A typical turkey for Thanksgiving meal takes about 1-2 days thaw, 1 hour to prepare and season, 4 hours to cook and about 20 minutes to consume. Now imagine planning, prepping and cooking a Thanksgiving feast for over 350 hungry stomachs (which is an estimated 22 turkeys!). It is possible and it has been done, in fact it has been a tradition at The Bridge for the past 18 years provided by The Bridge’s Director of Food Services, Sydell Bryant. This year over 350 meals were distributed to client’s agency wide including the delivery of meals to our ACT teams, apartments and residences across the four boroughs as well as a Thanksgiving feast in the cafeteria at The Bridge headquarters. This year’s menu featured turkey, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, candied yams, collard greens, cranberry sauce, rolls, apple pie and pumpkin pie; contributions from City Harvest and a grant from the United Way NYC helped make this vast selection of food possible. Sydell begins planning months in advance and starts preparing the meals two weeks ahead of time with the help of Edna Terry, and a team of 8-10 clients in the food service vocational program. Another veteran of this tradition is Vice President of The Bridge Board of Directors, Al Mayas who like Sydell has never missed a Thanksgiving. This year he brought his two daughters to help serve the meal alongside The Bridge staff.

We have much to be thankful for this holiday season such as the hard work and dedication of our staff exemplified by Sydell, the fact that our agency continues to grow during these hard economic times as well as all of the support from our donors, government funders, foundations and corporate and business sponsors. We hope your Thanksgiving was as fulfilling and delicious as ours.

A special thank you goes out to Eric Talbert, The Bridge's Development Manager for submitting these photos.