Teen Feed Times Two

In my dearth of blog posts, I have failed (until now) to chronicle the last couple of Teen Feeds we hosted. Let me fix that. ...  

CAMP OUT: This past Saturday, we had a summer camp out theme as our inspiration. Saturday was (finally!) a hot one in Seattle, and we were hopping in the basement kitchen at University Lutheran Church LC to put together the meal multiple people helped make happen through their sponsorships and donations. 

I usually publish our wish list a couple of weeks before our fourth Saturday of the month service. And I usually have a good number of people sign up to help post haste. But not this month ... it was crickets. The wish list was lonely, asks unfulfilled. This prompted me to recall that historically June is a *really* hard month for Teen Feed. There's so much going on with end of school stuff, people traveling, etc. that something has to give for people and often that 'maybe next month' is Teen Feed. 

I'm not gonna lie, this month was a bit of a bear - other than our own family, only one volunteer signed up to actually make something this month. That's an all time low, for sure. The good news is, we had plenty of sponsors, it was a pretty easy menu and I had the time and tools to get the stuff made! Thank goodness for my Instant Pots! 

The main entree was BBQ chicken, and I came up with a good system for getting a bunch of it cooked quickly. We seasoned the chicken with a BBQ rub from Costco, and then seared the skin on the chicken in a cast iron pan with some oil. I got it good and crispy. Next, into the Instant Pot the thighs and legs went for nine minutes, followed by a 'quick release' of the pressure. Then, it was into foil pans, slathered with BBQ sauce and put under the broiler for a couple of minutes - just until it started to get a little char on it, so it looked barbecued. We just reheated it on site for the teens. It worked great! 

We've never served BBQ chicken at Teen Feed before, and I'm hear to tell you, it was a hit! Kennedy, another volunteer and I cooked up about 44-plus pounds of bird, plus we had savory BBQ seitan cutlets as a vegan option, as well. 

I used my Instant Pots to cook the corn on the cob to perfection.

It was drenched in butter and covered in cotija. Yum! 

You can't have a summer camp out meal without beans and weenies, so we made 55 hearty servings worth! 

Another camp out must is watermelon. I got lucky and bought three of the most beautiful watermelons I've ever seen. They were *so* red and juicy and sweet! Annabelle expertly cubed the fruit into bite sized pieces for guests, who gobbled it up out of 12-ounce serving cups. One diner came for seconds, thirds, and fourths before we finally just gave him a big ol' bowl of his own. :)

At the last minute we had an extra task added to our plate: Teen Feed requested we use up several enormous heads of lettuce that were donated from a local grower. We turned that gift into 30 big Caeser side salads that Kennedy's friend Megan boxed up for ROOTS (an overnight teen shelter) and we had two enormous bowls for our dine-in guests. I'm happy to report, they ate it all! Veggies for the win!

CJ, Annabelle, and I made 55 servings of indoor s'mores. 

And since it was so hot out, we made sure to bring bags of ice so the teens could have nice, cool drinks with dinner.

It's always gratifying hearing feedback from diners. 

"Your food is delicious!" raved one Teen Feed staffer. (Teen Feed staff often sit and dine with the guests so as to create more of a casual, comfortable connection with them as they share info about services that can help the teens into stable housing, health care, and more.)

One teen's comment was kind of heart-melting. He said, "This reminds me of home." 

The food was such a hit, there were hardly any leftovers, but we did send a few meals to the nearby Community Fridge at University Heights. 

Part of the work we do for Teen Feed involves thoroughly cleaning the kitchen after every shift. There's a list of things every meal team is supposed to do every time they're in the kitchen, including mopping the floor, old school style. CJ takes on that task and does a really good job. I can't prove it, but based on the color of the water in the bucket almost immediately, I'm predicting most teams must not see the 'mop floors' directive. ;)

OPA!: In May, we offered a Greek themed-menu for the first time at Teen Feed. It was an absolutely beautiful meal with lots of bright colors and big flavors.

I found a really great recipe online for chicken gyros. The meat was absolutely delicious! It was served in toasted pitas with lots of veggies (chopped tomatoes, cucumber, Romaine lettuce and diced red onions. 

