Dinner Plate Is Spelled With Two N's

(the alternate title was "Blame Vox for the wasted five minutes of your life that you will never ever get back, if you read this")

…For a moment I reflected on the luxury of a proper dinner plate with utensils made of metal.

I wondered if the potatoes and the meat loaf were going cold by the time we placed the vegetables on. I wondered how to keep everything hot. I wondered if only having to do this once every three months was worth all the wondering.

I was reminding myself that they are people just like me, when loud shouting busted in from the dining area. I looked through the pass through to where the noise was coming from, nobody seemed concerned. The guy doing all the yelling was part of the regular team that serves these folks.

After I heard him yell "You always take her side," I went back to wondering on how I could be more efficient with the smallish slotted spoon I had in conjunction with the massive pot of green beans filled too high with water. It started taking me two scoops to get the preferred amount; I was slowing the team down. I tried different spooning techniques but nothing seemed to work. When the pace slackened a bit I simply dumped a lot of the water out. In hindsight, I should have tried bending the spoon into more of a ladle shape because when Chris tried to dump water out of his pot of carrots, he was asked not to because they wanted it for soup.

When I first walked in, the guy in charge, Mike was serving the soup which I thought was odd because one thing that I did now was that our church group was supposed to do a complete meal. The soup was something he just wanted to add on, which doesn't seem like a big deal but he was using two of the burners on a six burner stove and basically just getting in the way.

At the end of the day, both pots of vegetable water were dumped into the pot of the current soup of the day which magically transformed it into tomorrow's soup. I just thought that there had to be a better way.

My sisters told me that the night was better than previous nights. Part of the problem is that whoever is helping has responsibilities but no authority. You're expected to do it the way it has always been done. The help for the organization is inconsistent and they change things without notice.

To try to make the situation better, they both offered to do the service for the whole year, which is only four times but at least you can plan things out somewhat better. They weren't taken up on their offer but prior to them getting the "No thanks," I picked up a copy of Food for Fifty. It cost me 67 bucks thanks to a thirty percent off coupon; but I think it's worth it if you every find yourself in need of cooking for a bunch of people.


I had read part of the book and saw a lot of what could change from what I had read. I was bothered that it felt like we were feeding cattle when with just a few changes it could be more of a proper sit down dinner.

But people often get offended with change; they take suggestions as personal attacks. I kept quiet until I was out the door. I just want things better.