Potential offline status

Carl and I are getting ready to be "leaving on a jet plane". We're heading to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic on Tuesday, for 9 days. I may be able to do blog posts from there, but, there are no guarantees. So, if our blog goes silent, no worries, and we'll hopefully be back online sometime around November 10.

Stuff, Stew, and Q

Saturday was the day for "Stuff, Stew, and Q" at Jimmy and Regina's church, Providence United Methodist, Quinton, Virginia.

06:28am: The cooking starts at O-dark:30 (don't adjust your monitor, the picture is not quite in focus)...

... actually, the schedule indicates the potatoes to go in at 6:30am.

07:10am - many hands needed for stirring the stew

The cooking area

Ingredients prepared for going into the stew...

Butterbeans, ground bacon, chopped onions and celery on the near table; stewed chicken in the metal containers and corn in the green container on the middle table; canned tomatoes on the far table.

07:30am Need to keep stirring!

There's always someone else ready to "sub-in" when anyone is tired of stirring!

07:50am - Nephew Ricky kept the fires tended.

08:15am Carl decided he had better go pay for the 4 quarts of stew that we wanted to purchase - so he headed up to the Fellowship Hall where the Stew Sales location was located...

... as well as the "stuff" for the yard sale. A good crowd was there shopping!

The "Q" was being pulled in the kitchen.

08:20am - Back at the kettle, Carl is a happy stirrer!

08:25am - Preparing cans of vegetables to go in.

08:26am

09:50am - the paddle is standing up in the stew...

10:27am - Carl stirring...

Carl demonstrating that the stew has reached the state where the paddle stands upright.

The butterbeans (lima beans) still need to cook a little more, so the stirring continues.

By 11am, it was ready!

11:07am - quart containers that have been filled so far...

... the capping process...

... the dishing out process.

That's a lot of stew!

11:34am The stew is almost all container-ized in quarts.

We had to use an alternate storage rack.

I don't have total numbers, but almost all of the stew was sold before it was finished cooking, all the BBQ was sold out, and the "stuff" sale was successful too! The fellowship with the church was great!

Ingredient prep day for Brunswick Stew

Friday was the day to prep the ingredients for the Brunswick Stew cook at Jimmy and Regina's church...

Rinsing the chicken to prepare for cooking

Peeling potatoes

Cooking chicken outside

Still peeling potatoes

There were lots of potatoes to peel...

... lots and lots of potatoes.

Did I mention lots of potatoes?

There will also be a thrift store type sale on Saturday so items were on tables in preparation for that.

Cutting up onions

Another view of the thrift sale as well as the potato peeling...

After the potatoes were peeled and cut in quarters, they were sliced by the ladies with the food processor.

After finishing peeling potatoes, the crew moved to chicken-pickin'...

... the stewed chicken was brought in from being cooked outside and we picked it off the bones.

Celery getting prepared for the stew.

Lots of work getting done, also a lot of fun and conversation going on...

Chicken pickin' (those are my blue gloves on the side of the pan in the foreground -- I removed them for taking pictures!)

Lots of work, lots of fun, good preparation to enable the Saturday cook to go well!

Gleaning Pumpkins

On Thursday, we visited the Davis farm to glean pumpkins... we had done this last year and enjoyed getting pumpkins and winter squash (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/10/visiting-pumpkin-patch.html).

Gourds and pumpkins -- we have a friend who makes beautiful art from gourds... so this one made me think of her!

There were lots and lots...

... and lots and lots...

... and lots and lots of pumpkins!

What we gleaned. Jimmy and Regina will use the larger ones for the chickens, we got the smaller "pie" pumpkins....

... and some smaller decorative pumpkins (and we think maybe Delicata winter squash).

Lest you think that there were only smaller pumpkins... Carl pretending to try to lift one...

The back side of the large pumpkin - it was cracked.

Carl trying to lift a "smaller" large one.

The owner of the farm said that what he sold this year was almost all large pumpkins, leaving him a lot of the medium and pie pumpkins. We will enjoy these!