....I've changed my mind.
Blame my parents for me not knowing what carrots tasted like!
If they hadn't been so intent on trying to cram collards, turnips and rutabagas in me as a kid, maybe I'd have tried a carrot or two somewhere along the way.
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Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
....they tried.
Last week's vote for Thanksgiving dinner was......Traditional. Turkey. dressing. Sweet potatoes and all the rest.
DON / WAYNE / ANDY / CHAMBERLAIN / ANDREW / JOHN / ELAINE / ELLYN / TYLER / J.BOGGS / CREEEEEECH! / CHARLES / STEVE /
? ? ? ?
Notice anything different about this week's roster of folks?
There's a 28 person difference!
But that's the way it goes - the week after we have the largest volunteer night ever, we come back with the lightest crowd in a long time.
The biggest reason for youth not being there to help last night was Mid-terms. It's the last week of this grading period and the mid -terms began to day, so I hope and assume they were home studying, which is exactly where they should have been.
The food was inversely proportional to the amount of helpers, though. God absolutely opened up and showered us with abundance this week to pass on to our friends.
My plan was to simply to cook hamburgers patties, bake them in gravy and serve it over rice. I had all that sitting downtown already, so no shopping or running around. But guess who had a better plan?
God.
I got a call Sunday afternoon and someone gave me approx. 45 kielbasas, a pan of sauerkraut, bags of grapes and cheese, bottles of water and a big tub of pretzel sticks.
Sweet!
Then our buddy John Liverman called and dropped off a huge pan of fried shrimp, a pan of Roast Beef and gravy, and a pan of Banana Pudding.
Also Sweet!
Then I remembered I had a couple of gallons of stew beef broth we saved from last week still in the refrigerator, waiting to be used somehow. Who needs to make Gravy? We just cooked the hamburgers, placed them in pans and ladled the hot stew beef broth over them and covered them in foil. Good to go.
So, literally, the hardest decision I had last night was How to get all this food out? and Where to serve what?
That's a good position to be in.
We had rice tonight. Rice is a good thing for us. As Mitch Hedberg once said Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat 2,000 of something. The tough thing about it for us, though, is the quantity (100+) and keeping it from 7:30 when it's done cooking until 9:00 when we start serving at The Mercy House. In the past we boiled, drained it and put in a Gatorade cooler. Before long it would clump and get gummy. Not appetizing.
So I researched.
And researched some more.
Then i found a recipe for cooking it differently that guaranteed it would be perfect and keep that way for a long time.
So I gave it a shot, knowing that if I blew it, we'd be out of luck.
I put 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of warm water in a 9x13 pan, then covered it with Saran Wrap and aluminum foil. Let it sit for 30 minutes, then in the oven for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Pulled it out and waited until I was ready to serve it to take the foil and wrap off.
PERFECT! Cooked just right and no clumping or gumming at all the rest of the night. Each pan was just right.
NEVER BOILING RICE ON TUESDAY NIGHTS AGAIN!
MENU
Hamburger Steak
Rice and Gravy
Fried Shrimp
Kielbasa and Bratwurst
Roast Beef
Bread
Cheese and Grapes
Desserts
Sweet Tea / Water
Didn't have any cocktail sauce for the shrimp, but we did have ketchup and Horseradish sauce, so.....we made FBC Special Sauce! It was actually pretty good. I snuck a little TEXAS PETE in it. Shocker.
QUICK STORY
When I pulled the beef stew broth out of the fridge, I gave it the standard look'n sniff to make sure it was good. Seemed fine. Got it on the stove warming and being stirred. After a while I got Elaine to put a little in a bowl to see how it was.
It wasn't good. There was a strong, kind of sharp mint or mediciney taste to it. so I asked Elaine to try it.
She said it was fine.
?
So I got Andy to taste it.
He said it was fine.
??
Tried Tyler.
He said it tasted better than last week.
???
Two more people and they all said it was fine.
