A holiday meal for everyone

They loaded their cars and vans, then drove them away from Evelyn Cheatham's kitchen into the steel gray light of Christmas Day, bound for tables around Sonoma County.

To Petaluma and Sebastopol, Santa Rosa and Sonoma they drove, bearing 400 gourmet meals prepared by dozens of volunteers.

The dinners went to private homes of people in need, to homeless shelters, to houses for battered women, to anyone whose name had been given to Cheatham as someone who needed a good Christmas meal.

That's the only criterion.

"If a meal will make someone happy - then we're on," said Cheatham, a chef who started the tradition 17 years ago.

More than 60 people, most of them friends and many who have joined in for years, filled Cheatham's commercial kitchen in Windsor Saturday through Monday, preparing turkeys and hams, roasted vegetables and salads (33 turkeys, 43 hams, 75 pounds of carrots).

It's a tradition no one wants to let go. Cheatham, 53, moved to New York for three years in the 1990s, but returned every year for "The Meal," as it has come to be known.

"Friends wouldn't let me stay away," said Cheatham, who runs Worth our Weight, a food service training program for underprivileged youth.

She contacts her friends, many of whom are in the food services industry, in early December. This is what we need this year, she tells them.

People respond as they are able. This year, one friend said money was tight and gave $20. Another friend said money was tight and gave $150. That's why it works, Cheatham said: Everyone gives what he or she can.

"I'm not rich; I don't have a lot," she said. "But as a people, we have an awful lot to give."

Then word goes out, among her friends who work in social services, in radio spots and in newspaper columns. The names come rolling in.

Three years ago she prepared 175 meals. Last year, it was 400, as with this year. This year, meals were sent to Novato, too, the first time they've been requested outside the county.

One name suggested this year was for someone in Healdsburg's Dry Creek Valley; that call brought with it a lesson, Cheatham said.

"I had to go through a few minutes of thinking, 'Wait a minute, that's my neighborhood, there's no one in need out there,'" she said. "Then I had to say, 'Wait a minute, if someone asks for food, they need it.'"

The vans and cars leave the kitchen, bearing warmth.

"I try to clear my thoughts," said Carrie Brown, readying to take dinner to Petaluma for a family of 12. "I think about the true meaning behind what I'm giving, a gift of love from the county."

Brown, who owns Geyserville's Jimtown Store, has delivered The Meal for several years. As she and others describe them, the moments of delivery can often be an encounter with life's realities in a way far removed from the gauzy glow of a Hallmark holiday.

Last year, said Brown, she delivered the dinner to a women's shelter: "It was really, really difficult, because no one could make eye contact," she said. "Which is why I say I have to clear my thoughts. It's important to be in the mode of giving, and not to think about anything else."

On Monday, Dan De Serpa, 35, of San Rafael, returned from delivering meals in Santa Rosa.

The first was for a woman on her own, with emphysema, still smoking, and "overwhelmed" at her gift of a meal. The other was for a family of four, down on their luck and "obviously very proud," he said. The father tried his hardest to pay De Serpa for the food, he said, telling Cheatham the story.

"When we take this food out, it's so people can feel rich - rich enough to invite someone over," Cheatham said.

De Serpa, his eyes still red-rimmed, said he cried after both deliveries.

"It changes Christmas," he said. "It's so humbling, it just puts things in perspective. "