Karen Sheek, long-time inhabitant of Cortez, will once again be stepping up as Kitchen General for the 24th annual Community Christmas Dinner at Montezuma County Annex on Christmas Day.
Sheek, along with an army of volunteers, will feed about 750 people at this year’s Christmas banquet.
“I’m just one of lots of people who are trying to work together,” Sheek says about the celebration, which was founded in 1986.
Sheek enjoys her life in Cortez and reaps just as much joy from giving back to the same community that has blessed her throughout the years.
“I have to say, by and large, I have had a pretty good life in Cortez,” Sheek says. “And I think sometimes people have a tendency to think, ‘Oh, you have to live in a glamorous locale to have a good life.’
“I think you can have a wonderful life wherever you are, as long as you have the right attitude and do what you can to make it a good life,” Sheek says.
Sheek has always been passionate about cooking and entertaining, both for intimate gatherings and large crowds like the Christmas dinners.
“I always liked the idea of catering. ... I love and enjoy entertaining in my own home when I have the time,” she says about how she eventually became a small-business owner. She has been the co-owner of Seas’nings Catering alongside Holly Thenall since 1998.
Sheek was inspired to pursue kitchen crafts by her mom while growing up in Phoenix.
“My mom could teach herself anything; she was a great cook, great entertainer,” Sheek says. “My mom was a very talented woman.”
Sheek built on her mom’s talents by studying home economics and library science and technology. (She has a bachelor of arts degree from Arizona State University and Masters in Educational Media from the University of Northern Colorado.)
“Home economics as a whole got us a wonderful education, because it gave us lots of experience in a wide variety of living skills that sometimes, I think, our people don’t have as much contact with as we did years ago,” she says.
Sheek and her husband discovered Cortez in 1975 when he was offered a job as a law-enforcement ranger at Mesa Verde National Park.
“The next year, I was a family consumer sciences teacher, and I got a job at what used to be the old junior high school,” she says.
Sheek worked in Cortez as a home economics teacher and school librarian for more than 30 years while raising her three children.
Sheek’s children are grown and have had to leave Cortez, which might be part of the reason why she will again volunteer for Cortez’s Christmas Dinner, she says.
She mostly enjoys volunteering for the dinner to share in the spirit of Christmas and to be surrounded by like-minded souls, she says.
“It’s a lot of work getting out that many meals, but it’s just a nice way to be able to connect with the community,” Sheek says. “Many of the volunteers have worked year-in and year-out and some are first-timers. And they just want to get out and do something nice for somebody else on Christmas Day,” Sheek says.
For several years, Sheek had been in charge of organizing Montezuma County Annex’s kitchen where the annual Christmas dinner donations fed hundreds of people.
“When (Diane and Kelly) Wilson said they weren’t able to do it, Mitchell (Toms) contacted me, and so I said I’d be happy to help out this year,” she says.
“If you are alone for the holidays; if you have guests for the holidays and you don’t have enough space in your home to entertain; if you just want to get out and see some people,” Sheek says, “no one is turned away.”
Besides the pleasure she gets from helping others, Sheek also seems to have a major sense of accomplishment from her co-ownership of Seas’nings.
“Holly (Thenall) and I, I think, would agree that we’ve been really, wonderfully pleased at how our business has progressed over the years,” Sheek says.
Sheek and Thenall have fun by serving their devoted and growing clientele base, which is made up of local businesses and residents. Sheek also enjoys their newest venture, Seas’nings at 319.
“Fixing food is a really creative thing,” Sheek says.
The new venue allows them to get more creative by catering more formal affairs, such as afternoon tea times, baby showers and luncheons, at their own venue.
“It’s given us a place to ... do fancier desserts that we don’t normally get to do when we’re off site,” Sheek says.
Sheek reminds locals that if they’d like to order a Christmas dinner to take home, or would like meals delivered, they should place an order ahead of time.
The Community Christmas Dinner’s leaders remind readers that volunteers and donations are still needed in order to continue in its tradition.
Three years ago, Cortez’s Christmas Dinner was in jeopardy of coming to a screeching halt, Sheek says. But the community banded together to continue to offer this extraordinary celebration in both the spirit of Christmas and in the spirit of Cortez’s myriad volunteers.
Reach Nathalie Winch at nathaliew@cortezjournal.com.
