thenewchurchsupper

Last night’s church service included a celebration of Communion for the 5th Grade class.  Our sign in table for dinner honors our 5th graders and their families for their “Milestone” celebration. Ten tables of 10 were reserved for these families to eat together at dinner.

Everyone eats a lot of turkey during the holidays, so at Calvary we like to have our turkey dinner in the middle of winter.   The kitchen crew sliced and warmed up 228 pounds of smoked turkey breast, and made 18 pans of  mashed potatoes and 8 gallons of turkey gravy.

As an alternative to the mashed potatoes, we also baked up 300 sweet potatoes in a 400 degree oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until soft.  Some were so huge we had to cut them into thirds to serve.  The leftover sweet potatoes were peeled, mashed and frozen for future use in a sweet potato casserole.

For a green vegetable side dish, we served 55 pounds of asparagus, which was rinsed, had the ends snapped off, and then steamed for 5 minutes.  On the side we served a ready-to-eat lemony Hollandaise sauce made by Knorr.  The sauce comes frozen and just requires warming before serving.  Towards the end of our serving time, we ran out of asparagus and then cooked up some green beans that we had on hand from the freezer.  We’ll make more asparagus next time!

For dinner rolls, we used Sister Shubert’s yeast rolls which are available at Sam’s Club.  These are very popular rolls:  we went through 24 bags of 30 rolls/bag!  They come parbaked, so you just have to put them in a 350 degree oven for 8 minutes, and they come out warm, golden brown and have that delicious yeasty bread smell.

On Tuesday morning, we made 17 pumpkin spice cakes with cream cheese frosting, baked in half size sheet pans. We also defrosted the extra cookies from the freezer that we made 2 weeks ago.

470 people signed in at dinner last night!  Thanks for coming and we’ll see you next week.  Visitors are always welcome, so bring your friends along.

Next week is Ash Wednesday, so there will be no education classes, just dinner at the usual time, 4:45-6:15 pm, followed by a special Ash Wednesday service in the sanctuary.