly to the mission.
What: Victory Dinner
Where: Victory Center, 401 S. Pacific Ave., Kelso
How much: $10 per person
To find out more: Call Mark or Rochelle Larsen, (360) 562-6675.
Louie wrote on Feb 13, 2008 12:50 PM:
Clinton L. Riley wrote on Feb 13, 2008 3:58 PM:
"
Kelsoian wrote on Feb 14, 2008 8:38 AM:
alla wrote on Feb 14, 2008 6:58 PM:
Past Month's Most Commented Stories