Our Biggest Feast Yet! God’s Love Delivers 12,000 Meals on Thanksgiving

With the turkey delivered and pies gobbled up, we are extremely proud to say that Thanksgiving at God’s Love We Deliver was a smashing success! Thanks to you, after months of planning, weeks of prepping, and days of cooking, we cooked and home-delivered 12,000 Thanksgiving feasts for our clients, our largest feat yet! 

Did you know it takes 9,920 pounds of turkey, 1,364 gallons of soup, 203 gallons of gravy, 6,200 pounds of vegetables, 2,232 pounds of stuffing, and 2,232 pounds of yams to make our Thanksgiving feast? 

Our menu was extremely special this year! Our delicious Thanksgiving feast included: Winter Squash Bisque, Roasted Turkey Breast and Gravy, Sweet Potato Mash, a Vegetable Medley of Parsnips, Brussels Sprouts, Carrots, and Pearl Onions, and Apple Cranberry Sauce. New on this year’s menu is Cornbread Stuffing by Culinary Council member Chef Amanda Freitag as well as Crustless Pumpkin Pie with Graham Cracker Crumble featuring Cocoa & Spice blend by Chef Dorothy and New York spices company Burlap & Barrel. 

(Check out when Chef Amanda spent some time helping us chop and prepare for Thanksgiving in our NY1 story with Roger Clark!) 

We kept the love growing close to home with each meal containing sustainable, organic ingredients. A special thank you to Heermance Farm for donating more than 5,000 pounds of vegetables for our Thanksgiving feasts! 

This year, our Thanksgiving deliveries were up 30% compared to 2021. Thanks to our #CelebrateWithAPlate campaign, we were once again able to deliver our clients’ families, caregivers, and guest meals as well so that no one had to spend the holiday alone.   

We thank our neighborhood distribution centers, like Industry City in Brooklyn and the Blessed Sacrament Church in Manhattan, for so generously providing us with their space from which we should distribute our meals to volunteers. 

 Thanksgiving is a special time to volunteer in the kitchen at God’s Love We Deliver. We are lucky that our elected officials join us year-over-year to help prepare meals for their constituents. This year we were welcomed Councilmembers Crystal Hudson, Erik Bottcher, Chris Marte, Carlina Rivera, Gale Brewer; State Senator Brad Hoylman; Assemblymember Harvey Epstein; Culinary Council member Amanda Freitag; God’s Love Board members Jonathan Railoa and Pedro L. Rodriguez and Development Committee member James Palazza. We were also honored to work with fashion designer Marc Jacobs and his husband Char Defrancesco.

Check out our epic lip sync parody of “One Day More” from the Broadway classic Les Miserables to see what went on in and around the kitchen to prepare for Thanksgiving!

We delivered a special holiday meal to a shelter for unaccompanied minors –children who have been detained by immigration without their parents who are often fleeing violence. 

This is our fourth year providing this special meal, and we were asked once again to deliver treats that “taste like home.” With dishes like Pupusa de Cerdo (Pork Pepusa); Pepian de Pollo (Chicken Stew); Arroz con Frijoles (Rice and Beans); Tres Leches (Three Milk Cake); and Gaelleta de la Abuella (Grandma’s Cookie), we were proud to have brought a little bit of home – and a lot of love – to these children during the holiday season. 

Watch our meals come to life in our reel below.

 

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A special thank you to the to AES NYC – Absolute Event Solutions, Atlas Print Solutions, GSS Security Services, Inc., NV Events, and Sound Investment for making a holiday donation to God’s Love. During Thanksgiving week, your teams then doubled down on your support of New Yorkers in need by purchasing turkeys and distributing them with our friends at Food Bank For New York City.

You helped give our clients so much today. Our clients received full turkey dinners and sweet pumpkin crisps. They received holiday gift totes with snacks, a dental care kit, and a personal care bag. Thank you to our gifting sponsors The Krumholz Foundation, the Binn Family Foundation in loving memory of Penny Binn Binstock, The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, L’Oreal USA and OUT@Loreal, Stewart Lantner DDS & Joseph Goldberg DDS, BACCARAT, and Bed Bath & Beyond.