Fixing and Feeding

MS. FIXIT: Saturday morning, Annabelle and I sat down at the dining room table and pretty much didn't get up for the next 2.5 hours. We were super focused on fixing her cell phone. Specifically, replacing its broken screen. She bought a cute new astronaut 'protection' case last week. One day after she got it, she dropped her phone and learned the cute case offered almost zero protection. The phone's screen shattered in one corner. 

I told her to look up her model number and that we'd order a replacement screen. It came mid-week, and I advised her to find a video or two about how to perform the repair. She did find a couple of videos, each were varying degrees of helpful (showing most of the process step-by-step) and ridiculous (tinny voice overs, bad photography, awful canned music). 

Christian is Mr. Fixit around here, of course, but he was busy doing some drywall. I told Annabelle that I thought she and I could tackle the fix, and that's just what we did, with zero intervention needed by Christian.

The first steps, were removing the sim card holder and popping the back off. Then, Annabelle had to remove the battery. That was a bit of a bear. The finger print reader and phone's speaker, charging port, and antenna had to be temporarily removed. That wasn't too bad. We worked slowly, and methodically, watching both videos during each step to make sure we were proceeding properly.

The repair kit came with all sorts of objects, most of which we never used. When it was reassembly time, we did use tiny double-sided sticky tape to refasten the repaired phone.

Annabelle handled all the hands-on work. I was impressed by her determination and confidence. 

The 'scariest' part of the process was heating the phone up so that we could pry the old screen off the phone's body. These screens are super glued on, and both videos said you needed to heat the phone to get the glue to soften, so that you could remove the screen. 

One video used a heat gun and warned viewers to be very careful not to get the phone too hot. But how hot is too hot? No temperature or time was mentioned, whatsoever. 

The other video recommended using a heating pad, and their phone was on what was clearly a commercial phone repair person's custom heating pad. Yeah, we don't have one of those. Annabelle suggested one of our food warming trays. We were about to fetch one from the basement, but then spied our pancake griddle in the pantry upstairs. We put a silicone mat atop it and then did some math. We spied the temperature of the heating pad in the video was 39. We figured that must be Celsius. So, we converted that to Fahrenheit (102) and fired up the griddle. We kept a careful check on the temperature with a good kitchen grade thermometer. We'd heat the phone for a minute, then she'd pry for about a minute. Heat and pry heat and pry. This went on for about 20 minutes. 

It was tedious, but it worked! Hooray! Once that was off, putting the new screen on was pretty straightforward. Then it was a matter of carefully reassembling the phone.

The moment of truth was firing it up. We held our breath as it booted up. ... It worked! She did it! Definitely a great feeling of accomplishment. 

TEEN TIME: This Saturday was the fourth Saturday of the month, and for our family, that means cooking up a whole lot of food for Teen Feed.

We came up with a main dish menu idea we'd not attempted before: Casseroles. Volunteers could sign up for a slot and then bring enough casserole to feed 10 really hungry homeless teens. I purposely left it entirely up to them what kind of casserole they wanted to provide. I find volunteers are more willing to help if they're given choices.

We made four lasagna pan sized casseroles on Friday. Two were corn dog casserole I wrote about a couple weeks back, and the other two were chicken tortilla, a recipe we test drove a week or so ago. 

On Saturday, we did things like get containers and condiments ready and pick up donations from others in our group on our way to the Teen Feed kitchen.

We were in the University District by 4:45. Christian and CJ handled receiving the drop ofr donations curbside from 5 to about 5:20, while Annabelle and I were in the kitchen getting things in order. 

The casseroles started rolling in. So many, so good! There were two terrific turkey casseroles (one with mega veggies, the other a gluten-free tetrazinni). There was a big, beefy hot dish from Kennedy. There was piled-high lasagna, a classic tuna casserole with lots of cheese (yum!). There was a clever breakfast tortilla casserole, a spicy tamale casserole, and two vegan masterpieces. The ovens - and our dining guests - were absolutely stuffed! 

Below is a collage of a few of tasty options.

And below is a shot of me trying to keep track of what was what in the various aluminum pans (that all looked the same when they're covered in foil).

We also had an abundance of healthy fruit and veggies, cases of sparkling water and, of course, desserts. The sweet treats included brownies, snickerdoodle and Oreo cheesecake bars, apple crisps, vegan and gluten free treats, to boot. Notice Annabelle holding one of our Rice Krispies treats. It was so big, it required two hands. :)

"They were running for seconds," Teen Feed staffer Austin said of the hungry diners.

The night was not without its challenges. The basement kitchen Teen Feed is temporarily housed in is *SO HOT.*  I mean like you're purple and sweating if you're just standing in it, not to mention if you're running around trying to make dinner for 80. 

Also, can I just say that it's an adventure trying to serve up casseroles without a spatula. :(  I did manage to find a pancake turner, but those are inelegant when you're trying to scoop out a square portion from a rectangle shaped container. Ugh. Next time I'd know to bring my own. Just really didn't think a commercial kitchen wouldn't have spatulas.