Church Supper

Months ago my pastor Chris asked us if we would host a new member dinner at our house. He was used to having church dinners at our house over the years so he knew I would agree. Russ likes when I agree to these things because it means I am going to cook. I like that I agree to these things because it makes me clean things up.

The good thing about a church dinner is there is always a committee to help. So I did not have to make desert, salads or garlic bread. The bad thing was the staff member who was helping with the sign up for volunteering double assigned garlic bread so we had enough for each person to have a quarter of a loaf.

After getting all the dietary restrictions I settled on making jambalaya. I only had to make one pot with just shrimp for the people who don’t eat meat and two giants vats for everyone else that had andouille sausage, chicken and shrimp. Sadly my friend Grey never turned in his shrimp allergy and didn’t tell me until the last minute when I literally had just added the shrimp.

We had a big turn out of 36 people, which was exactly the number of RSVPs. That never happens like that. Even with the exact number I had a whole extra pot of jambalaya left over. The committee went home with take out containers full of it.

I was especially thankful for the young members who stayed and washed the dishes. They all had babysitters and didn’t want to go home before the kids were asleep. The only thing left in the sink were the Dutch ovens soaking. The house is fairly much back to normal which I am thankful for since I have an out of town group coming here for an all day mah Jongg class first thing in the morning. Thankfully, not as many mah Jongg players as came for dinner tonight.