Catching Up On.....BBQ

So we've talked softball (entry below), now it's time to talk chicken.

The BBQ is a church-wide event that takes place in the spring, usually the last weekend in April, though this year we moved it to the first week in May for various reasons. (Personally, I didn't see why we didn't keep it where it was, but there you go.) In the past, the United Methodist Men have been in charge of organizing it, but since it took up a lot of meeting time, this year was the first year an outside committee was in charge.

And in charge of that committee was me. I organized, delegated, made announcement, scheduled, etc. So you can make your own judgments on whether the account I give below is tinged with personal bias or not.

The actual day of the BBQ was Friday, May 2. I got to the church about 5:40 in the morning, the first to arrive. I went in and posted the lunch schedules and checked a few things before people started arriving.

Around six we started the fires. This was the first real test of our new BBQ pit. In the past, we had a pit at the church that had 6 bays and then used a pit at a member's house that had 7 bays. For ease in cooking, plus increase in fellowship, we decided a few years back to consolidate and build a new pit at the church. It finally got done this spring with a total of 12 nice new bays. It's an impressive structure all the way around, really. It's what happens when you get a retired engineer in charge of the whole thing!

We monitor the fires, but also the weather. During this time, a monsoon of rain starts pouring down. Of course, we were the lucky ones. Some rain, some wind, some sirens, but no tornadoes. Parts of the state couldn't say that.

In the dark and the rain, we had a short service blessing the pits to God's service. (Yes, the Methodist church does have liturgies for everything, though I think Blake wrote this one on his own.) Then it was down to the serious work of cooking chickens, and right away the problems start.

A couple of years back, we got huge chickens. We cook a half of a chicken and you get that with beans, slaw, cookies and bread for $6. (Personally, it's a heck of a deal if you ask me.) Anyway, two or three years ago, the chickens were close to two pounds instead of more in the pound, pound and a half range. Not only does this mean they take longer to cook, but more importantly, there are fewer birds that you can get on the racks.

We were hoping to get about 40 birds on a rack, which would have meant the first batch would produce 480 chickens. Instead, it was closer to 30-35 birds, which meant that we only had around 400 birds ready after the first cooking set, which was all we could get in before lunchtime.

Lunchtime, however, is our big time. Lots of businesses in town buy tickets for all their employees and want them delivered for the midday meal. We had 450 or more lunch orders that we had to fill. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.

One of the members stepped up and called the businesses that were not getting chicken and most of them agreed to wait until later. There weren't many refunds we had to do there, which is good. The problem was some people didn't get their lunch until 2:00 pm, which isn't so good. Still, for the most part, that crisis was averted.

When we were doing some tabulations before the BBQ about ticket sales, we realized that it looked like we'd sell over 800, which is how many halves we had ordered. The church member in charge was able to get the plant to sell us 150 leg quarters as backup. We figured if we used them, we could give people two legs and it'd be close to the same as the chicken half.

The tickets said that dinner ran from 3:30 to 6:30. By 5:45, we were completely out of everything. Chicken, bread, cookies, you name it, it was gone. Most people were pretty understanding and a number of them refused a refund, though we did have to give back some money.

All that was left was to clean up and close down. Some of the less essential stuff was left to the next day, but some stuff had to be done that night. I was the last one to pull out of the parking lot, leaving about 7:00 PM.

Of course, anytime you have a less-than-perfect major project, fingers start pointing and solutions get advanced, whether they are asked for or not. I've got to lead a meeting Thursday as a debriefing and a general planning of what to change for next year.

Never mind that we've done this for 30 years now and that some years it goes off without a hitch. In fact, just last year we did a good lunch business but had no problems whatsoever. There are some that want some radical changes. I don't know if that will happen or not, but we'll find out Thursday I guess. The biggest problem was more demand than ever before and the largeness of the chickens. I'm thinking minor tinkering is all that is needed, but I'm not a big change guy, as we know.

It was a long, exhausting day (and the softball game afterwards loomed as well) but it was fun and enjoyable. Though it took about three days to get the smell of chicken smoke off of me!