I knew they'd "sleigh" you.

It was cold tonight.
School's been out all week
It's 3 days before Christmas .

And yet MAGGIE / MADDIE / MARY WALKER / VIRGINIA / CECELIA / ELAINE / SAVANNAH / KAYLA / NICKI / MERRITT / SAM / CRAIG / PRUDEN / ANNA / BRIEN / STEVE / BLAKE / TYLER / MARK / T.J. / TWIG / KEITH / TREY / CATHERINE / CAMERON / DALLAS /

all came out to help cook and feed tonight. They did a great job.

OVEN FRIED CHICKEN

MADE FROM SCRATCH MAC'n CHEESE
GREEN BEANS
ROLLS
DESSERT
SWEET TEA/WATER

Leg quarters were 49 cents a pound this week so we went the chicken route for this weeks meal.
I always want to do fried chicken but it's not practical. Then I remembered an oven fried chicken recipe this girl I used to date would fix. I went online and found an easier one and we used it.
I also found a recipe for Macaroni and cheese for 100 people. It called for 8 lb of macaroni and 8 lb. of Velveeta. I bought 12 lb. of both and adjusted everything else. For some reason we had twice as much cheese sauce as we needed when we were done pouring it over the macaroni. I have no idea why. But I got about a gallon and a half of cheese sauce that's gonna get used in a recipe in the next couple of weesks.

WHAT DO YOU CALL A REINDEER WEARING EAR MUFFS?
IT DON'T MATTER, HE CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Josh and Chris Armstrong were in town for Christmas break and came down to help. They're twins and Chris goes to UNC and Josh goes to NCSU.
Nice.
It was good to see them. We laughed a lot over the course of the night, which reminded me how much I missed them being around. BLITZ!

WHAT'S THE FIRST THING SANTA'S HELPERS LEARN IN SCHOOL?
THE "ELF-ABET".

We set up all the clothes and miscellaneous stuff we'd collected up to now in Fireside Hall. Before we ate out front we took them downstairs to "shop" and get what they needed.
Then we went back up and served. When everyone had been served, we passed out our Merry Christmas bags. We had a pair of socks in the bottom, then 2 apples, a tangerine(yum!), an orange, a bag of of hard candy, and a candy cane. Then as they were leaving the first stop we gave everybody a blanket.
The blankets came from the kids that attended Celebrate Christmas! a couple of weeks ago.
Gary Wilcox collected some blankets and coats for us, too.
The Merry Christmas bags were a joint effort. Brien bought the bags and put the socks in them, Steve Leger bought the oranges and tangerines, and some friends of mine from the other side of the state helped fund the apples and hard candy.
Thanks go to them for making those things possible.
God is faithful and amazing in the ways he provides resources for us to do the things we do on Tuesday nights.

What's red and white and gives presents to gazelles?
Santa-lope

HERE'S THE DEAL:

If you're reading this I want to you to leave a comment telling me what your all-time favorite Christmas present as a kid was.
Seriously.
Whether I know you or not, tell me.
I'm gonna tell you what mine was.
That's easy: A metallic green 3 speed Schwinn Sting Ray bike. I have no idea what I did to deserve it that year (probably not a darn thing) but I got it.
And. It. Was. SWEET!
I loved that bike.
And to my parents credit, they got my brother a bike that year except his was totally different. I was the only one with that bike.
I don't remember being" cool" as a kid, but I sure thought I was when I was on that bike.
Nothing but Twisted Steel and Sex Appeal. Lean, Mean, The American Dream.

Now it's your turn.
What's the best present you ever got as a kid?

As far as the jokes go........

.....They have low "elf-esteem"!

Told ya, if I don't get to it on Tuesday night. . . . . .

Twig was out of town again this week so I could wait til the last minute again to decide what to fix. After staring at this list:
SPAGHETTI
TACOS
BAKED CHICKEN
HOT DOGS
all afternoon as possible meals, I decided to go with SLOPPY JOES!

Go figure.

We used deer burger to cook it and it turned out great. We used about 30 lbs. to make it. Deer burger is leaner than ground beef so it isn't as greasy but since it doesn't have as much fat, you have to work a little harder to bring out flavor. Garlic salt, chili powder, vinegar, a little sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Texas Pete and pepper take care of that.

TYLER / EBY / CECELIA / MAGGIE / J.BOGGS / ANNA / MITCH / MARK / STEVE / BLAKE / HAMPTON / MO-GAN / CREEEECH! / WADE / SAM / ELAINE / HAYLEY / ELLEN / ALYSSA / were the architects and servers for the night.

The sloppy joes were so good that by the end of the night we ix-nayed the bread and were just putting it on top of the mashed potatoes.

SLOPPY JOES
MASHED POTATOES
MACARONI and CHEESE with HAM
DESSERT
DIET COKES! (how's that for a change?)