I was afraid that it had absorbed something funky in the fridge (although the fridge smelled fine and was clean), but everybody said it was fine. I had even taken stuff to make gravy because I was sure everyone would agree with me.
So I said Fine we'll use it.
Later, when I pulled it off the stove and looked it into and stirred it, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Carrots.
What I thought was a bad taste was simply the influence of carrots, which had gotten stronger as it sat for a week.
I didn't know what carrots tasted like!
I don't like carrots. I don't eat them. I guarantee you 99.99 per cent of any carrots ever entering my system has been the direct result of Carrot cake.
Everyone else didn't taste anything wrong because they had eaten carrots before.
I realize this does not reflect well on me, but don't hold it against my parents.........
DON / WAYNE / ANDY / CHAMBERLAIN / ANDREW / JOHN / ELAINE / ELLYN / TYLER / J.BOGGS / CREEEEEECH! / CHARLES / STEVE /
? ? ? ?
Notice anything different about this week's roster of folks?
There's a 28 person difference!
But that's the way it goes - the week after we have the largest volunteer night ever, we come back with the lightest crowd in a long time.
The biggest reason for youth not being there to help last night was Mid-terms. It's the last week of this grading period and the mid -terms began to day, so I hope and assume they were home studying, which is exactly where they should have been.
The food was inversely proportional to the amount of helpers, though. God absolutely opened up and showered us with abundance this week to pass on to our friends.
My plan was to simply to cook hamburgers patties, bake them in gravy and serve it over rice. I had all that sitting downtown already, so no shopping or running around. But guess who had a better plan?
God.
I got a call Sunday afternoon and someone gave me approx. 45 kielbasas, a pan of sauerkraut, bags of grapes and cheese, bottles of water and a big tub of pretzel sticks.
Sweet!
Then our buddy John Liverman called and dropped off a huge pan of fried shrimp, a pan of Roast Beef and gravy, and a pan of Banana Pudding.
Also Sweet!
Then I remembered I had a couple of gallons of stew beef broth we saved from last week still in the refrigerator, waiting to be used somehow. Who needs to make Gravy? We just cooked the hamburgers, placed them in pans and ladled the hot stew beef broth over them and covered them in foil. Good to go.
So, literally, the hardest decision I had last night was How to get all this food out? and Where to serve what?
That's a good position to be in.
We had rice tonight. Rice is a good thing for us. As Mitch Hedberg once said Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat 2,000 of something. The tough thing about it for us, though, is the quantity (100+) and keeping it from 7:30 when it's done cooking until 9:00 when we start serving at The Mercy House. In the past we boiled, drained it and put in a Gatorade cooler. Before long it would clump and get gummy. Not appetizing.
So I researched.
And researched some more.
Then i found a recipe for cooking it differently that guaranteed it would be perfect and keep that way for a long time.
So I gave it a shot, knowing that if I blew it, we'd be out of luck.
I put 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of warm water in a 9x13 pan, then covered it with Saran Wrap and aluminum foil. Let it sit for 30 minutes, then in the oven for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Pulled it out and waited until I was ready to serve it to take the foil and wrap off.
PERFECT! Cooked just right and no clumping or gumming at all the rest of the night. Each pan was just right.
NEVER BOILING RICE ON TUESDAY NIGHTS AGAIN!
MENU
Hamburger Steak
Rice and Gravy
Fried Shrimp
Kielbasa and Bratwurst
Roast Beef
Bread
Cheese and Grapes
Desserts
Sweet Tea / Water
Didn't have any cocktail sauce for the shrimp, but we did have ketchup and Horseradish sauce, so.....we made FBC Special Sauce! It was actually pretty good. I snuck a little TEXAS PETE in it. Shocker.
QUICK STORY
When I pulled the beef stew broth out of the fridge, I gave it the standard look'n sniff to make sure it was good. Seemed fine. Got it on the stove warming and being stirred. After a while I got Elaine to put a little in a bowl to see how it was.
