A Lovin' Oven

Maybe you've thrown a dinner party for 25 people. How about for 250?

Across the nation, churches, charities and businesses are gearing up to provide a hearty Thanksgiving meal free of charge to the less fortunate. It takes a huge effort—donating the food, cooking, serving and cleaning up—to pull off these elaborate feasts.

Claudette Gilbert, 71, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, feels blessed to do her part.

For the past four years, she has contributed her homemade dinner rolls—some plain, some swirled with her famous caramel sauce—to the Eastside Church of Christ's Thanksgiving meal. The church serves dinner to 250 people.

But the tiny oven in Claudette's assisted-living apartment only fits a batch of 16 rolls, so she has to take some extreme measures.

"I wake up hourly the night before the dinner," Claudette says. She refuses to risk the freezer burn her rolls might suffer if she made the dough ahead of time. "I can't leave them once they start rising. You have to cook them once they're risen to a certain point."

Her mother "baked all the time" and was the one who taught her and her five sisters and brothers their way around a kitchen. While her mom's specialty was angel food cake, Claudette's family—and now her extended Thanksgiving family—always clamors for her delicious dinner rolls.

Want to make your own? Go for it!