Christmas is next week. Gonna try and get some fruit and hard candy and nuts and bag it up to give it out. Why? Because I associate that with Christmas about as much as anything I can think of.
When I was kid, at the last Sunday night church service before Christmas, Santa Claus always showed up and passed out bags with fruit, nuts, and hard candy. I remember being a little concerned about Santa and Baby Jesus being in the same building together but not being able to put my finger on it. My concerns were gone when I got that bag, though. I loved Baby Jesus but Santa brought Tangerines! Santa could show up every week as far as I was concerned, if it meant bags with Tangerines in them!
I didn't like oranges (like orange flavored stuff, just not big on eating the actual fruit), don't like that generic white, red, and green hard candy you see at Christmas, and the nuts in the bag were usually Brazil nuts, Filberts and Pistachios which I didn't particularly like either.
I lived for the tangerines. I'd trade the rest of my bag for somebody else's tangerine. I can eat tangerines like it's a part-time job. ( My favorite Life Saver flavor: Tangerine)
It was almost as big a deal as going through the Halloween bag and checking out the haul.
We did it last year and it just felt good making the bags and it felt right handing them out. So, there.

We're gonna pass out blankets on Tuesday, also. I could use some more. If anybody reading this wants to throw some blankets our way, let me know. It would help.

Why are Santa's Helpers depressed?.........


g

........that would be an answer to prayer for some of them.

Upon further review....I might've passed on inaccurate information in my last post. I don't know for sure whether or not Connie and Barbara told me they take the Prayer Shawls(scarves) to the jail. I might have pulled that out of thin air (it's late when I write things).
It hit me when I was reading over it the next day that the jails are pretty strict as to what you can bring in for the people there.
I have this image in my head of a bunch of guys going over the wall using a rope made of 20 brightly colored, hand-made shawls and scarves.
Although.......

g

....... glad I could help!

I just put up last week's post. I wrote it last week and saved it, thinking I would come back and add more. So much for that plan. I swear, if I don't do it Tuesday night after everybody leaves, the likelihood of it even getting done drops below 25%.

So scroll down and read last week's and then come back and finish this one. I'll wait.






Good.


It's like I told everybody before we went to the 2nd stop.
I love the nights when a plan comes together.

Too bad tonight wasn't one of them.


Tonight was FISH FRY. It's a big kind of extravaganza thing. We got hot oil, stand-alone burners roaring, people making cole slaw, people making tartar sauce, hush puppies being dropped in hot grease,......lots of balls in the air at one time. And we don't do it often enough for the youth to remember or get good at it, there's different people helping each time....it's always an adventure even when everything goes right. Then nights like this, when we get thrown curve balls, make it even more adventurous.


We got started and things were going OTAY .... and then it started to sprinkle. We moved the hush puppies under the overhang but kept doing fish out in the open. Then it started to just flat out rain. I left the cooks (more about them later) and went inside to set a new plan for how we were going to serve. Normally we just bring them in to Fireside Hall and serve them at the tables and it's actually easier than serving outside like we normally do. But there was already a group having a function in there. So we switched to the Youth Room where all the couches and easy chairs are. We made the plates in the kitchen and then passed them out to the guys in there. We fixed their drinks and brought them to them.

For the second stop we just made up all the plates and took a few people there to pass them out and pass out sweet tea while the rest stayed behind and cleaned up.

I'm flying through this because I want to tell y'all about how great everybody did tonight.

People like:

WAYNE CURRIE


GREG GARRETT

ANNA TOLAR


TERESA BLAND

BRIEN CAMPBELL

HAMPTON COOK

MITCH COOK

HAYLEY UPTON

MORGAN McKNIGHT

TOM HODGES

BARBARA HODGES

CONNIE ALLEGOOD

TYLER BORDEAUX

DUSTIN EBY

KELSEY CREEEEEEECH! (couldn't resist)

MERRITT HUNT

BLAKE LEGER

STEVE LEGER

HAYDEN

GARY WILCOX



MENU


FRIED FISH

HUSH PUPPIES
CORN ON THE COB
COLE SLAW
ASSORTED DESSERTS
SWEET TEA / WATER

BAG LUNCH TO GO


Everybody did a great job tonight. And I mean a GREAT job. We were cooking in 3 different places at one point. We were feeding in a new room with new challenges. Most of the night I simply told people This is what I need and then left them alone to do it. Without fail they all came through like champs.

This is pretty much how it went tonight:

Teresa and Merritt, Here's 8 heads of cabbage mayo and mix. I need cole slaw.



Hayley. Here's everything you need to make Tartar sauce. Just put it back in the jar.



Mitch. Can you put the corn in the pot and put it on the stove. Start cooking it about 7:10. And put the water for Tea on. Thanks.



Greg and Wayne, here's the breader and fish . Y'all do what you need to.



Tyler, you want to drop hush puppies for me? Greg and Wayne'll show you what to do.



Hayley, I need to serve in the Youth room.Can you make it happen?



Eby, here's peanut butter, there's jelly. Find the bread and make and bag 75 pb&j's for me.



