Setting the Hook
December 16th, 2009Chow Delivered
I just dumped a bunch of desserts off at church. I didn’t get to try a single one! All I got was a couple of tablespoons of batter and such. I hope the food is okay.
I don’t know if it was smart to make chocolate flan. I like it, but not everyone is crazy about the combination of chocolate and burned sugar, and in any case, it will look sad among the cheesecake, brownies, and coconut flan, which are all bona fide blockbusters.
They have decided to close the church’s cafe until January, because people will be out of town, and the place is dead. So I won’t have to cook on Monday. I have time to plot.
I still have to fix stuff this weekend. The cast of the Christmas play will need food again. Last week I made macaroni and cheese and chili. I’m not sure what to make this time. Maybe people familiar with my cookbook could recommend something. I was thinking maybe doro wat and rotis.
Rotis are kind of a pain to make. You have to roll them out on a dining table or something. You need a lot of room.
People are buying the book this month. As a Christmas gift, it’s a natural. Everyone knows some fat guy who cooks. I guess it will sell at Christmas time for the rest of my life, or until it becomes dated.
I’m pooped. Try making two flans and two batches of brownies in one day, while making goop and putting berries on top of a big cheesecake. I don’t plan to cook at home any more. It’s just too much aggravation. And of course, I left my pans at church again. I hope they don’t walk off.
People steal at church. If there is a faster ticket to hell, it’s hard to think of what it might be. If you think there is no God to punish you for stealing, why are you in the building?
I’m wiped out. This is what happens when you do work that doesn’t feel like work. You’re too caught up in enjoying it to realize you’re tired.
I have half a mind to make a pizza.
Hey, it’s for the glory of God.
December 17th, 2009 at 1:25 AM
I’ve always been amazed how people treat Church and other non-profits as their own pantry/basement. I’ve lost everything from canned goods donated for charity meals to nice paint brushes I paid for myself to be used for building sets in community theater because the “insiders” with keys and security codes could just walk in and walk off with stuff and then act ignorant or expect no one to say anything.
December 17th, 2009 at 9:52 AM
Most church kitchens have a huge collection of serving containers and such – which periodically have to be donated or discarded. Having things walking out with the wrong people seems to be a minor problem, if any problem at all.
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I’m sure that varies by location and congregation.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:49 AM
If being ripped off isn’t a problem (a statement I can’t understand at all), then maybe you won’t mind paying me the cost of the items I lost. I’ll keep a tab and submit a bill to you every time something is stolen from me.
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Was the commandment about stealing repealed?
December 17th, 2009 at 1:14 PM
If it has your name on it, it was stolen. If it was un-identified, then it was seen as church property to be borrowed at will and returned at convenience.
Churches suffer from the tragedy of the commons. You’re getting practice in not thinking the worst of people.
(Not that people don’t steal at church. I flaked and left an envelope with $90 in cash somewhere [with the cub-scout popcorn flier in it, no less]. Never saw it again.)
December 17th, 2009 at 1:47 PM
Dude…it was stolen. When you take something that isn’t yours, even if you think you might bring it back some day, it’s stealing. Check your state statutes, if the Ten Commandments aren’t cutting it.
December 17th, 2009 at 2:59 PM
Probably, but you may want to consider the temperment of the Court you’re appealling to. There’s a commandment greater than those 10. For me, it suggests bennefit of the doubt.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:01 PM
I never had that happen in a church I was a part of. They were too small. We KNEW who brought what.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:24 PM
You go into a private room in the back of a church, you see cookware in a shopping bag, you take it without permission, and you keep it.
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It’s possible to construct a bizarre scenario in which this could be anything but theft. If you have time for that sort of pointless mental activity.
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I still remember my visit to Aaron’s yeshiva in Jerusalem. Students left laundry detergent in open boxes in the laundry room, because they knew everyone there understood the commandment against stealing. It didn’t matter that a thief might take a very small amount, or that the detergent was on “church property.”
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Somehow I know things I find at church are not mine. How is it that other people should not be expected to figure this out?
December 17th, 2009 at 4:31 PM
Wow – quite a different experience from the churches I’ve been a part of (of course, they’ve been pretty small, so the feeling is more extended family than anonymous corporate – and a lot of people recognize each others’ dishes, so someone would probably notice).
December 18th, 2009 at 1:15 AM
The closest I came to something being stolen in church was when I left some of my own dishes in the church kitchen after a pot-luck dinner. Someone assumed they belonged to the church and not finding any room in the cabinets, they stored the dishes in a completely different room…I found them by accident three weeks later.
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On the cheesecake front, I’m thinking of trying to modify the Chocolate Cheesecake recipe to make a White-Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake and a Butterscotch Carmel Cheesecake. This is for a Christmas Open-House I’m having on Saturday.
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I can post a report on the forum if you have an interest.
December 18th, 2009 at 1:23 PM
The bag does make it dodgier. Well, time to talk to an elder then, isn’t it?