Serving Meals at Asbury
Asbury United Methodist Church (101 West All Saints St.) is one of the oldest African-American churches in Frederick with roots dating back to 1818. They are asking for help with serving free meals to people in need with the goal of connecting recipients with various different community service agencies. The meals will be served on Tuesday evenings in the Asbury UMC Fellowship Hall.
UUCF has been invited to provide a meal at Asbury on 2nd Tuesdays.
- The meal should be ready to serve by 5:00pm. Rev. Groover will say a prayer to bless the meal before it is service. And the program typically concludes around 6:30pm. You would also be responsible for helping clean-up after the meal. (There are paper towels in the Asbury kitchen, but you may want to bring some kitchen towels with you as well.)
- You are welcome to prepare the meal in advance. Or you can also use Asbury kitchen either to cook or to heat up pre-prepared food. The kitchen has one long prep counter, 3 industrial sinks, 10 burner gas stovetop, two ovens, microwave, freezer, and fridge. The pantry has a lot of seasonings. Please be in touch with Asbury's pastor Rev. Mark Groover (443-392-2075) to arrange the time that you need access to the Asbury kitchen.
- There is a church parking lot less than a block away on Ice Street. There is a building with a mural directly across W. All Saints Street from the church. The parking lot is behind that building with the mural. The door to the kitchen is the last door on the S. Court St. side of the building. If locked, knock.
- Asbury will provide beverages, plates, cups, napkins, and utensils. Teams of approximately three UUCF members or friends will sign-up to provide a meal for approximately 40 people, spending approximately $50. (If each of the three UUCF Team Members contributes $20, that will provide a $60 budget.) Examples of successful meals Asbury has offered in recent weeks include:
- Sandwiches with lunch meat, rolls, and chips
- Spaghetti
- Sloppy Joes
- Hot Dogs
- Chili
- Little Cesar’s special coupon that discounted pizza sufficiently for budget
- Vegetable Soup
Previous Meal Ideas
- November 2018, Monica Greene, Barbara Schectman, Carol Gosnell prepared Vegetable Beef Soup: $13 for 72 dinner rolls and butter (Costco) + $19 for 6 lbs of ground beef (Costco) + $23 for stock, canned diced tomatoes (Costco), frozen vegetables, beans, and potatoes. = ~$55 Total. We served ~35 guests, including staff/helpers, and had almost twice as much food as we needed, even though some guests came for seconds. The church was happy to keep the leftover soup in the freezer for another night. It was fun to interact with members of the church and sitting to eat together. The guests were grateful and thanked each of us.
- December 2018, Pat Einhorn, Steve Einhorn, & Carol Antoniewicz served Hot Dogs, Baked Beans, Applesauce & Cake: We served b/w 35 - 40 people, including kids from the after school program.
- On Tuesday, January 8, 2019; Steve Ramburg, Tom and Marilou Barratt prepared pulled pork loin roast-half in juice, half in BBQ sauce and pineapple juice, rice, green peas and cake. Pork loin roast (18lbs) from Giant Eagle ($25), 10 lbs of rice ($5) and 13 lbs frozen peas ($14) from Costco, 4 cake mixes and frosting from Giant Eagle ($8 ) plus Sweet Baby Ray BBQ sauce and eggs = ~$60. Geoff Coleman came to help serve, clean up and prepare for next month. As the program had been closed during the holidays, Rev Mark said there were fewer people than usual-about 29 people. Many of them came back for seconds and about half took some food with them. Lessons learned: people preferred the BBQ meat, on the rice and the lemon cake to the chocolate. Left-overs were frozen for future meals: half the peas, about 2 qts of meat, about half the cake-left for the after school program. Only used 8 cups of rice-left the rest.
- February 2019, Geoff Coleman & Scarlet Fannin, Pat & Steve Einhorn served chili, cornbread, and cake for dessert for ~25 people.
- March 2019, the Mordans and Menkes prepared chicken stew (or pot pie), plus choc cake & ice cream for ~15 diners. (Rev. Groover says crowd is thin on days that are nice outside, as today was.) We spent $53. Were there cooking, serving, and cleaning up 3:00 - 6:30pm. We left all the extra food for Asbury to use for a future meal, which was their request.
