...."Punks better be glad I feed the homeless on Tuesday nights"

I knew it was gonna be really cold tonight when I grabbed the church truck and there was a big sheet of ice in the bed of it. If it hadn't melted by 4:30, it wasn't gonna melt, because it was only getting colder.

We fed inside tonight and our friends were glad we did. It's always good when you can warm up and relax, even if it's only for a little while.

We had homemade chicken pot pie and homemade peach cobbler tonight.
Twig had the recipes, got everybody involved and ran the mixing show and brought it all together. Did a great job on the amount, too, because we came back with no peach cobbler and one half-size pan of pot pie.

BLAKE ANNA KELLY ELLEN ALEXIS JOHNNY CHRISTIAN J.BOGGS MICHAEL BRIEN DALLAS TWIG CAMERON ZACH TOM NICK and me were responsible for making it happen tonight.

Almost every person who commented on the pot pie tonight mentioned how much meat was in it. Well, one of my pet peeves is something like that, that shafts you on the meat and loads up on cheap filler like carrots and peas. So i thawed a ton of chicken breasts to put it in it. Twig didn't even use it all. I honestly think there was more chicken than vegetables in it. If there wasn't, it wasn't my fault. We bagged some of it up and back in the fridge.
But it had enough chicken it. We made sure of that.

The peach cobbler was way good, too. He just put canned peaches in a pan, then yellow cake mix on top and poured the juice from the peaches on top of that...I think. I might be missing something.
Whatever.
It was straight up and down like 6 o'clock.

Random Things
Sometimes we have some things left over at the end of the night that we can give to the Night Captain at the Mercy House to pass put as guys leave in the morning. Most of the time I'm one of the ones who takes it inside to give to them. The inside is just a long, low ceilinged room with three rows of bunkbeds in it. I always tone my act down when I go in there, and I'm not really sure why, except maybe because I feel like I'm stepping into their privacy in a way I haven't earned or shouldn't be privy to. It's weird.
And the women that serve with us will never see it because they won't ever go in there.


Back in the day.... I used to go to the trivia contests that Hooters had every Tuesday.
And win.
Every week.
Seriously.

Guys would get up and leave when I came in.

They changed the rules a couple of times to handicap me.

Didn't matter

Not bragging, just saying.

And every week I'd win an "ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Wing Party for me and 10 other people" Gift Certificate. 10 other people. Do you know how popular you become when you say "Hey wanna go to Hooter's and eat all the wings you want for free?
I had a stack of them on my dresser
But then something happened. I noticed every time Hooter's got mentioned, so did my name. Especially around Youth Group.
I decided that as much as I liked winning every time and being known for winning every time, I didn't like the association being made. Now, I have no problem with Hooter's. I don't care if others go there. I'd go tomorrow if someone said let's go.
But I did not want to be the first thing someone thought of when their name came up. I didn't hit on the waitresses, didn't drink, and I really did go for the kick of beating any and everybody. But it just got where I couldn't see it doing my witness any good.
So I quit going.
About that time, BW3 opened up here in town. They had trivia network games you could play in a more family oriented atmosphere. Plus I started doing this on Tuesday nights.
So, no big deal.
But, every now and then, I'll ride by there and the Hooter's sign will be advertising "TRIVIA TUESDAYS" and I feel like stopping and sticking my head in the door and yelling......

TEA OR HOT CHOCOLATE?

Looking to be cold tonight. We're making Chicken pot pie and Peach cobbler. I always wonder on a night like this should we fix hot chocolate or, since we're serving a hot meal, would people still like something cold to drink.
Personally, I always take something cold for the meal. If I'm just standing around, I'd want hot chocolate.
I'll probably ask someone else and just go with their opinion

G

2/17/09 Kelly Leger is introduced to Chili and Rice, and nearly freezes to death

Didn't post last week. My bad. Had to get out of Dodge quick last week when we finished and didn't put anything up after that. Last week went good. It was a little weird because we did Cheeseburgers and that usually means we'll have no leftovers at all. They love cheeseburgers. We cooked 160 and figured we'd need to watch them close to have enough for everybody to have two. Usually we start out giving them two but this week we figured we'd do one and let them come back for their second. Well, for whatever reason- first of the month, full moon, weather, - it was a light turnout at both stops. I'll bet we had 60 burgers left over.
Just goes to show, every time I think I know what I'm doing.....

Had a ton of people last week. I could probably list them but....they know who they were....

Tonight was easy. We had a chili supper on Sunday and we always reap the benefits of that. we probably got 10 gallons of chili given to us after that, so we set up fine for tonight. We warmed that up and made grilled cheese quesadillas, warmed up the cheeseburgers we saved from last week and threw more sweets at them than they knew what to do with.

CHRISTIE MIKE CHRISTIAN J.BOGGS TWIG ANNA PRUDEN CRAIG TERESA REBECCA DAVID TOM KELLY LEGER BLAKE
me are the ones that made it happen tonight.

It was cold tonight. It was so cold, I wound up putting on a sweatshirt at the second stop. Some of our crowd looked lie they were going to hit the slopes. We had some serious gear at work. Kelly had on her Gotta Go To Russia coat.

RANDOM QUESTION ALERT
Has anyone else ever heard that sitting on cold concrete will give you hemorrhoids ?
I've always been told that by old people. Someone sat down beside me tonight on a concrete ledge. I was sitting on a folded up blanket and I told them they needed to be careful because cold concrete blah blah blah hemorrhoids and they looked at me like I was crazy. Several people looked at me like that. But it's what I was always told. Matter of fact, the first time I heard it, the old guy said it would give you "the piles". I had no idea what he was talking about for a while until someone explained that "the piles" was slang for hemorrhoids.

