....,,but you take it. We'll be all right.

Tonight was a leap of faith night, especially for me. We've been so blessed with resources lately our freezer capacity has been stretched thin. We've been able to freeze a lot of food that has been given to us. The downside of that is we really were maxed out in our freezer space. So we had to use it or lose it and I hate to lose it.

So we decided to have a "clean out the freezer night" and try to free up some space. I went down about 4 p.m. and pulled out every aluminum foil wrapped pan of food and every white tub of leftovers in the both freezers and started thawing them.

Only thing was, I wasn't really sure what was in some of them. (I don't always have a Sharpie close by when I put things into the freezer.)
So here I was getting ready to commit to serving all these pans without a real clear idea what we'd be serving.

So, as soon as the 7th graders showed up, I grabbed them and headed to our storage closet under the jail and spent the next hour or so cleaning up and let Twig deal with the food.

When I got finished down there, they were taking the food up to serve. I asked if we had enough and he assured me we had plenty, so I said good enough.

And he was right. They were serving huge portions all night, even for seconds. And we saw a large number tonight. We had 13 in line 10 minutes before Mercy House let their guys out.

Gotta share this.
From the start, from when it was me and Skyler, Jonathan, Drew, and Mason, way back outside the St. James shelter, we have always had Texas Pete on table. Always. We'll forget forks and spoons, we'll forget to grab the trash can, but there'll be a squirt bottle of Texas Pete on the table. Count on it. I wish we could get some kind of cool swag from them, like tables with a big bottle of Texas Pete on them or aprons ...something like that.
Anyway...
Everybody knows I love it and most of the guys coming through like it on just about everything, too. But tonight we had some guys who made us look like rookies.

There were about 10 Hispanic guys that came through tonight at the 2nd stop. They were some of the first ones through and they stood around and ate off to the side of the drink table. Very friendly although limited in their English.
Now, usually one of us stands at the end of everything and offers some Texas Pete, and if they say yeah, we squirt it on because their hands are usually full. We use a squirt bottle because it's faster.
Tonight for some reason, someone had put the Texas Pete in two of those glass bottles that you see in barbecue restaurants. The ones that the good vinegar sauce is in? Those
So it took a little shaking but is still came out faster than a regular Texas Pete bottle.
Well, I shook some on the Hispanic guys food and actually shook extra, you know because ....they're Hispanic. They like that stuff, right?

Before I knew it, they all came back asking for more. And they kept coming back. Finally I had to refill the bottles, so I just started handing it to them and letting them do it themselves. I looked at Tom Varno one time and he had the same look of disbelief I did. After filling it for the 3rd time(!) I took the top off and let them start pouring it on their food.
In-freaking-credible.
We've got to buy a new gallon bottle for next week.

I was down under the LEC cleaning so I didn't really know who all had showed up until we started serving.
ALAN BRIEN JOHN TATUM ELLEN J. BOGGS MICHAEL COWAN DALLAS CAMERON SHANE PEYSON HAMPTON MITCH DANIELLE SAM ELLIOT LAURA TOM VARNO GENE MCINTIRE SUE MCINTIRE MICHAEL CANDACE ERIC TWIG me
....are the ones who did. Thanks to everybody.

One of the really amazing things tonight was how good a bunch of frozen leftovers turned out and how much they enjoyed it. Every bit of that credit goes to God.

Sunday is the SUPER BOWL PARTY! Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!
Planning it is as much fun as doing it! Lining up food, deciding what to do, getting things ready,......fun!
As far as the food goes we're still in a state of deciding.
Don't worry......the Turducken is going to happen. trust me.
But that's gonna a special event, like the pregame show or the halftime wardrobe malfunction. We still gotta decide what we're really going to eat.
We had a cake leftover tonight that someone had forgotten to set out and so we told Brien to take it to the folks at he Literacy Council meeting.
She suggested we keep it and serve it at the SUPER BOWL PARTY. She said that because she is kind, generous, and thoughtful. She also said it because she is a woman.
All the guys looked at her like, "CAKE? CAKE? SUPER BOWL PARTY-ies aren't about cake, or any other sweets for that matter. It's about meat, and cheese, and chips, and dips and combinations of those things. If it doesn't immediately slow the rush of blood through the heart to a rush hour crawl, or clog your arteries like a checkout lane at the grocery store when some ol' grandma whips out the checkbook, then you don't serve it at a SUPER BOWL PARTY."
We told her thanks, ........