A Recent Gathering and a Memorial Day Remembrance

Hi everyone! I haven’t written for awhile, but that’s not because I haven’t been busy with food. (Double negative there.) I had another big church breakfast Sunday before last, serving my breakfast burritos using the guidelines from my cookbook. Order your copy from my website here or through Amazon here. I think you’ll find it helpful for your own gatherings. The burritos I served had scrambled eggs as their base protein, with sliced sausage, the smoked fully-cooked Polish type (on sale for $2/package) plus tons of sauteed onions and peppers, some canned black beans heated up with chopped red onions and taco seasoning, and the usual toppings: sour cream, salsa, and shredded  cheese. I gave people a choice of flour or corn tortillas, labeling the corn ones as gluten-free. I think people who were concerned about gluten just skipped the tortillas, which was fine.  For this number of people, expected to be perhaps 75 and ending up more like 85, I did NOT bother with avocado. Too much work, and too much expense! I had lovely helpers, including a couple who served as my “egg wranglers,” whisking up and scrambling a dozen eggs at a time in my big griddle and someone else who made fruit salad that she’d divided up into individual serving cups so that people could just grab and go. I bought 8 dozen eggs and I’m pretty sure we used them all up. I also got a dozen bagels just in case–all but two of them disappeared. It all went extremely well and was a great way to get people to talk and eat after we’d gone online for two weeks because of some COVID cases in our congregation. I went shopping on Friday and spent a big chunk of Saturday prepping, saying that I wanted to have my nervous breakdown early.

Today is Memorial Day, and we’re not doing much. It’s been very cold and rainy for the past couple of days, so we may not even eat outside. But today is a time to think about our veterans, and I do: my father, Peter A. Baerg, my father-in-law, Lowell Simons, and my nephew Zachary Baerg. And, because it’s so recent, here’s the obituary notice for a man from our congregation, our beloved Ralph Whitlock, who died earlier this month. I would encourage you to read this excellent essay about his remarkable life:

Ralph Whitlock July 21 1926 My 12 2021 (age 94)