Even though we are a small congregation—about 40 of us, currently without a pastor—our church manages to do some amazing things. A few years ago, one of our members had a vision to put up a gazebo on church property that could serve as a waystation for cyclists on the Great Divide cycling route every summer. (The husband poured the concrete for that project.) The gazebo is well-used throughout the warmer months, with some cyclists even camping overnight there.
That same member wanted to bring the Mennonite Central Committee Western States Bike Tour to the Flathead Valley. This is a fundraiser for MCC. The Eastern and Western tours alternate every summer. We knew that pulling off this event would take some work. I am not sure we realized how much work, but it was absolutely worth it. About two months ago, several guys in our congregation began demolition on the existing bathroom areas in our church basement. The husband cut out part of the concrete floor so they could access the plumbing. Walls went up. Showers went in. The guys drywalled. We painted. It seemed like the whole church pitched in, in ways both large and small.
We had meetings. I volunteered to be in charge of food. (I am not sure where my head was that day, LOL.) We do have someone in our congregation who is a professional chef, but he was already scheduled to be somewhere else the week of the bike tour. He helped me ahead of time with recipes and some of the prep work.
[You need to know that I do not like to cook. It is my least favorite domestic activity. I do it because the husband requires a ridiculous number of calories daily, but it ranks right up there with cleaning bathrooms. Laura Ingalls Wilder once commented that she didn’t like to make buttonholes, so she became very skilled and efficient at them. That’s the approach I take to cooking. After almost 40 years, the husband has no complaints, so I must be doing something right. Having said all that, though, I am incredibly organized and an absolute whiz at multitasking (yes), and sometimes I think that’s the more important skill.]
Riders began arriving at the church last Sunday afternoon. Some came in RVs and some stayed in nearby Airbnbs, but the majority planned to camp on the church property. We had an orientation meeting and I checked with the riders who had special dietary needs to make sure we were covered.
I was at the church at 5 am Monday morning to prep for a 7 am breakfast. Our breakfast menu was basically the same each day: baked oatmeal (made the day before and reheated), sausage or bacon, fresh fruit, and individual yogurt cups. We also made sure to have plenty of coffee available. Each night was a different dinner: ground beef casserole, pulled pork, teriyaki chicken, and then leftovers.
I had the days scheduled down to the minute. The first crew served breakfast and cleaned up, then a second crew showed up at 10 am to cook dinner and prep for the following day. A third crew came late in the afternoon to serve dinner and clean up. (The dinner crew made sure that I was on my way home by 5 pm every night, which was wonderful.) Every morning, I put a list of the day’s tasks up on the fridge so that any of the kitchen crew could look at it and see what needed to be done. If someone took on a task, I gave them free rein and didn’t micro-manage. The recipes were all printed and available for everyone to see. A nearby room served as our pantry and each day’s supplies were stacked there and labeled.
Our church has a second kitchen in the basement of the original church building. The plan was to have the riders make their lunches after breakfast, so I suggested we put the lunch station in that second kitchen. That worked beautifully. One of the women was stationed there every morning to make sure the riders had everything they needed, and that kept them out of the way of the kitchen crew.
We ran like a well-oiled machine and there were no arguments or conflicts. (I did have to make it clear that if you were not specifically on the duty roster, you had no business being in the kitchen.) The only problem we ran into involved the 72-cup coffee urn that dates back to probably the 1980s. We have been using it quite a bit lately—two funerals and a church service in our former pastor’s garden—and when I started it up Tuesday morning, it tripped the breaker several times and then died altogether. We now have a new one.
Other than that one issue, we had plenty of food and everyone seemed happy. We served one last breakfast yesterday morning before the riders left. A gentleman came up to me after breakfast yesterday and asked me if I had a catering business (🤯) so we must have done okay. Truly, operations, not cooking, is my forté. I was tired—Tuesday was an intense day—but having everything organized meant I could enjoy the week, too.
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Now I need to catch up here. Being at the church 12 hours a day for five days was the equivalent of being out of town for a week. We are under a red flag warning today because a dry cold front with gusty west winds is supposed to come through this afternoon. Spokane is in really bad shape because it is much drier there than we are. Hopefully, we will not have any new fire starts.