It wasn't good. There was a strong, kind of sharp mint or mediciney taste to it. so I asked Elaine to try it.
She said it was fine.
?
So I got Andy to taste it.
He said it was fine.
??
Tried Tyler.
He said it tasted better than last week.
???
Two more people and they all said it was fine.
I was afraid that it had absorbed something funky in the fridge (although the fridge smelled fine and was clean), but everybody said it was fine. I had even taken stuff to make gravy because I was sure everyone would agree with me.
So I said Fine we'll use it.
Later, when I pulled it off the stove and looked it into and stirred it, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Carrots.
What I thought was a bad taste was simply the influence of carrots, which had gotten stronger as it sat for a week.
I didn't know what carrots tasted like!
I don't like carrots. I don't eat them. I guarantee you 99.99 per cent of any carrots ever entering my system has been the direct result of Carrot cake.
Everyone else didn't taste anything wrong because they had eaten carrots before.
I realize this does not reflect well on me, but don't hold it against my parents.........
Thursday, October 21, 2010
....I'll tell you next time.
MARK / T.J. / ZUPON! / JOHANNA / DON / TANYA / ZOEY / CHARLES / CHUCK / LUKE / BRETT / SARAH / MARY ANNE / EMILY / PAUL / DANIEL / MALLORY / SHAUN / BROOKE / TYLER / JACOB / LONDON / TYLER / BLAKE /MACKENZIE / TREY / MS. BONGIORNIO / ELLIE / BRIEN / TWIG / DAVID / JENNA / SANDRA / BETTY / CREEEEECH! / STEVE / ELAINE / ANDREW / SAM / ANDY ....in addition to being a huge crowd (41), this was also an All-Star crowd when it came to cooking and serving to meet other peoples needs.
STEW BEEF MASHED POTATOES GREEN BEANS ROLLS DESSERT SWEET TEA / WATER
Every time I turned around, more people kept walking in tonight. The names in orange are kids that go to New Hanover, which is my school where I am an FCA sponsor. It was good to see them come out and help. I didn't even know they were coming. Speaking of which.....
Here's a story you can file under "GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE".....
I was on my way down to the church from the AC and was thirsty, so I hit the only drive thru on the way - Checkers. I'm in the middle of getting my Diet Coke and the phone rings. It's Paul Fleck, one of my FCA guys. So I answer and he says We're coming tonight to help feed. Where do we go?
I start to tell him how to get to the church and I pull away from the window and go left across the front of the joint (they have the drive thru on both sides) and I start hearing yelling through my phone and outside the truck. I look over and they're sitting in the other drive thru!
Paul said he hadn't been to Checkers in 3 years and just decided to stop on the way.
How's that for random?
Zoey brought her mom, Tanya, with her tonight.
Elaine has gotten so good at making the Sweet Tea, she's now totally in charge of it and I use her to teach new people how to do it. My role now is just to taste it when they're done. She also knows exactly what to with our desserts (slice, bag, wrap, etc.) so we can best distribute them. Love Elaine.
Plus, she keeps reminding me it's time for ScaryGary Movie Night now that Halloween is close. Last year's was a great time.
Twig was back this week after being ghone on a mission trip to Guatemala last week. It was a good trip. I'm jealous because they had 3 tremors while they were there (3!). I've always wanted to feel a tremor.(_______________________________________Insert your own joke here)
We always do a traditional Turkey/dressing/cranberry meal the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Knowing that there are lots of people who donate food after during and after the holidays, we worry that they might get "Turkey'd" out and whether we should switch up to something else. It's a lot of fun for us to do the Turkey thing but maybe they'd rather have something else.
So I asked them.
I had a minute to kill while we were waiting for the stew beef to come up from the kitchen so I told them what I just told you, then asked for a show of hands if they wanted traditional or something different.
What do you think won?..........
