Peru - Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser

Each year Calvin's youth group hosts a Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser. Last year it was held for our youth group. This year, Saturday, January 30th, it was held by our Peru Team, of which many are from our youth group. : )

This breakfast has become sort of a "looked forward to" event over the past couple of years. That is NOT because I, Pastor Ron, have anything to do with it actually! More to the point, it IS because John, a member of our congregation, has taken this event to lofty levels with his ever new breakfast creations.

This year was once again a time to wonder what John would be preparing to tantalize the pallets of our guests.

The menu for the breakfast ended being the following:

Cinnamon Rolls

Panakoeken

Blueberry Pancakes

Apple Baked Pancakes

Sausages

Coffee

Tea

OJ

Enjoy the picture diary of the event.........

After several email exchanges with John, we decided we would have two cooking times. The first would be on the Friday evening. We needed to make raisin cinnamon rolls. Here you see several of our group getting warmed up and ready to make them.

Megan decided she didn't like making cinnamon rolls so she did dishes instead. (Just kidding Megan. : ) )

Others in the group were assigned [yes, by yours truly] the task of preparing the donation envelops and getting the tables ready.

Here you see Marg hard at work.

Yes, the counter tops were bleached before use.

Wilma and her daughter getting ready to roll the cinnamon and raisins.

There is some skill involved in this.....that's why I'm not involved. : )

Here is John describing to Mina how best to make panekoeken. I don't think Mina ever heard of that word : ).

Peter came out on Friday night too to help us out. It was interesting to watch the dynamics going on in the room. Seems that Peter and John looked VERY experienced in the kitchen, and the rest of the group....well..... : )

These two, Leah and Hannah, are GREAT YP on their OWN. Get them TOGETHER though, and things go wonky! They decided to place the ingredients of our cinnamon rolls on their faces for some reason.....and no, I don't know what that reason was!

Chris and Jeannine working hard at setting up the tables.

After about 8 hours sleep, we were back at the church by 6:15 am [I am NOT a morning person BTW] getting ready to peel lots of apples, and get things ready.

John had to manage a group of 15 ish people and get them to make things just right. I could see that at times it was an exercise in frustration because you loose some control over cooking with a group this size. He handled it well, and the group listened to him well.

Chris so wanted to make the OJ for the day. I think he REALLY just wanted to use the sprayer on the sink. : )

Hannah, and others, were in charge of making sure our apples got baked. She was just as chipper as the night before.....how do you do that Hannah! : )

Kevin and Jeannine getting the sausages ready for the oven.

A trial taste test of the cinnamon rolls. They were gggggggooooodddddd!!!!!

Now, when an event such as this is under way, and all sorts of things are going on, the leader in charge [not of cooking] hopes that the adults in the group offer strong leadership and model great behaviour to our youth. As I walked into the basement to check on the progress of the sausage making, this is what I found......enough said, don't you think?

A bit of a lull in the baking/making process. The only two left in the room were Brenda and Wilma......you get a A in my books.

I'm pretty sure that Nancy is telling John some joke or something. Nice apron Nancy.

After peeling, cutting, baking apples, and then doing lots of dishes, your hands start to look like the raisins that we put in the cinnamon rolls.

Hmmmm. We hope you didn't find a knife, or fork, or any other foreign object in your food. The culprit of this LARGE item left in the batter? My son : (

Panakoeken (don't ask me how to spell it) on the go. John handled this personally.

Blueberry pancakes on the electric griddles. mmmmmm

Our welcoming YP. Hannah, you are starting to look tired.

A tender moment between mother and daughter.

The final product - cinnamon rolls.

At 8:15 am our FIRST guests arrive. I took this picture because of who the guests are. Jason and Angela are, self admittedly, NOT first for anything, usually. I think they've learned that its good to be first for this event. GREAT selection of ALL the food. BTW, Angela was VERY pregnant and both are now proud parents of a healthy son. Congrats!

The room soon filled up with EVERYONE coming at once. Yes, that IS bad because we had signed them up for 8:30 and 9AM shifts to allow us to make the food fresh and hot. NOTE TO SELF: more time between shifts so people will honor them : ).

John's family enjoying breakfast. The interesting thing is that this is a regular occurrence for them. Every week, all the time.....I wonder if I can get adopted into that family just for breakfast time.... : ) [I know John, you are definitely going to be making a comment to me about that one]!

The master chef taking a moment to sample his creations. How'd we do John? Judging by the comments I received, you/we did VERY well.

So, we end yet another pancake breakfast fundraiser. We managed to raise just over $1,800 in profit for the Peru team. Now, the $$ is nice, but as I mentioned in another entry, the other spin off benefits of fundraisers also are GREAT and should not be discounted.

THANK YOU to all who came out to enjoy some great food and fellowship.

THANK YOU to the Peru Team from Calvin for all your hard work. A class act once again.

THANK YOU John, for coordinating the cooking once again. Already people are talking about what you will be serving next year. : )

See below a short video of some of the group's antics if you'd like.