Honoring veterans focus of special dinner

MOSES LAKE - Under normal circumstances, Theresa Clement said her culinary arts class at Columbia Basin Job Corps would've had to decline with thanks, but these aren't normal circumstances.

A caller, who Clements said prefers to remain anonymous, contacted her last week with a proposal. The caller said she looked around and saw a lot of veterans, especially those who had fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and in her opinion "they were kind of forgotten about, in a way," Clements said.

The caller wanted to do something to show that someone remembers their sacrifices, and the ultimate sacrifices of those who didn't make it back. She proposed a special Christmas dinner for veterans at the Moses Lake American Legion, a really fancy spread, and wanted the Job Corps students to cook it.

"This person paid for it (the dinner) out of their own pockets," Clements said.

The catch was that the donor proposed a dinner on Pearl Harbor Day. Now, normally the culinary arts class would need a little more time to prepare for a first-class dinner. This dinner was going to be super top-drawer, really off the hook - prime rib, chicken cordon bleu, baked potatoes, salads. Normally the answer would've been thanks but no thanks, not enough time.

But Clement said yes, sign us up, even though this culinary class is pretty new to cooking school and totally new to the whole chicken cordon bleu thing. Of course Clement said yes, she said. "You know what? Look what they did for us. I don't think we can do enough for them," she said.

Not only did the class make dinner, they served it too, dressed in their best, full-dress chef uniforms. And they decorated the Legion hall Thursday afternoon.

"We were totally taken aback," said George Doles, commander of the Legion post. The dinner donors also are working with the Legion to improve and expand the building, and the construction is still ongoing.

The owners of Michael's on the Lake volunteered to cook the prime rib, but the culinary arts students made the chicken. And cordon bleu is pretty challenging. The cook has to cut the chicken (usually a chicken breast) in half, stuff it with ham and cheese, roll it back up and cover the roll with bread crumbs.

Stuffing is simple, right?

Not so much, when cooks are trying to bend chicken to their will. "Chicken is really difficult to work with," said Dominic Eckles, who was among the students cooking and serving Friday night.

"The cordon bleu is definitely the hardest thing to make so far," Eckles said. Eckles has already finished the welding classes, and decided to enter the culinary arts program because he wanted to keep going with his education.

But aside from wrestling with chicken, the cooking wasn't really that difficult, he said. A big job like that is really an assembly line, Eckles said. And a lot of the efficiency is due to the instructor, he said. "She (Clement) has a way of getting everything done really fast," he said.

Dinner was a hit for the veterans, who filled every table in the Legion. It was the first big dinner for the Job Corps class. "That in itself was a really cool experience," Eckles said.