At just a little after 6:00 PM on Friday evening, November 21, it was already beginning to look as though there wouldn’t be enough turkey for everyone, but most of the seats were full at the Broken Bow Municipal Building for Friendsgiving.
Beth Ottun, owner of Ollie’s Coffee and Boutique and Friendsgiving organizer, estimated at least 400 full Thanksgiving meals had been served by the end of the evening.
“I bought 500 plates. And all we have left is less than 100,” said Ottun.
Of course, pulling off a meal for 400+ doesn’t come easy. Fundraising and collection of donations from numerous generous sponsors had been ongoing for weeks. In addition, just over $1,000 was raised through a free-will donation at the door to help cover the cost of food for everyone as hungry guests arrived.
Cooking up the Thanksgiving dinner also started well in advance.
“We’ve actually been cooking for a couple of days,” said Ottun. “We started kind of doing some of it up ahead of time because we did do 14 turkeys all together. So we did a lot of the last few days. And then today we just filled all the roasters and we had a crew that came through and they kind of helped assemble all of the casseroles and everything and then baked it all and had an amazing serving line and got it off.
When asked about the support for the Friendsgiving dinner, Ottun expressed her gratitude for the local community.
“Just how awesome our community is and coming all together and just, you know, everybody’s genuinely just thankful and so happy to be together. We’re just glad to be a part of it.”
In the end, there was plenty of turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries, pie and friendship for all.
