I love the soup and salad ideas and a crusty bread and you will have a nice hot meal.
I noticed that chili wasn't mentioned. It is also a economcal meal to serve in this same way as above.
Our church sometimes serves a dish called haystacks. Basicly, it is a taco salad vegetarian style. It is tortilla or corn chips crushed onto the plate, spoon over this, cooked pinto beans with some of the juice, cooked white rice, shredded mild cheddar or longhorn cheese, heated canned chopped tomatoes (with some of the juice) and shredded lettuce for the top. You also offer a taco sauce to pour onto the top of the haystack.
It is a serve yourself style meal that you stack up as little or as much of everything onto the plate. It is a wonderful meal and you can't stop eating it. LOL!
This is a complete protien meal and very nutrious even though it doesn't have any meat. (Any legume, starch, and green together forms a perfect protien and is more digestable than meat.)
I hope you try it, I know everyone would love it.
I was wondering why your church doesn't have a pantry you could pull from donated by other members that wanted to help feed these people but couldn't participate in the actual act of making it. It really helps to put a call out for ingredients that you could have on hand for these meals. You might be surprised the responce you can get of the bags of groceries.