Random Friday

1. Work: I ended up getting a few invoices in the late mail drop yesterday. So I have a little bit to work on while at home. Since my boss and the Chief are out today, I’ll wait to do them on Monday so that they can do their thing to get them paid without the invoices hanging in the ether over the weekend. Confused? We pay most of our bills by ACH anymore.

2. Play: We are making a trip to the used bookstore today. We’re hunting for books for Jesse - Beau wants large picture books for teaching purposes; I want Little Golden Books.

3. Church: Our church is hosting a large homecoming, of sorts, for our overseas missionaries next month. It’s a week-long event and they have asked folks to step up to help with the logistics of hosting such a big thing. I volunteered to cook for some of the meals they have planned - group meals for planned events during the week, not the regular meals they will receive with whomever they are staying at other times, like breakfast.

I initially signed up for a couple of weekend day events since it’s tough for me to participate during the week with my job. And then I got a heads up that the leader of the food team was thinking about asking me to cook the meat for the large dinner where they’re expecting about 250 people. At the time I thought she meant that I would cook some of the meat for that dinner, but I got the email from the leader of the food team yesterday asking if I was up for the challenge of cooking all of the meat (pork tenderloin roasts) for the dinner. She’s estimating 10 large roasts - I told her that might feed everyone if the roasts are huge - you might be able to feed about 12 people from a large tenderloin. Any experienced cooks out there who can verify that quantity of meat will serve 250 people? Will we need more?

The problem is that the dinner is on a Thursday. I can’t take that day off. I proposed pre-cooking the roasts over the prior weekend (it will take the whole weekend) and then freezing them in the interim days before the dinner and then reheating them before slicing for serving. It’s the only way I can do it. She agreed that no matter what, it was probably going to have to be done that way. So it looks like I’ll be cooking a lot of pork tenderloin in a couple of weeks.

The good thing is that I can take advantage of my teleworking on Friday to start cooking then. I figure to get half of them roasted and into the freezer on Friday. Then I finish the other batch on Saturday before we go to church that night and I can take the lot of them to the church with us to put in the freezer there. At that point I have completed my task.

Now I’m working on a plan to cook 10+ pork tenderloins in my regular sized oven when I only have one roasting pan. I may see if I can borrow my mother’s roaster or I may just buy some of those aluminum roasters. And I’m hoping I can fit two roasts into one roasting pan and then two roasting pans into my oven at the same time.

4. Friends: My bridesmaid’s youngest daughter is graduating from high school next week. When I met Scot and Joanie, their girl was 9 months old. I remember her as this happy, adorable little girl with white chick fuzz on her head that stood straight up. Too cute. She is now a very lovely young lady. I know her parents are proud of her and I am, too.

5. Jesse: He’s teething again. I think he’s got multiple teeth making their way. I don’t know how they endure the pain of it. Poor little guy. Even with that he’s still way too happy. He’s amazing.