And Now For My Next Trick...

Every day the Senior Center in town provides a noon meal for $3.00 for folks older than 60 who want to come and eat. Younger folk can also eat, but they must pay $5.00. A Meals-on-Wheels program also operates, and they send food out to seniors who are not able to come to the center to eat. In addition to making sure these folks, some of who are at risk for malnutrition, get at least one nutritious meal a day, the Center is a gathering place for social activities, complete with a pool table, exercise equipment, board games, and other amusements.

Once a month the Center offers an all-you-can-eat breakfast for $4.00 on Saturday morning, cooked and served by volunteers from community service organizations and local churches, as a way to raise funds. Our church signed up with the Lutheran church in town to be in charge of the breakfast today.

There were several things volunteers could do: pour coffee, wait on the tables, or work in the kitchen, cooking, serving food from the steam table, or rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.

I tried to determine what activity would be the easiest for me to do without goofing it up, because I tend to make big messes when food is involved. It was quite amazing how much cleaner our kitchen became when my husband more or less took over the cooking.

But I digress. When someone asked if I would like to work at the steam table in the kitchen dishing up the food, I agreed that would be a good thing for me to do. I had visions of me pouring coffee and missing the mug, or returning to the table with the plate of food and dumping it on the person's lap, that sort of thing.

The diners checked off what they wanted on slips that were on the tables and the waiter came to the window with the slip and we assembled the food. Our station was biscuits and sausage gravy and scrambled eggs. The woman standing next to me was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Yes, I am one of those crazy Lutherans." We agreed that she would put the biscuit(s) on the plate and ladle on the sausage gravy, and that I would add the scoop of scrambled eggs.

The first order arrived. She put two biscuits on the plate, broke them in half, poured over the gravy, and handed me the plate. I added the scrambled eggs and dumped about half of the eggs into the pan of gravy in the steam table. So she laughed, and I laughed, and I fished out the eggs with a slotted spoon. But I did learn my lesson, and when the next plate was handed to me for eggs, I held the plate over the pan eggs, and there were no more mishaps.

Another one of the crazy Lutherans came to the window and said "Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger !" I stared at him in amazement for a second, and then said "Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi," and he said. "No, no, no, you're supposed to say 'Fries, fries, fries!' and then we laughed, remembering the old Saturday Night Live skit, and offered some opinions about why so many talented people, such as John Belushi  self-destructed and he went on his way.

A good time was had by all.