....the first motorcycle rides of their lives!

Tonight was a really cool night because:
1. God was faithful and good, providing us with an abundance of food to share with our friends, like he does every week.
2. We had a chance to distribute clothes to our friends. That's always a great blessing to be able to do.
3. The New Hanover High School National Honor Society came and helped us. I work at New Hanover so I know several of them from classes and FCA. They did a great job and were a lot of fun.
4. I got a visit from someone that was totally unexpected and out of left field- but still great.
5. Tuesday nights are always really cool.
6. One other thing I'll tell you about at the end...............
LONDON / ERICA / MALLORY / ELIZABETH / MARY ANNE / SARA / EMILY HOBBS  / EMILY HILL  /  HANNAH / JESSICA / BRIANNA / ALEXIS /  MARGARET / ELAINE / CECELIA / MACKENZIE / MISSY / ROCHELLE (I've always called her Ms. Bongiornio and she told me last night to call her Rochelle, so....)  / HAYLEY / PAUL / DANIEL / ROBERT / TYLER / SHAUN / SCOTT / ELLYN / WAYNE  C. / TWIG / CHUCK / CHARLES / DON / CREEEEEECH! / MORGZILLA / ALEXIS /  BRYANNA / GRANT / MR. TRAINER / TYLER / JOHANNA / KILLER / MERRITT / WAYNE
Count 'em up. 42, surpassing the record of 41 we had 3 weeks ago.
42!
And we needed every single one of them. (The ones in orange are National Honor Society students and the ones in bold orange are the ones who stayed for both stops.)


We had 6 cooked Boston Butts donated to us by a local men's ministry that was selling them as a fundraiser. We chopped them up and made BBQ sandwiches. A friend of mine called and gave us a pile of Sweet Potatoes and we had a lot of other produce donated to us this week.


MENU
BBQ SANDWICHES
BAKED BEANS
COLE SLAW
SWEET POTATOES w/BROWN SUGAR, CINNAMON & BUTTER
DESSERT
SODAS
SWEET TEA / WATER


We also had bags with an apple and a bag of cookies to take with them as they left.


We had a room full of t-shirts, hoodies. sweatshirts, and sweaters, as well a decent amount of pants and shoes to pass out. We walked them through that first, then served the meal. It was a good night to do this because there was enough people to have in two places doing stuff.
The National Honor students from New Hanover did a fantastic job all night. To their credit, half of the 20 had already been and helped before so they had an idea what was going on. They were quick to jump in. We chopped our own BBQ and made our cole slaw from scratch and they were on it in a flash.


Now for the other thing........
I'm in the kitchen with everybody, just riding herd on the chaos and noise that comes with that many people, when my phone rings.
It's my sister, Sherry.
She says I know you're busy and I don't want to spoil a surprise, but you need to call Wayne (my brother who lives in Fayetteville).
I say OK.
Before I can get away and call him, he calls me.
Where are you at? he says.
I'm at the church. Why?
Cause I'm in Wilmington looking for you!
????????????????????????????????????


Surprised would be one way to describe me.
Shocked out of my socks would be a better one.
Wayne and I are a year and a half apart in age and light years apart in personality.And not in a bad way. Just different.
Most people don't even know I have a brother.


We get along fine, but don't spend much time together outside of holidays and family reunions.
So for him to ride 100 miles on a motorcycle to see me.........not something I would expect.


 It was good to see him. He'd heard my sister talk about when she came to help a couple of months ago and wanted to come help, too. That, and the fact he wanted to take his motorcycle out on the road.
So he did. He helped at the first stop and headed back after we packed up to go to the Mercy House.

But not before he'd given Creeeeeeech and Morgzilla .......

.......When it comes back four seconds!

LONDON / LUKE / BRETT / SHAUN / SAMMY / ERICA / MALLORY / ZUPON! / ELLYN / TWIG / MITCH / HAMPTON / J. BOGGS / CREEEEECH! / ALEXANDRA / BLAKE / STEVE / DAVID / JENNA / T.J. / MARK /  CHARLES / LUKE / BRIEN / IAN / DON (#24) /  .....got out in the chill last night night and put Faith into action and Love onto a plate for people who needed both.


GRILLED CHEESE
HOMEMADE CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
FRIED FISH
FRIED SCALLOPS
DESSERT
SWEET TEA / WATER


Twig made the call for the grilled cheese and soup tonight. I'd made about 5 dictatorial decisions in a row for meals so I was glad to hand it off this week. I got a call late in the afternoon that someone had a pan of freshly cooked spots and hush puppies for us. Then when I got downtown I remembered we had some scallops we had been sitting for a while, so I pulled them out (5 gallon-size Zip-Locs) and we had them tonight, too. It is always amazing and humbling to see how much God is capable of putting in our hands to distribute each week. Last week, fried shrimp. Tonight , spots and scallops.
How wild is that for a feeding ministry to be able to do? 
It doesn't go unnoticed by our friends either. They comment often on the variety they see and we always give the credit back to God and his graciousness. 


There has a been a nice response to the boxes at the Activity Center asking for coat and clothing donations. We're going to distribute them next week.
We'd like to put together a package deal of a toboggan, a pair of socks and a pair of gloves, if we can come up with enough.


We're rearranging some of our storage downtown to make things more efficient and a little easier at the end of the night.


Having the spots last night reminded me that we haven't had a FISH FRY in a while. I'd like to, it's just a matter of can we fit one in now that the Holiday season is on top of us. We'll see.


Don Vigus and I have been working on a plan for a Spring Break Mission Trip with the High School kids that come and help on Tuesday nights. The current thought is to go to New York City and spend 3-4 days plugged in to some homeless/food distribution programs up there. Let you know more as it develops.


Had 45 people in line at the first stop last night when we said the Blessing. That number will go up as it gets colder.


Fixed 10 gallons of homemade chicken soup last night. Went through about half of it, so now we have 5 gallons ready to be used another week. We're smart like that.

It's about time to start switching Sweet Tea for Hot Chocolate. I've never drank one cup of coffee in my life, but I've drunk enough Hot Chocolate to float a battleship. Love the stuff. I like to dunk graham crackers in it. Don't know where that came from but I've done it ever since I can remember.

FOOD JOKE
How do you know when a clock is hungry?...........

Upon further review.......

....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.

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

....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, 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.

....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.....