....you would've been slam out of luck, jack!

Tonight was a gorgeous night, especially considering how nasty it looked for a good part of the day. The daylight stayed for a while, there was a nice breeze carrying the small of frying fish up and down Fifth and Market, we had good help in all the right places,....tonight went really well.

Remember last week how I raved about how great the Big Metal Pancake Maker worked? Turns out it doubles as The Big Metal Hush Puppy Maker, too! Who knew? We made the best Hush Puppies in the world tonight! We made a ton of them. We used eight bags of Hush Puppy mix, provided by Robin Manning (Robin is wonderful and tries to help us every week. See previous blogs). Each bag would make about 200 hush puppies. We didn't count, and truth be told, some of them were a little bigger than normal, but we used it all and had a cooler full. Passed out every doggone one of them too. Gary McKnight was the one in charge of O.H.P.O. (outdoor hush puppy operations) tonight, so if you see him, tell him good job.

I want to use the Big Metal Pancake/Hush Puppy Maker every week and just find new things to cook. Turn it into the Big Metal (Insert some new food here every week) Maker and just deep fry or cook stuff on the griddle all the time.

Twig and Eric and Candace did a nice job on the fish. Ryan Carr did a great job running between the outside crew and the indoor crew with materials and anything else asked of him. Ryan is a good guy and a big help. He has been coming consistently as long as anyone outside of Twig, Jim Morgan, and me. And he's only a Jr. in High School. Thank you, Ryan.

The lineup tonight was :
Twig
Eric
Candace
Tom
Ryan
Bryan
Theresa
Chamberlain
Clay
Pruden
Craig
Gary McKnight
Me

We served
Fried Fish
Corn on the cob
Hush Puppies
Slaw
Dessert
Tea / Water
The fish was a mix of Flounder, Drum, Pompano, and Whiting. It was good and lots of our friends made it a point to say special thanks for the food tonight.

It started a little different tonight. We only had 7 people show up to eat at the first stop in front of the church. That's very low, but, today is the 1st of the month. A lot of the folks we see at that stop get a check or some type of aid at the first of the month and so for whatever reason, we don't see them. It's not automatic that numbers are low around the 1st, but it is a pattern. A couple of the folks serving commented that we had cooked bunch of fish and hadn't had a big turnout so far. I told them I would be surprised when the night was over if we had any left over at all.

We got to the Mercy House and proceeded to serve nonstop for 30 minutes. Every last piece of fish and every Hush Puppy. All together, we passed out at least 75 1st time plates and probably 30 plates of seconds. No food or Hush Puppies left at all. Most of the time there's a little something left over and some of the servers will have at it. Not tonight. Craig was the only one who got any fish ( but that's because we love Craig).

For the past 3 weeks there has been a gentleman named Jonathan come through the line at the Mercy House. Jonathan is deaf and mute. The Mercy House guys appear to look after him and help him, but tonight several of our folks mentioned how their hearts went out to him and his condition. We mentioned him specifically as we prayed before leaving tonight. As you pray, if you could remember him and his needs throughout this week, that would be great. As we find out more, I'll let you know.

Kerry Taylor's Sunday School class is going to come in two weeks and do the meal with us (he doesn't actually own the class but I can't remember the official name of it). They're going to stay all night too, not just cook it and bolt. That's how you get the full benefit of it ,I think. The time spent preparing and cooking is as good and spiritual of a time as any I spend during the week. Then, when we're out serving and interacting with our friends, God blesses us again in a new and cool way.

Don't get me wrong - if you can only stay for a short amount of time, that's fine. We'd love to spend it with you, and it would be a great service and help.
But, if you can, it's good to go all in and see it through to the end.

And most of the time, if you stay all the way to the end, we'll probably have a little bit left over if you're hungry and want to have some of what we made. But not tonight. If you wanted some leftover fish tonight.....