Anyway....

Sometimes I open the fridge here at the church and someone will have left something for us to use without telling us. So I never really get too surprised at what I see in there . Today I saw two good-sized pans of rice. Cool. That's good with chili. Put some rice in the bowl, cover it with chili....voila!!
When I was growing up, and we had chili suppers at church, that's the way it was served...Chili and Rice and the chili always had beans in it.

So tonight I set the pans of rice out and Kelly Leger says what's that? I said rice. She said what are you gonna do with that. I said serve it with the chili. She goes rice with chili? I thought she was kidding.
She wasn't. It was a foreign concept to her. It was like I'd said I was going to put barbecue sauce on jell-o. I still think she thinks we made it up and were the first ones to ever do it. That became the running joke all night. The answer to everything was "rice" or "put rice on it".

I don't get jealous or admit to being jealous very often but I was tonight.
Tom Varno came in with something wrapped in foil and said "Here. I made a Bacon Explosion. Try this."

Ok. If you don't know what a bacon explosion is go and Google it or Youtube it because I'm not gonna do it justice. What you do is take 10 strips of bacon and make a 5x5 weave so when it's done you have 5 strips wove one way and 5 strips wove the other way. It should look like a mat. Then take bulk Italian sausage and lay it on top and cover your bacon mat. Take and layer cooked bacon sprinkles on top of that. Roll up the sausage and cooked bacon to one side of the mat. then start at that side of the mat and roll up the the tube of sausage and bacon in the bacon mat. Put Barbecue sauce on it and grill it or bake it for about 2 and 1/2 hours. Slice it and enjoy.

I was so jealous. I been wanting to make one and Tom beat me to it. Plus it was good as all get-out. On top of that, my last attempt at cooking something cool was The SUPERBOWLPARTY TURDUCKEN which was a spectacular flop! I felt like the kitchen equivalent of an ugly step-sister.

For about two seconds. Because then we started eating the Bacon Explosion. Bacon and sausage wrapped in Bacon? Shoot, can't feel bad about yourself if you're eating that!
Check it out.
I'm gonna make me one but I think I'm gonna add some cheese and Garlic Texas Pete.

All right, I'm gone. Love , Peace and Chicken grease.

g

Insert your own Title Here

Ellen Maddie Maggie Christian J.Boggs Michael Dallas Cameron Shane Hampton Peyson Candace Sue Alan Mary Brien Teresa Twig Tom Mark Varno Lissette Colby Kelly Ledger Blake Johnny me are the ones who put it all together tonight.

Red Beans and Rice Burritos
Dessert
Hot Chocolate
Sweet tea is what we put on the table tonight. The fixin's for the burritos took up almost 2 tables. We put out an extra table at the first stop.

The first of the month is always a roll of the dice as far how much to cook at the first stop because the number that shows up always varies. Some of our folks get gov't checks at the first of the month and get a room somewhere and hole up until the money runs out, then go back on the street. And tonight it was cold so some might have stayed away instead of getting out in the weather. We had a pretty light crowd at the 1st stop for probably all of those reasons tonight. We were loaded for bear, too, with plenty of food.

Tom Varno's dad, Mark, came out tonight. Kelly Ledger was with us for the first time tonight, too. We had a visitor named Lissette who knows the couple who visited with us last week. The told her about us and she came with her son to see what we did. She speaks fluent spanish, which would come in handy some nights.

After last week's love letter to Texas Pete, listen to this. I was in the grocery store and looked in the hot sauce section and guess what I saw?
GARLIC TEXAS PETE and HOTTER TEXAS PETE!
Sweet! I usually buy TEXAS PETE in bulk at Sam's so I hadn't looked for it in a grocery store in a while. I don't know how long those flavors have been out, but I jumped all over them. The GARLIC is real good! We used almost the whole bottle of it tonight on the burritos.

SUPER BOWL PARTY notes:
-The biggest laugh for a commercial came for the "crystal ball" Doritos commercial.
-The funniest sight of the night had to be a roomful of guys wearing 3-D glasses.
-We ate 300 bacon wrapped cocktail wieners with brown sugar. (and that's because we only had 300. if we'd had more, they would've been eaten.)
-The crowd was split pretty even between Cardinal and Steeler fans.
-I'm glad I wasn't wearing my 3-D glasses when The Boss slid crotch-first into that camera.
- I can't wait until next year!

Later, taters. I gotta run. The sandman is beating on me hard. It's 11:45. Catch y'all tomorrow!

....TURDUCKEN - 1 GARY - 0.

The SUPER BOWL PARTY was so much fun! We had about 40 guys (and 1 woman ) come through and watch it with us tonight. About 20 guys from the Mercy House and about the same # of walkups from the 1st stop rolled in. This is our third year doing it. First year-20. Second Year-30. This year-40. I see a trend.

Tom Varno Pruden Twig Gene Mcintire Sue McIntire A friend of Pruden's named John me ran the show tonight and they did a great job! And John didn't get there 'til the 3rd quarter, so give the others a big hand for doing a lot of work to get it set up.
We had some very generous people put money in my hands to help make this work and for that we are very, very grateful.

Gonna bolt and get some sleep. I'll get on tomorrow and give a better rundown of the night.

As far as my special food project went, let's just say.....