A hot lunch that's local

Jackie Calhoun, left, and Peg Snaza-Alexis prepare salads for the weekly Friday Lunch Bunch at the Wolf Creek Grange at North Powder.

By LISA BRITTON
For the Baker City Herald

NORTH POWDER — June Bauck slices fresh cucumbers and cherry tomatoes to toss in the salad, while the salty scent of baking parmesan fills the air.

She peeks in the oven, checking on those upside-down potatoes baking in cheese, and enlists help from Jackie Calhoun to help put a slice of pineapple on each pork steak.

Bauck checks the clock — less than 30 minutes until the lunch crowd arrives — and asks Calhoun and Peg Snaza-Alexis to start dishing up the salad.

This is The Lunch Bunch, a meal offered at noon every Friday at the Wolf Creek Grange in North Powder.

The price is $3, and all ages are welcome.

Previously this weekly meal was provided to senior citizens by Community Connection out of La Grande.

Those meals came Friday morning, and volunteers reheated everything for lunch. Then the program changed, requiring someone from North Powder to pick up meals in La Grande on Thursdays, and then cook everything Friday.

A few months ago, the North Powder volunteers decided to take on the meal, offering a homemade lunch for all ages.

“I have menus made up through the end of the year,” Bauck said. “And it costs three dollars. For everybody, not just seniors. And every once in a while, we have live music.”

Friday’s menu was oven-baked pork steak, upside-down baked potatoes, fresh salad, bread and homemade lemon meringue pie.

This week’s offering is barbecued chicken, special potatoes, mixed salad with Dijon vinaigrette and millionaire pies.

“Real home food. No mixes. I don’t believe in them,” Bauck said.

She’s been cooking for more than 50 years, and has worked at restaurants and a logging camp.

“I did my first 10-course meal when I was ten,” she said.

When The Lunch Bunch started, she scoured her cookbooks for recipes, and has been incorporating fresh local produce from gardens. The breads and pies are donated each week.

“Each time we’ll have a different salad and bread,” Bauck said.

Then she flips through her menus, pausing on a dessert.

“This one’s coming up — double peanut butter fudge pie.”

Bauck prepares enough food for 30, which is the largest crowd they’ve had so far. Each week she makes the meal, and other volunteers rotate helping — Calhoun, Snaza-Alexis, Joyce Lawyer, Barbara Campbell, Bev Bigler and Susanne Watson.

The volunteers clean up the Grange, set tables, and help serve.

“We help wherever we’re needed,” Campbell said. “June’s usually the cook.”

She said the community has responded well to the change.

“They say the food is much better,” she said. “And we’re getting people who didn’t come turn out before because it said ‘senior.’ And they like to visit — it’s a great place to gather.”

Bauck said she welcomes fresh produce from local gardens, which she needs by Wednesday. Monetary donations are welcome as well — the $3 cost is how they buy food for the meals.

For more information about The Lunch Bunch, or to donate vegetables, call Bauck at 541-898-2149.