....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.........