....At the same time? I'll pass. Thanks anyway.

First off, Jason and Jade were back tonight. They are the 2 kids I mentioned last week that came and ate with us. They weren't there at first but once we set up and I went about halfway down the line to say grace, I saw Jade poke her head out from behind a lady. I said "Jade! Jason! Hey!"

And Jade came up and hugged me.

Second time she'd ever seen me in her life and she hugs me. Amazing.

She had on a coat too big for her but she was warm and that's good.

I sent them on to the front of the line and nobody minded...... or was dumb enough to show that they minded.

I found out a little more about them this week. The woman they were with said she was a friend of their mom's and that they'd wanted to come back this week to see us and because they were hungry. She said they lived about 3 1/2 blocks away. Jade said she went to Snipes Elementary and Jason went to Virgo Middle. They both came back for seconds and we gave them some more dessert to take home.

They seem like such good kids. I hope they are and that everything I was told is on the up and up. Still not sure about the mom/dad/house thing but we'll see. The best thing is to just keep inviting them back and doing what we can for them on Tuesday nights.

Told you about the turkeys we got last week. Well, they take up a lot of space in the freezer and we have been filling up the freezers so I decided we'd go ahead and use some of the turkeys and try to make a little room. I thawed out six of them for tonight.I had left school a little early because I was going to try and get them on the grill by three and give ourselves plenty of time to get them cooked and carved. We were going to get the pig cooker fired up and put them on that but that didn't happen so .....

between 2 and 3 I got all six turkeys out, pulled the innards, patted them dry, rubbed 1 with lemon pepper, 3 with Cajun spice, and 2 with nothing but Texas Pete. I cut the ovens on and put all 6 in about 3:30.

My man Alton Brown (check out Good Eats on Food Network - great show!)

says most people cook turkeys too long- that's why they're dry.He recommends 400 degrees for about 30-45 minutes then cut it back to 350 and go 'til they're ready. so I did.

They popped up about 5:45. I pulled them and let them sit until 6:15, then we started cutting and pulling.

The plan was to serve it as an open faced sandwich, sorta.

We'd put 4 points of toast on the plate, cover it with turkey, then have mashed potatoes and gravy on the side and they could get gravy on the turkey and toast, too. We also had peaches.

I remembered we had just gotten a lot of shredded cheese and a big chunk of Velveeta, so me and Tom Varno started making a cheese sauce, armed with nothing more than a vague idea of how to do it. Turned out vague was being optimistic. We totally overestimated the amount of milk needed and had to improvise, which in this case meant adding about 50 slices of cheese and a decent amount of flour to thicken it up. Tasted great, though.

I had Cameron and Dallas running the 4-slice toaster full bore all night. We made about 300 pieces.

So it turned out as :

Open faced turkey sandwiches on Toast

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

Peaches

Dessert

Sweet tea

And in case you're wondering where I stand on this, let me set the record straight: Turkey skin, for about the 45 minutes after it comes out of the oven or grill, is just about the best thing IN THE WORLD!

Give me all the skin, you can have the meat, and I won't fell like I've been cheated at all. Man it's good!

Brien Teresa Ryan Michael J.Boggs Cameron Dallas Jane Twig TomVarno Laura me were the ones making it go tonight.

Small crowd but that's all right. Didn't seem like it when we working

Did I mention it was cold and wet tonight. Oh yeah. Cold and wet.Just the way I don't like it.

Cold is fine.

Wet is fine.......