And tonight's meal is........

Tonight is our Thanksgiving meal. We serve it on Tuesdays because that's our night and it makes sense for continuity's sake. We don't have to make an announcement about changing days or times. Also, there's several good groups who come out on Thanksgiving Day and serve a meal to the folks downtown on the street, so we don't want to take away the Tuesday meal during that week. Plus, and I don't mean this to sound selfish, but it lets us do a good thing at Thanksgiving without having to do it on Thanksgiving day. Anyway.....

I mentioned in previous posts that we weren't going the Turkey route this year and that I wasn't sure what we'd do.
Well, we had a meeting of the minds last week and decided on Steak. It's not traditional for Thanksgiving but it's still a little out of the norm for us and special for the holiday. We collected a little extra money (and by that I mean some people were very generous to us), and we can swing it.

Believe it or not the biggest decision has been what kind of potatoes to serve. I can make a case for mashed or baked, hashed or new....I waffle on the most insignificant stuff sometimes.

You don't even want to know about me getting a new cell phone. I'll let you know when that matter of universal importance gets decided. Geez....

Talk to you later today. g

Tonight was cold!
(How cold was it?)

It was so cold...I saw a lawyer walking down the street with his hands in his own pockets! Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.(apologies to Johnny Carson)

It was the first really cold night we've seen this year. It's supposed to get down to 26 tonight but I don't know exactly what the temperature was when we were out tonight.

It was a chili and grilled cheese night for sure. We ditched the sweet tea for hot chocolate, too.

Lots of good folks around tonight
MICHAEL MICHAEL'S DAD STEPHEN J. BOGGS JON HILL JOHN ELLEN CAMERON LAURA SAM LIZ KIT TOM VARNO TERESA CHRIS TWIG JANE ANNA MARY ALAN RYAN RYAN MURPHY NICK ZACK me

Gonna be quick tonight. Feel like 700 lbs. of cement on a popsicle stick. Sinuses been draining yesterday and today. I'll have more about tonight tomorrow. Be good. Stay warm. g

..."He Taught a lot of kids how to make Tea."

And sometimes circumstances make the decision for you.


I hadn't decided what we would cook this week as late as 4:00. I was waffling leaning towards cheeseburgers, but I had to see if I could get enough buns. I went to the bread outlet and our friend there said all she had was the large 5" buns. I looked at them and knew the burgers we buy and cook would be dwarfed by those buns. She said "I have some sub rolls, though."


Ahhhhhhh....


A little one-stop shopping at Sam's and we were in business with meatball subs and macaroni and cheese!

There was a great crew in the kitchen helping out tonight.....
CHRIS MORGAN ANNA PRUDEN GOLD MEDAL CRAIG ANNA TOLAN BRIEN TERESA JOHN J.BOGGS JON HILL LIZ BAILEY DANIELLE HANNA JELENOVIC REBECCA SAMANTHA ALAN DALTON DREW DALTON DAVE LAURA MICHAEL NICK CANDACE ELLEN me

( Told you it was a great crew. )


Amy Long gave us a big pan of mac'n cheese and we added some more to it. We also had sliced pickles, banana peppers, cheese, and mayo for the sandwiches if they wanted it. It was a good meal and everyone seemed to enjoy it. There was also the added perk of having a little leftover so the crew could dig in when everyone was served and gone.

Altogether we probably saw 30 at the 1st stop and 45 at the second.

I think sometime this winter we're gonna serve Tomato Meatball soup. It's a complicated recipe. Throw a bunch of meatballs in Tomato soup.
But, like Lemon Pepper Chicken, the ease of fixing is inverse to the taste.

The mathematical equation would look like this:

(easy x quick)(redmeat + just about any cheese)= TASTES GREAT

Conversely:

(lots of directions + long time)(lots of vegetables)= BAD

I could graph this, also.



Quick Hits
Craig won a Gold Medal in Golf at the State Games last week, which of course, he proudly wore last night.

Twig was AWOL last night. He was in Charlotte, so we prayed for Charlotte.

Thinking about straying off the traditional Thanksgiving meal path this year and doing something a little off the wall. Maybe a Mexican meal. We could celebrate "El Giving de Los Thankos".


One of my former Laney students, Hanna Jelenovic, came and helped last night. It was good to see her. She was pretty fearless in the kitchen. Every time I looked up, she was helping somebody do something different.

The tea we make each week is so good that I'll be a little sad when it gets cold enough to switch over to Hot Chocolate. Fortunately, I have a lot of love in my heart for Hot Chocolate, too.

Anna Tolan puts together a devotional sheet for us every week. It covers 7 days and is designed so it can be folded twice and be read that way. Just about all of our friends take one. It's a great idea on her part. I like it because it's one more thing I can keep people busy with. "Here. Go fold these for me. Thanks".

