Turkey for 273? That’s easy, here’s the recipe for success ...

With oodles of noodles at her disposal in the Greencastle Christian Church kitchen, Thanksgiving Outreach Dinner volunteer Pat Armitage helps prepare one of 273 meals the church distributed Thursday to community residents. Behind her, fellow volunteer Sarah Bond dips green beans as 50 guests dined in, 100 got meals delivered and others picked up their turkey and trimmings.

Banner Graphic/Eric Bernsee

The next time you want to whip up Thanksgiving dinner for a couple hundred of your closet friends, or feel compelled to invite the entire neighborhood over for turkey and all the trimmings, we’ve got you covered.

Well, not really “we.” But the good folks at Greencastle Christian Church who have been putting on their community Thanksgiving outreach dinner for longer than they can really remember.

The recipe is probably some part Betty Crocker. Some part Martha Stewart. And several parts Mary Anne Birt.

Making sure the kitchen is operating smoothly Thursday morning, Mary Anne Birt joins Scott Armitage (left) in preparing take-out containers for turkey and all the trimmings during preparations for the annual Greencastle Christian Church Thanksgiving Outreach Dinner. The volunteers helped 273 community members receive a free Thanksgiving meal.

Banner Graphic/Eric Bernsee

And Birt is perhaps the one with the best handle on how long the outreach dinner effort that annual feeds more than 250 members of the community has been ongoing.

As others around her fumbled for an answer in actual years, Birt drew on personal history in an attempt to figure it out.

“My daughter Lesli was 10, and she’s 33 now, so you do the math,” she suggested as she handed off another hot pan of turkey.

Dining in at Greencastle Christian Church for Thanksgiving dinner Thursday, Jody McCullough (seated, left) and Beth Petrarca of Greencastle are waited on by servers Misty Roll (standing, left) and Mary Jo Dove who just delivered their slices of pie to the table.

Banner Graphic/Eric Bernsee

So it appears Thursday’s event -- which fed 273 overall, including approximately 50 dine-in guests, 100 via meals delivered to 25 locations and more than 120 pick-up orders -- will go down as the 23rd annual dinner.

It will also go down as another smooth operation, whether it was Pat Armitage dipping up oodles of noodles, Sarah Bond ladling out green beans or Margo Wills topping the plate or carry-out container off with generous pieces of juicy turkey.

In all 55 volunteers took part in the annual holiday event at Greencastle Christian Church.

And while the human element is certainly central to this wonderful humanitarian effort organized by Tammy Newgent and others, the wow factor is really the ingredients and the numbers necessary to feed the masses.

For example, talk about big birds, turkeys totaling 81 pounds were cooked for the meal this Thanksgiving.

That mountain of turkey was accompanied by 13 pounds of stuffing and 18 pounds of mashed potatoes with 256 ounces of gravy.

Rolls totaled 288 in all, while an astounding 17 pounds of butter was utilized, no doubt for basting the turkey, buttering the rolls and perhaps even greasing the doorways to get the diners back out after such a feast.

Of course, no true Thanksgiving dinner would be complete without dessert, and the GCC dinner didn’t fall short there either with 46 pies being donated for the occasion.

With the rush winding down as the noon hour passed, Tammy Newgent looked at her notes and shared some highlights. Then, reacting to the notion that it seems like an immense amount of organization and work, she summed up the day with the comment, “We just love doing this.”

That, indeed, is the secret ingredient in this recipe.