The Help & Thank You

A few people were integral when it came to meal preparations at our recent church retreat... Some females stepped up to the plate; such brave souls to always come knocking to see if I need help preparing the meals (not just for the retreat but every time we have big event meals there's a core group of the ladies who always come ready to help)... This time around, I surprisingly had some help from the other gender and not just in the usual "take out the trash" kind of way either. One little brother, let's call him "One Man Band", was for whatever reason eager to help me cook... (He's been itching to learn how to cook it seems) So in the weeks prior, I let him know he'd be helping me cook a couple meals - he was genuinely excited. (*shaking head* he doesn't know what he's in for) One Man Band also had to prepare the sound/music equipment & prepare to lead praise during a couple of the worship times as well so we had to coordinate our "schedules" to make sure neither conflicted.

Friday evening when we arrived to the retreat center, I stood in the kitchen for a good 1/2 hour & stared to try to figure out how to unpack & organize all of the food, snacks, drinks, kitchen equipment in an orderly fashion. People were asking left and right how to help but in order for me not to lose my mind I asked them to give me time to try to figure out how to organize everything first and then we could all unpack (because the last thing i wanted was to find like a spatula in the pile of onions or something to that effect). So we all arranged everything in its place... There were a couple times when I would go back and ask "um, why is this here?" and then people would stare back at me... (It's because I asked them to put it there...) And then it would click that I asked that it be put there for the time being. *shaking head*

During one of my first meal preps another little brother, let's call him "Bear", popped his head into the kitchen asking if I needed any assistance. At first I was kinda skeptical of his kitchen skills so I accepted his help on a trial basis... Surprisingly, he's pretty handy in the kitchen! I did have to adjust a couple things (washing vegetables w/ hot water for example) but otherwise - Bear was my go to kitchen person. There were a few times that I was so tired that I wouldn't even have the energy to form words but I just made motions but somehow the message came through. There were times that I would make things a little bit more difficult or complicated for him without even thinking. (I chalk it up to lack of sleep not bad intentions) It's too bad I didn't pack more than one apron otherwise I would have forced them to wear one (not a frilly pink one, just a basic apron). One Man Band & Bear kept me from drowning in the mounds of food prep by telling random funny stories...

I felt like I put them through like a kitchen boot camp of sorts so as a thank you gift I made each of them a box of cookies... Which I think they happily scarfed down the afternoon they received them. They must have had fun helping b/c they offered to help me next year too! (*evil laugh* Do they know what they got themselves into??!)

My testosterone-filled kitchen help

Some toffee almond chocolate chip cookies (I also made peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies) as a thank you gift