Tuesday, February 17, 2009

ETM Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser

It's 6:00 a.m. I've managed to stay up the whole night. (I had a computer issue I had to deal with, and this kept me wide awake!). It seems that many of the group stayed awake too. Talking, and running around with way too much energy from all the snack food they had inhaled while watching movies. I had the fun job of getting everyone up. It's one of the joys of youth ministry. : ) John B showed up at 6:00 a.m. with loads of ingredients. On the menu for the day were going to be:
  • Baked Apple Pancakes
  • Pannekoeken
  • Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes
Along with that would be sausages prepared by Chad and others, as well OJ, Coffee, Tea, Syrup and butter if you wanted it. Yummy!
Here you see the group in wake up mode, and John in command mode. There we LOTS of apples to peel and other ingredients to mix. Everyone seemed to get moving eventually.
Well,....almost everyone. Seems like Caleb, Rossy, Katherine and Fontana are a bit stuck at the moment.
We had some of the group set up the tables in preparation for the guests to arrive.
Again, hard at work. I thought that John bought way to much stuff at first, but boy, was I ever glad he did at the end of the morning. : )
Chad DIDN'T stay up with us all night, and yet, well, he has that glazed look about himself too....
Jonah on OJ duty. An important job.
The apples had to be cooked before being baked in the ovens. Caleb did a masterful job on this. The apples smelled REALLY good! Everyone was hungry and asking if they could eat. The rule for me is that no one eats until the guests are full. A learning curve for this group.
I don't think Chris wants to see another apple for a while. He did like the easy way the apples were peeled and cored though.
John giving instructions to Hannah, his daughter.
Leah, you don't look very awake. John's brother came out for the weekend, and his daughter (L) helped us out too. Thanks for coming and helping.
Foo, Foo, didn't sleep at all. I think she's having a minor meltdown right about now. She recovered and continued working. FYI
After the apples were baked and the batter mixed, it was into the glass pans for baking in the oven.
The end result is a pan full of Baked Apple Pancakes. They were a hit to say the least.
We also served Blueberry pancakes and Pannekoeken (very thin pancakes). Here Hannah demonstrates her cooking abilities to us.
Jacob was on the other side of the kitchen cooking more blueberry pancakes. He did a masterful job as well. You can see John in the background working with the Pannekoeken.
Joy is working hard at making sure we have enough batter for everything.
Katherine did an excellent job serving tables. She ended up cutting herself on a plate near the end of the morning. Not a pretty site. I hope you heal quickly. Thankfully we had a nurse in the kitchen with us helping.
Chad, the master sausage maker, barking out instructions. Everyone liked the sausages. We used a secret ingredient to give them their rich flavour (water) : ) !
Now for the ultimate test. Having our guests come and taste our wares. Kevin G is always a good indication. He went away happy. In fact, he came back after leaving, to join his family for another round of food.....I hope you donated twice eh Kevin!!!! (Just kidding man).
Shawn brought some friends along. He didn't feel like cooking breakfast. Good thing we were supplying one, eh Shawn!
Guests sharing some great fellowship together over coffee.
Annette (wife to John, our chef) (r) is smiling. We must have provided a good breakfast for you eh! But you must get this great cooking all the time so maybe it wasn't so great after all.....hmmmm : )
I'm not in many pictures so Peter figured it would be good to take one of me with his camera. If you take out your magnifying glass, you might JUST be able to see me. : )
Saskia took a friend along for breakfast. I thought they were sisters. They aren't. They sure look like sisters. Don't you think? I think so.
My wife (centre) and daughter (r) with others whom we invited to attend.
Rueben and Emily came out for the morning. They had some GREAT news to share, though I wasn't surprised at all to hear about the upcoming wedding (sorry to burst your bubble). Congrats!!!!!
Well, back to the events of the morning. We had two shifts lined up in order to keep things running smoothly. 8 and 9 AM. The first guests began arriving shortly after 8 am (John was feeling like he wasn't quite ready, so he had a few panic moments in the kitchen). Things went very well for the first hour. Then 9 am hit. The guests who signed up showed up, as did 25 others who are from what I call the "Last Minute Club." Don't get me wrong. We love it when we get lots of people for a fundraiser. We just weren't planning on most of them at once. Things were hectic for a while, but we managed. We weren't sure if we were going to have enough food, since we planned on only feeding 100 people, including us in the kitchen. It turned out we fed 130 people, and we had JUST enough. I can assure you, I was a bit nervous for a while. The worst thing (and this is always the case) is the fear that running out of food might actually become a reality. Thankfully, it didn't turn out that way. At 9:30 ish, we began the clean up process. Here you see Joy washing dishes. She does a pretty good job of it, actually.
Chris, Makusi and David realized that washing dishes with a powerful, hot, fast dishwasher can actually be lots of fun.
As always, clean up is the hardest part of the day. People are tired. Some leave early. The rest are left to make sure the kitchen is spic and span. Megan's still smiling as she works to make the stoves shine like new again.
Looks like Hannah is out of gas.
Hannah is still out of gas. Everyone else looked pretty chipper, considering most hadn't slept in 26 hours.
And finally, the man of the hour. The one who made this morning such a huge success. The head chef, party whip, and all around nice guy : ) John! Thanks for all the work in getting us all to work and make some great pancakes. You can't tell here, but he's tired too!
All in all, a great morning. We raised over $1,300 for the youth group, which has been the best take yet. It's comforting to know that John has 6 kids, with only two of them in youth group at the moment. We'll have him around for a loooonnnnngggg time making pancakes in February. Good thing, because my "just add water" pancakes just don't seem to taste the same any longer. : ( Thanks to all of you who came out to support us. Thanks to the young people who worked hard through their tiredness. Thanks to Chad and Janine for your work. Thanks for watching the kids Micheal. Thanks Mary-Jane and Graham for helping in the kitchen. We couldn't have done it without you. I end with this thought. Even if we only made $1 this morning, this time would have been worth it. Worth it because we got to know each other better as a group. We were able to work hard and feel good about the end result. Those who came commented they had never had a better pancake breakfast put on by young people. Nice to hear that about young people. So often it's the negative that comes out first about young people. Today, nothing but positive. I'd be ok with just that! How about you?

2 comments:

Makusi Peter said...

Hi Ron why did you put a lot of pictures? some people stayed up all morning when you told them to go to bed. And you have a nice blog!

Anonymous said...

Good job Ron you seemed to do that entry with out exagerating to much