And so on and so on. Plus the infinite number of little things that have to be done throughout the night.

Greg Garrett answered the call for us tonight. To say he is one of my best friends really doesn't explain it well enough, so I won't try. He is the source of our fish on the night we have FISH FRY. He fishes year round and what he doesn't eat for himself he puts up for us. When we have enough...it's time for FISH FRY. He went out over Thanksgiving and killed it, so we cooked that this week. ( About the only time he doesn't catch fish is when I go with him. I take full responsibility for it. I think the fish sense that I'm in it more the boat ride than I am the fishing.) He also came and helped cook the fish tonight, bringing his own burner and tank. We would've been in trouble if he hadn't been there tonight.

Same with Wayne Currie. Between the two of them they got over 100 pieces of fish cooked in bad weather and less than desired conditions. He's an enormous help every week, anyway. Plus, he brought me a jar of pickled shrimp to try. It was good.

Hayley Upton is a phenomenal asset. Why? Because you tell her what you need and she does it. You don't have to go behind her or worry about her finishing it. It'll get done. She proved it all night tonight. (In the business, we call that "pulling a Springsteen".)

Teresa Bland worked her fingers off last night. I'm told that when they were fixing the carryout plates for the second stop, she was putting in the fish, cole slaw, corn, and hush puppies and then one person would put in a dessert and another would do tartar sauce. Made them all look bad.

Brien Campbell simply does any and everything that needs to be done. Doesn't matter where, or what: she just does it and usually because she sees the need, not because she's asked.

Anna Tolar has a gift. In the middle of everything that is going on, where I might tend to get focused on things 3 steps ahead, she doesn't. She sees the opportunity to do something for someone right then. She sees needs that otherwise might get overlooked in the process of "meeting needs". She is probably the most one-on-one relational connector out of all of us. Plus, she never wastes anything.

Tyler Bordeaux, Dustin Eby and Hampton Cook were invaluable last night. If it had to be done right then, or something taken somewhere, or we need this from over there, they were the guys. Tyler got a quick lesson on hush puppy making last night and now has a lifetime to enjoy his new skill.

Merritt Hunt got there early and went hard at it in the kitchen until she left. Thank you, Merritt.

One of the highlights last night was Connie and Barbara coming and sharing their Prayer Shawl(scarf) ministry with us. They and the other ladies in their group make shawls and scarves for groups and write prayers on cards for each one. They take them to the jail and other places where people in need can use them. They made 50+ prayer scarves for our folks. They have about an hour of time invested in each item, not to mention the cards. Our folks were pretty happy to get them and every single one left wearing theirs. It's cool because they are all shapes and colors and materials. None of them are exactly alike. We're very grateful for what they did and they said they would do it again. They were wonderful.

Last story:
Normally on a rainy night where we bring them inside, I make sure we're good-to-go inside, then I go outside and sit by the sidewalk where they come up. I say hey and tell them we're inside and just go to the door and someone will show you in. I do that for a couple of reasons. One I kinda like being outside on cold rainy nights. It's the "Camp Eckerd" in me. Another one is I like to size up who's coming in and speak to them and set the tone for the night. The biggest one, though, is I just hate to ask someone to go sit out in the rain. So I do it.
But last night I couldn't do it. We weren't as close to being ready as we normally were and I needed to stay downstairs. I asked Mitch Cook if he would take care of it. Hated to do it, but had no choice.
At the second stop he came up said I want to thank you for letting me sit outside tonight.
??????
He said I needed that. I just needed to be out there, and saying hey to everybody as they came was good for me.That was good for me.

Well all right........

Trying to avoid the week after Thanksgiving blahs......

Week after Thanksgiving.

High 40's.

Rain on the way.



No way we're doing anything related to turkey or Thanksgiving leftovers.

So, .....which way to go?



Breakfast.

Pancakes and sausage.



Our friends love it when we do Breakfast and they especially like pancakes and sausage. We make sure we cook plenty for seconds.



Ellyn Currie wanted to pick and take charge of one of the meals and at first we talked about a soup or stew. Then we saw it was going to be the week after Thanksgiving when she did it so we made the pancake decision. I looked at what we had and she and her folks went shopping to fill in the rest. I told her we had deer sausage and she scrunched up her face and said I like pork sausage, so I told her she could get pork sausage, too, if she wanted.



A quick aside- Sausage. They love it. I honestly think we could show up with nothing but 3 coolers full of sausage, have it all passed out in 30 minutes and no one would even ask What else are we having?

And I'm right there with them.



ELLYN / ALYSSA / LAURA / WADE / WAYNE / SAM / HAYLEY / LAURA / ANNA / TERESA / TWIG / TYLER / J.BOGGS / EBY / HAMPTON / ELAINE / CECELIA / MADDY / LAURA / all showed up tonight and helped meet other peoples needs.

Next week is a week to get excited about.
Why?
Two words: FISH FRY!

I'm excited. C'mon get excited with me.

g