STEW BEEF MASHED POTATOES GREEN BEANS ROLLS DESSERT SWEET TEA / WATER
Every time I turned around, more people kept walking in tonight. The names in orange are kids that go to New Hanover, which is my school where I am an FCA sponsor. It was good to see them come out and help. I didn't even know they were coming. Speaking of which.....
Here's a story you can file under "GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE".....
I was on my way down to the church from the AC and was thirsty, so I hit the only drive thru on the way - Checkers. I'm in the middle of getting my Diet Coke and the phone rings. It's Paul Fleck, one of my FCA guys. So I answer and he says We're coming tonight to help feed. Where do we go?
I start to tell him how to get to the church and I pull away from the window and go left across the front of the joint (they have the drive thru on both sides) and I start hearing yelling through my phone and outside the truck. I look over and they're sitting in the other drive thru!
Paul said he hadn't been to Checkers in 3 years and just decided to stop on the way.
How's that for random?
Zoey brought her mom, Tanya, with her tonight.
Elaine has gotten so good at making the Sweet Tea, she's now totally in charge of it and I use her to teach new people how to do it. My role now is just to taste it when they're done. She also knows exactly what to with our desserts (slice, bag, wrap, etc.) so we can best distribute them. Love Elaine.
Plus, she keeps reminding me it's time for ScaryGary Movie Night now that Halloween is close. Last year's was a great time.
Twig was back this week after being ghone on a mission trip to Guatemala last week. It was a good trip. I'm jealous because they had 3 tremors while they were there (3!). I've always wanted to feel a tremor.(_______________________________________Insert your own joke here)
We always do a traditional Turkey/dressing/cranberry meal the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Knowing that there are lots of people who donate food after during and after the holidays, we worry that they might get "Turkey'd" out and whether we should switch up to something else. It's a lot of fun for us to do the Turkey thing but maybe they'd rather have something else.
So I asked them.
I had a minute to kill while we were waiting for the stew beef to come up from the kitchen so I told them what I just told you, then asked for a show of hands if they wanted traditional or something different.
What do you think won?..........
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Stew beef, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, Dinner rolls and dessert.
Working the "comfort food angle" tonight. Check back to see how it went.
Getting pressure from the college guys to pull the trigger on a Griiled cheese spaghetti sandwich night.
Which I really like, but I have learned over the years that things I "really" like aren't always "widely" liked,sooooo.......we'll see.
Working the "comfort food angle" tonight. Check back to see how it went.
Getting pressure from the college guys to pull the trigger on a Griiled cheese spaghetti sandwich night.
Which I really like, but I have learned over the years that things I "really" like aren't always "widely" liked,sooooo.......we'll see.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
....too easy and too cheap to be that good
So.....I had last week's post half written, full of names and menu items and all the things we offered to put on the Hot Dogs, and funny incidents. I saved it to come back and finish on Wednesday morning and then.....???? The rest of the week happened and I never finished it. Probably would have been the best ever but now we will probably never know.
Oh well.
BUT THIS WEEK WAS JUST AS AWESOME!
Just ask....
LONDON / SEAN / ELAINE / CECELIA / VIRGINIA / PAT / CHUCK / WAYNE / STEVE / BLAKE / PEYSON / T. J. / SAM / ANDY / ZOE / DALIA / MAC / KELSEY / ALEXANDRA / MS. BONGIORNIO / BRIANNA / TYLER / J.BOGGS / BRITTANY / DON / LAUREN / SHARICE / ....
because they are the ones who cooked
LEMON PEPPER CHICKEN
BUTTER NOODLES
GREEN BEANS AND POTATOES
DINNER ROLLS
DESSERT
SWEET TEA / WATER
and did a great job.
It was another day for "Game time decision" on what to cook. It was 4:30 and I was in HarrisTeeter waffling between kielbasa and chicken. I finally decided on chicken, mainly because on Sunday I told Elaine that's probably what we'd do. That, plus the fact that kielbasa was running $2.25/lb. and chicken was $ .99/lb.