- May 2019, Geoff Coleman, Scarlett Fannin, and Whitney Cruey served six pizzas from Costco (2 cheese, 2 pepperoni, and 2 supreme), five 11x9x2 tins of salad (iceberg lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, cucumbers, carrots, and cherry tomatoes w/ 2 bottles of dollar store ranch dressing and 1 bottle of Italian dressing), and 3 tins (same size) of Weis brand brownie mix, mixed and made at home. We also made lemonade from mix and sweet tea with supplies provided by the church. About 30 people attended, and the amount of pizza and brownies were good; however we only used about 2.5 tins of salad. Also in the future the pastor asked for suggested only bringing one kind of pizza.
- June 2019, Pat Einhorn & Steve Einhorn served ~50 people sloppy joes, mixed vegetables, watermelon, cookies & lemonade. Appeared to be a popular menu. The kids from the after-school program were our greeters & servers, they were terrific, and the clients seemed to enjoy interacting with them.
- July 2019, servers were Whitney Cruey, Cory Cruey, Darragh and/or Kylyn Goodwin.
- On Tuesday, August 13, ~40 people were there. Standard meal for us: sloppy joes, corn, applesauce & cookies.
- September 2019: Whitney and Kylyn Cruey served ~40. Menu: chicken and dumpling soup (9lbs chicken thighs, 6- 32oz cans chicken broth, 63oz cream of chicken soup, 2lbs celery, 2 lbs. carrots, 3lbs biscuit dough, 90 oz. frozen peas), canned peaches, and cookies. Iced tea and water. Luckily we brought paper bowls to serve the soup in because the church does not have any. Would recommend bringing a powdered drink mix (lemonade/ iced tea) and another side dish. Spent ~$45-50.
- October 2019: Marleen Brooks, Tom & Marilou Barratt served ~45 people: sweet chili on hamburger buns with coleslaw, brownies and lemon cake. Cost: $42.60 for 6 pounds ground beef 85%, 6 onions, 3 bell peppers, ketchup 2 x 50 oz, #10 can kidney beans (6 pounds). Lessons learned: we used two stainless steel kettles from home, one at a time hot from the kitchen range. This worked better than the warming aluminum trays with burners for heat. There were no leftovers.
- November 2019: Pat & Steve Einhorn and Janice & Stan Schlepp served 43 meals: usual menu of sloppy joes, corn, applesauce, cookies and iced tea. Two boys from I Believe in Me helped, they brought plates to clients and made sure people had what they needed; we appreciate their volunteering. Paper products are low, we brought paper plates, just in case, and needed to use them.
- December 2020: Geoff Coleman and Scarlet Fannin served the meal.
- January 2020: We had a small group of diners, maybe 15, Asbury has been closed for a couple of weeks for the holidays, Pastor Groover expects the group to grow. Janice & Stan Schlepp made spaghetti w/ meatsauce & peas for a vegetable. Pat & Steve Einhorn brought bread, apple sauce & cookies.
- March 2020: Marleen Brooks, Tom & Marilou Barratt served 30 people: baked beans, hotdogs / buns, coleslaw and cookies. (72 beef hotdogs from Costco, 64 hotdog buns from Costco, eight quarts of homemade baked beans using 4 pounds great northern beans other ingredients, several quarts of coleslaw from BBQ restaurant, several packages of cookies. We had more food prepared than what was needed, we expected 40 to 50 servings. Baked beans were prepared at home, canned and re-heated at Asbury. Leftovers retained at Asbury for future use by I Believe in Me.)
Tips from Previous Meal Teams
- We bring paper plates, just in case. Often we don't need them, but sometimes we do. So many people use that kitchen, supplies come & go.
- You are welcome to contact Asbury's pastor, Rev. Mark Groover (443-392-2075), to inquire about the previous week's head count in order to estimate how much food to prepare.
- Do as much prep work as possible at home and reheat at church. Keep it simple.
Sign-up
To sign-up, email .
Until further notice, this program is currently on hold due to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
The short link to this page is frederickuu.org/asburymeals.