When the dust clears and I'm outta here, probably the most accurate epitaph for me would be.......

I'm working on it.......

Had the day off. That was nice. Talked to three of my old Laney students from one class today, all at different times without them knowing I'd talked to the others. Kinda wild.

I've had, literally, a week's worth of crazy things happen in the last 24 hours. I gotta find time to get them posted, but time is tight lately.

Tonight went great. I could post for a solid hour but it's an hour I don't have so, I'll get up and get on it in the morning. But for now I gotta Peace Out, Girl Scout!

...our old Tuesday Night buddy Jim Morgan, that's who!

Lemon Pepper Chicken

Mashed Potatoes

Green Beans

Dessert

Sweet Tea/Water

That was the menu Chris Armstrong planned and cooked tonight for his Senior Project. He was responsible for getting it lined up and putting it all together. the only thing I did for this week was take some chicken out of the freezer today to thaw out. I stayed out of his way as much as I could and let him be the Ramrod in the kitchen, also. Twig got there late tonight so he really was in charge while I went to get the tables.

It rained tonight so we ate inside in Fireside Hall for our first stop. that's always an unexpected little event for our folks and it makes it feel more special, like it's a holiday. It's different to see our crowd sitting around tables. We're so used to being outside and hearing traffic and sirens.

I sent Chris upstairs around 8:20 and asked him to make the decision on how we would serve at the 2nd stop. Our options were: 1. business as usual or 2. make up carryout trays and hand them out. It was still raining so he made the call to make carryout trays and pass them out that way.

So that's how it went down. There's a element of fun to doing it that way because you assembly line it and everybody has a job and you get to cut up a little. At least I do.

Lemon Pepper Chicken (and any kind of baked chicken, for that matter) is one of those meals where the taste and the work needed to prepare are proportionally way off. I mean, you just put it on a pan, sprinkle the lemon pepper on it and put it in the oven. Take it out and eat it.

But man is it way, way, good!

The ones who would back me on this because they were here tonight are

Morgan Anna Brien Chris Dave J. Boggs Kit Michael Alan Mary Anna Tolan Laura Dan & Donna Armstrong Ryan me

Twig Sprig

I think I mentioned before about doing something other than a traditional Turkey meal when the Tuesday before Thanksgiving rolls around. I asked for suggestions and to date have received a grand total of zip, zero, nada, squadoosh, big honking nil so far. Thanks for the help.

Teresa wasn't here tonight because of a migraine. Pray that goes away.

Pruden and No-Goatee Craig weren't around tonight.

Several of the middle schoolers weren't around because they got back today from the Middle School campout around 4 p.m. and went home and crashed.

Hope everybody voted responsibly and well informed, to the best of their beliefs and convictions.

Speaking of voting, I was at someone's house last night and they had the 11 o'clock news on. (If you hear me say I saw the news on TV, you can assume I was at someone else's house. I never watch the news on TV unless it' s for a particular thing and even then rarely.) All of sudden they're showing Kay Hagen in town speaking to some Democrats at Whitey's (insert your own joke about that here) and who is sitting right beside her?

The President of the New Hanover County Democratic Party.....

That's me......Citizen Gary

Did you vote early?

I hadn't until last Friday. I left school and went to the downtown spot. I wasn't sure I would stay if it looked crowded, so I rolled through the parking lot to check it out. Lo and behold, there was a spot directly in front of the building. I parked there expecting someone to come out and tell me I couldn't park there, but no one did so I went on in.

Two workers at the door told me the wait was approximately an hour and forty-five minutes. I debated briefly about taking off and coming back Saturday morning, but I knew that wasn't happening, so I got in line.

And I'm really glad I did, because for the next hour and forty-five minutes I had a great conversation with the guy in line next to me. We started out talking about voting, and politics, and the process, etc. At some point the word "church" got used and I found out that he went to Port City and worked in the Children's program there. I told him I went to First Baptist and worked with the youth. The cool thing was that we didn't spend the rest of time talking about our churches, but instead it was a common factor that provided a jumping off point for a ton of other spiritual topics such as Christian authors, speakers, trends, and so on. He shared his tesitmony about coming to Christ as an adult and I told him mine about growing up in the church and accepting Christ at age 11. ( For those who don't know, I was a kid with a huge "drug" problem. I got drug to church every time they opened the doors.) It was a great way to kill the time spent waiting for our turn to vote.

It's a good thing the wait in line left me a good mood or otherwise the voting itself would not have. Some of the choices in front of me for offices were no win situations. I wish I could've checked "Neither. Let's do without and try again in a couple of years" (and I'm not talking about the presidential race). But on the whole, it was a good experience.

So not only did I exercise my right as an American to vote, I engaged in freedom of speech and freedom of religion at the same time!WHOO HOO! I was so full of it, I sang "I'm just a Bill" from the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons all the way home.