London Paulson got a quick how-to on using a meat cleaver to separate leg quarters. After about the 3rd one he realized what most people do; chopping stuff with a big knife is fun.
There's a million ways to do it, but here's how we made Lemon Peppper Chicken last night:
Separate the leg quarters
Wash it
Dry it
Pan it
Put a pat of butter on top of each piece
Hit 'em with the lemon pepper seasoning
Bake for 20 at 400
Take them out and squirt a little TEXAS PETE on them
bake for another 20 - 30 minutes.
Done.
The butter melts and browns up and helps crisp the chicken. The TEXAS PETE just makes something good even better.
The number we've fed the past couple of weeks has gone down a little, mostly at the 2nd stop. The first stop continues to be 35 + at the start.
If you see STEVE LEGER this week, get him to tell you his story about the birds on the golf course. He had us rolling. Matter of fact, don't wait 'til you see him. Call him up and get him to tell it to you. It's that funny!
About 14 kids from Hoggard High School's Key club came last week as part of a service project. This week, 4 of them came back just because they liked doing it so much last week! Gotta love that.
Slowly getting over the old truck being gone but it's tough. The new truck doesn't have power windows or locks,so every time I have to roll the window or lock the door, I'm reminded of the old FORD.
Good times, good times......
Butter noodles are like Instant Mashed Potatoes, Cookout, and NETFLIX.....
Oh well.
BUT THIS WEEK WAS JUST AS AWESOME!
Just ask....
LONDON / SEAN / ELAINE / CECELIA / VIRGINIA / PAT / CHUCK / WAYNE / STEVE / BLAKE / PEYSON / T. J. / SAM / ANDY / ZOE / DALIA / MAC / KELSEY / ALEXANDRA / MS. BONGIORNIO / BRIANNA / TYLER / J.BOGGS / BRITTANY / DON / LAUREN / SHARICE / ....
because they are the ones who cooked
LEMON PEPPER CHICKEN
BUTTER NOODLES
GREEN BEANS AND POTATOES
DINNER ROLLS
DESSERT
SWEET TEA / WATER
and did a great job.
It was another day for "Game time decision" on what to cook. It was 4:30 and I was in HarrisTeeter waffling between kielbasa and chicken. I finally decided on chicken, mainly because on Sunday I told Elaine that's probably what we'd do. That, plus the fact that kielbasa was running $2.25/lb. and chicken was $ .99/lb.
London Paulson got a quick how-to on using a meat cleaver to separate leg quarters. After about the 3rd one he realized what most people do; chopping stuff with a big knife is fun.
There's a million ways to do it, but here's how we made Lemon Peppper Chicken last night:
Separate the leg quarters
Wash it
Dry it
Pan it
Put a pat of butter on top of each piece
Hit 'em with the lemon pepper seasoning
Bake for 20 at 400
Take them out and squirt a little TEXAS PETE on them
bake for another 20 - 30 minutes.
Done.
The butter melts and browns up and helps crisp the chicken. The TEXAS PETE just makes something good even better.
The number we've fed the past couple of weeks has gone down a little, mostly at the 2nd stop. The first stop continues to be 35 + at the start.
If you see STEVE LEGER this week, get him to tell you his story about the birds on the golf course. He had us rolling. Matter of fact, don't wait 'til you see him. Call him up and get him to tell it to you. It's that funny!
About 14 kids from Hoggard High School's Key club came last week as part of a service project. This week, 4 of them came back just because they liked doing it so much last week! Gotta love that.
Slowly getting over the old truck being gone but it's tough. The new truck doesn't have power windows or locks,so every time I have to roll the window or lock the door, I'm reminded of the old FORD.
Good times, good times......
Butter noodles are like Instant Mashed Potatoes, Cookout, and NETFLIX.....
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