Every year, at the end of summer or the beginning of fall, Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska holds its annual "Bountiful Harvest Banquet" in Hastings, at which we honor a volunteer or a group of volunteers that have exhibited the love of Christ for their neighbors in an extraordinary way.
This is a dinner that started years ago as a ‘pot-luck’ and is now held at the Hastings City Auditorium. It is a similar dinner to our annual "Celebration of Caring Banquet." It has grown tremendously in that we now have between 300 and 400 people attending. After dinner, during the program portion of the evening, we are able to inform those attending how Catholic Social Services has helped needy individuals and families with their help.
For the last several years I have offered a gourmet dinner as an auction item. The winning bidders in 2012 were Tom and Mary Lieske of Minden and Neal and Susan Hoff from Hastings. At the time of the auction, I gave them a choice of Italian, Spanish or Czech fare. They chose Italian. On Saturday, April 6, I traveled to Minden with my secretary and her husband Pat and Dave Walbrecht with a vehicle full of prepared and partially-prepared food and spirits.
Our first course was an antipasto platter of bleu-cheese-stuffed olives, kalamata olives, pickled mushrooms, applewood smoked gruyere cheese, Italian salami, genoa salami and pickled herring. Our second course was minestrone soup which was started at our main CSS kitchen and finished at Tom and Mary’s. The third course was a three-cheese ravioli with bolognese sauce. Next came a wonderfully delicate tiramisu served with Christian Brothers Port, ending with a colorful and exotic fruit tray of Korean pear slices, mango slices, pineapple chunks, black and red grapes, strawberries, clementine sections, raspberries and espresso with assorted chocolate-covered coffee beans. I am quite confident that after all was said and done, everyone involved skipped their regularly scheduled midnight snack.
I would like to thank once again all of our corporate and individual donors to our annual Bountiful Harvest Banquet as well as Tom and Mary Lieske, and Neal and Susan Hoff for purchasing this dinner. With your help we were able to help the many individuals and families that come to us on a daily basis. Who knows who will be bidding on the next dinner? I am already planning possible menu items.
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