You Can Find Me In The Kitchen

I have a couple busy days of fancy footwork in the kitchen coming up, starting now.

Tomorrow my husband will be leading a training burn for his fire department, which means they will be using a donated house to burn, and then they do drills to practice rescuing and other things that are best practiced with real fire conditions. These hungry firemen will need lunch, and when my husband asked me to pick up some bologna and cheese to make lunches for these guys, I just couldn't let it go down that way. Cold, nutrition-free sandwiches for a bunch of hungry, tired, cold men? I don't think so! So I volunteered to make a bunch of chili and Pioneer Woman's Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever. And my husband was delighted.

So today I took three kids off to the grocery store, both to purchase our two weeks worth of household groceries, AND the groceries for the firemen. It took 3 carts to get out of there with everything.

Now I've got 3 pounds of ground beef and a pound of sausage in the crock pot, along with a chopped onion and two chopped bell peppers. That can cook while I do more important things, like blogging...and making cake!

The cake is about to get underway so that it has time to cool tonite. In order to keep things simple for the guys, and to work with the situation they'll have out at the burn site, I will be cutting the cake into pieces and individually wrapping each one. I'll also be making little snack-size ziploc bags of oyster crackers and sharp cheddar cheese, so that they can get a grab-n-go meal since they won't have tons of time for eating. I'm excited about the project. In the past there have been older ladies that were wives and mothers of firemen that did these sorts of things. However, a lot of these ladies are getting quite old or are in poor health, and a couple of them have died recently. So, I guess it's time for a younger gal to step up to the plate. I think it will be fun for my kids to help with this, see where the burn is, and have an opportunity to serve.

In addition to this exciting project, I also volunteered to take a meal to a family from church that has a new baby tomorrow. I was planning on making my Tomato Bisque Soup for them, and also planned to serve that for lunch on Sunday when some friends of ours come to visit. So I'll make all of that tomorrow so it'll be done for one and all. After we serve lunch to the firemen we'll be heading to drop off the soup to that family, plus take my oldest son for an eye exam, plus visit the library in that town. (about 30 minutes from here)

Sunday we'll have soup in the crock pot, as well as Pulled Pork Sandwiches that my husband wants to make. So, again, both of our crock pots will be employed. Thankfully, I decided to take the easy road by purchasing a ready-made veggie tray today, so that'll be ready for Sunday as well.