Wild Ride

We have been on a bit of a wild ride since Thursday!  A good wild ride, but a wild ride nonetheless.

Funny how some things come along your way and just seem right.

The short version of a potentially long story is that there has been a forest fire in our area.  Our church Camp is in the neighborhood of the fire and the camp was asked to house and feed the fire fighters.  Our friends are the Camp caretakers and, in the process, agreed to cook for the fire fighters and asked us if we could help. 

There, that's the basic story.  The end.

Well, no, it's been a wild ride, really!  And I have loved every minute of it! 

I consider myself to be a fairly experienced cook.  I can cook for 12-15 people easily.  I have cooked for a group of 25-30.  But this time we were asked to cook for 50 HUNGRY fire fighters (which actually turns out to be more than 50 people once you add in the security guys and all of the camp/kitchen staff and our kids).  In an industrial kitchen.  With the closest grocery store about 20 minutes away.  And they eat at 8 p.m.

Tracy has been our head cook.  She's had the tremendous job of planning the meals, getting all of the groceries, communicating with the officials, and keeping the kitchen a happy place.  Wow, good job, Tracy!  She's also been the unlucky soul who, along with her husband and one other Camp staff member, has been rising at 4:30 a.m. to make breakfast for these guys.  We arrive later in the day and help to make sandwiches for their bag lunches and then do the supper prep, service, and clean up.  On a good day, there have been 3-5 adults cooking, plus 3-4 teenagers assisting with prep and dishes.

Oh, if you could see the sandwich making process.  These guys eat their breakfast around 6-6:30, leave for the fire site at 7, and don't come back to camp until 8 p.m. so they have to have a hefty lunch to take with them.  One bag lunch = 4 sandwiches (8 slices of bread) of meat, cheese and lettuce; 2 pieces of fruit and a granola bar.  We can't fit it all in one brown bag.  We get a pretty substantial assembly line going and it takes 1-2 hours of concerted effort.  16 loaves of sandwich bread.  200 sandwiches.  One loaf at a time.  Individually buttered, layered, wrapped, bagged. 

Tracy has planned a great variety of suppers - chicken, lasagna, pork chops, burgers.  But cooking for that many people has caused us to have to re-think how to do things, just from a quantity perspective.  On the night that we had pork chops, I stood at the grill for about 2 1/2 hours frying pork chops non-stop, so you have to work ahead and figure out how to keep things warm without drying them out.  We had a major panic moment on our first evening when, 25 minutes prior to serving time, the chicken breasts were still pink.  Can you believe that we managed to get them on the table on time?!!  You get creative and learn to think on the spot and improvise.  That night, we ripped the tin foil off, dumped half the mushroom sauce out of the roasters, boosted the heat and sprinkled them with onion soup mix and served (on time) completely cooked chicken breasts in a lovely sauce, lightly browned.  Whew. 

Did I mention that these guys are hungry fire fighters?  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  I have never seen anyone eat such massive portions in my life!  2-3-4 chicken breasts.  Plates FULL of potatoes, heaped with potatoes.  The lasagna night - I won't quickly forget that night!  We miscalculated how many lasagnas we actually had, and so served the men single pieces, much to their disappointment.  When we made the call that there were seconds in abundance, they literally flooded the serving table with plates outstretched, eagerly asking for 1 - 2 more pieces.  And the plates come to the dish counter clean.  The only thing they aren't always wild about is dessert.  Dessert appears to be optional.  They love Caesar salad.

And I got one marriage proposal as a result of making coleslaw.

Yup.  It's been a wild ride!

On a serious, from-my-heart, note - I am grateful for where the last year has brought us.  You see, last year at this time, I was a completely burned out and broken soul.  There were a lot of reasons for that, which don't really matter any more, but I was in such a broken place.  We needed to pull apart from everything familiar and re-group, rest, try to put ourselves in a place where we could be restored.  That wasn't easy.  One of the places that we came to do all that was Camp last July.  God, in His immensely loving way, brought us some of that restoration while we were there. 

Another area that has healed my broken spirit has been that of finding fresh perspectives - via new/redeveloped friendships, new ways of thinking that had to come from my soul via letting go of the past, and new interests.

So, for me to return to Camp to cook (and not sing) for hungry fire fighting men with new friends - do you see why I am so grateful?  I feel like this weekend has been the culmination of a long journey, as if God Himself arranged this weekend to remind me of how firmly He has set me on new ground.

Yup, it's been a wild ride indeed.  No recipe for this post.  Just stories, memories and a piece of my heart.

Comments

  1. So good to hear your spirit is healed- you are such a giving and loving person, if anyone deserves to be healed it is you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really, really beautiful, M. Much love, PJ

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi maureen,
    i enjoyed reading the blog. you're AMAZING....

    ReplyDelete

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