COEUR d'ALENE - James Harris' day is like an episode of the reality television cooking show "Chopped," where chefs are given a mystery basket of goods and they have to create a three-course meal.

As the head cook for St. Vincent de Paul's dining hall, Harris has to get creative with the day's ingredients.

The dining hall provides dinners for 30 to 70 people every Monday through Friday. He also cooks for the men's shelter and the St. Vinny's warming centers.

"We serve about 18 people at a time, and rotate them in and out of here," he said, adding the dining hall is open to the public - not just residents of the shelters.

"We get men, women and children," he said. "And sometimes we'll get whole families stop in."

If planning the day's menu with limited ingredients isn't a tough enough challenge, Harris also has to estimate the number of people who are going to show up each day.

He knows who his regulars are and he checks the places where they usually hang out to get a feel for who might come to dinner.

Harris usually cuts it pretty close, but on occasion he will run out of food and have to start another meal.

"We tend to get more people at the end of the month," he said, explaining his low-income diners usually get food stamps or food from the food banks at the beginning of the month.

"We start seeing them when they start running out of those things," he said, adding he is expecting to see quite a few people in the next two weeks.

Harris said the dining hall does have a meager budget, but relies heavily on donated foods - especially around the holidays. He said donations of meat - particularly turkeys and chickens - are needed.

"Canned goods, too," he said. "We can use anything in a No. 10 can. They are easier to cook with, but we will take small cans too."

Harris, who has been cooking for St. Vinny's for just over a year now, said soon it will be adding a lunch service too. He hopes to have that up and running by late spring.

How did you get connected to St. Vincent de Paul?

I came to Idaho to help out a friend, but that didn't work out. So I needed a place for myself short-term. I needed a platform to work from, and I stopped by here and found a few things. I started helping them out and here I am.

Where do you call home?

I am a Navy brat, so I call the states home. I have lived all over the place, but both my parents are from New Jersey, so I guess that is the closest thing to home for me. I like California for the most part, but I really like it here too. The Northwest is really scenic.

How did you find yourself in Coeur d'Alene?

I was helping a friend, who had moved to Idaho but a little farther away. Coeur d'Alene was the only place with any support services. I needed some place to figure out where to go from.

So run me through your daily schedule. What do you do on an average day?

Well, I just kind of wing it. We rely very heavily on donations as far as the food side of things goes. So a lot of times I'll come in on any given day and assess what we have received recently and see what is going to go faster because you want to use that before you want to use anything else. If we have a lot of potatoes or a lot of rice, we will try and move that a bit. I try to keep a rotation going so people don't get bored with the food.

So you are always coming up with something new?

Pretty much. I am really good with soups. I like making soups, so I do a lot of that. I try and make spaghetti a couple of times a month, along with some of the other basics. Then I will try some new things. Last week we had a 50-50 like and dislike with the menu. I made borscht, but I also made stroganoff and pretty much everyone likes stroganoff.

You not only cook for the dining hall, but you cook for the warming centers too?

When the warming centers are opened, especially downtown, right now a lot of the churches are helping with the warming center in Post Falls, so they haven't needed it as much. But I make a bread pudding and I send a fresh soup down to Fresh Start Monday through Friday so that they have something there. That is one of the things I do in the morning and one of my co-workers takes it down there to them.

You also cook on the holidays?

We close to the public on Thanksgiving and Christmas but I make sure the shelters have meals and make sure that we have a meal for Fresh Start.

So you are open to the public year-round?

Yes. Anybody can come in Monday through Friday. Anybody that needs a meal is more than welcome. Men, women and children. We have a lot of college students that come in and senior citizens. It's hard to make ends meet for some of these folks.

Do you ever run out of food?

There have been a few times where - and I always have backup things - but there have been a few times where we have run out of food. And I have had to get something going pretty quick. We've also had special dietary needs a few times. There will be meals that we've made and when we found out they were coming we had to get something else started so they could eat.

So what time do you start your day in the morning?

I start fairly early because I am cooking for the shelter, but officially I start at about 11 a.m., but I am usually here much earlier because I am thawing meat that we are working with for the day and checking to make sure we have enough bread, milk and juice - stuff like that.

What time do you close up shop?

We stop serving at 6:30 p.m., then we clean up the dining hall and take the leftovers to the men's shelter. Some of them don't get off work until after the dining hall closes, but if we know they are going to be late, we'll make a plate for them, so they have something to eat when they get off work.

When do you start serving?

We start serving at 5 o'clock. When we do a special meal for Christmas we do a special meal a couple of days early so the whole community can have a Christmas dinner early and we did it from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Next week we will start serving Christmas dinner on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday but we won't be extending the hours. We will have a feast meal all three days to make sure everyone eats going into the holidays.

You've got to be gearing up for Christmas now, huh? Do you need any donations?

Yes, we could always use food. I actually have two people who are going to help me cook for the two shelters. One is a certified chef who came up here do something but it fell through. He is staying here as a platform until he gets things all squared away. We create food pantries in both shelters for people who are waiting to get food stamps or the food bank.

We want to make sure no one goes hungry.