We made a gallon-plus of homemade hummus from scratch. I soaked the chickpeas overnight, cooked them in my Instant Pot the next day, and then followed a solid recipe and used my food processor to whip up the hummus. Kennedy made a gallon of tzatzaki for the gyros. Of course we had lots of cucumbers, carrots, feta and kalamata olives to go with.  

We also served up tasty little triangles of spanikopita, and the dolma absolutely made one in-person diner's day. When he came back for seconds all he wanted was more dolma!

Sweet treats came in the form of Greek butter cookies, which my friend Emily and I made.

Peach and honey Greek yogurt smoothies were another dessert in liquid form.  

All in all, a really great meal that is now a family favorite.

Slaying It

DOUBLE DEMON: Regular readers know we have been making birthday cakes for kids in homeless shelters for years now. We tend to gravitate toward the cakes we think other volunteer bakers won't take on, due to the topic requested. This means we end up doing cakes decorated in themes ranging from Tupac Shakur to an astronaut Godzilla to an artistic cat.

Recently, we saw a request for a Demon Slayer themed cake. We knew that to be a Japanese anime, but nothing else about the franchise. It seemed like that might be a request that went unfulfilled, so we signed up, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. Naturally, we turned to the Google. 

According to the Wikipedia article about the series, "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃, Kimetsu no Yaiba, "Blade of Demon Destruction"[4]) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge. It follows teenage Tanjiro Kamado, who strives to become a demon slayer after his family was slaughtered and his younger sister Nezuko turned into a demon."

Well, that sounds rather dark ... But apparently it's popular. As of last year, there were more than 150 million copies of the manga in circulation and the movie "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train," released in October 2020, became the highest-grossing anime film and Japanese film of all time.

The story features several colorful characters, so we didn't really know which direction to go with the cake. We asked Birthday Dreams if they could find out which character was the child's favorite. We were told it is Zenitsu Agatsuma, an honest and kind boy with self doubt but special talents.

Given that, we decided to make a modeling chocolate sculpture of him as our cake topper. And by we, I mean Annabelle.

                                       

ROUND TWO: It seemed like no sooner had we delivered the first Demon Slayer cake than CJ received an email from Birthday Dreams asking if we would take on another one. Um, sure? 

We wanted to go a totally different direction this time, so it was back to the Google. After some poking around, I found myself wondering if cookie cutters for these characters existed. I turned to Amazon and found a set featuring eight of the characters. But the cutters were super tiny - just a couple of inches tall apiece. I thought that might be an OK size to make fondant versions of the characters and have them on the sides of the cake. But then as Annabelle and I talked more about it, we pivoted to the idea of making little cookies to put around the cake. And then that morphed into making cupcakes with the character toppers, and a petite cake with the child's name in the Demon Slayer font/logo style.

One thing we had to do was figure out who each of the characters were, and what they looked like. What would we do without the Internet?

In the end, our vision came together in a most pleasing manner - well, at least to us. We sure hope the birthday child liked it (name changed to protect anonymity).

Below is the character that was featured on our first Demon Slayer cake. This was a smaller, cuter version. Annabelle said the art style is called chibi, actually.

The photo below shows that sometimes in life, you have to paint with a toothpick. This project was one of those times.

Here's a close up of four of the main characters. The one with the scar on his forehead is the main character in the series, Tanjiro Kamado.

Mum's the Word

MOTHER'S DAY: I know it's not ever mom's dream, but for me, there are few places I'd rather be on Mother's Day than the ballpark. And so, that's where we were on that special Sunday, with seats right behind home plate!

CJ was working the game, of course, so at one point I walked to the opposite side of the stadium to get him his favorite concession stand food, a burger from Lil Woody's, and say 'hi' to him while he had his lunch break.

It was an extra special Mother's Day for one mom, the mother of Mariners' rookie pitcher George Kirby. Kirby, 24 and from Rye, New York, made his first ever Major League Baseball start on Mother's Day, and his parents and a whole bunch of friends were sitting right behind home plate. In this crowd shot, if you look in the center, in the shadow, you can see a cameraman with a glowing light on his camera, which was pointed right at the Kirby rooting section.

Here's a brief video about Kirby getting notice of his "call up."

PRIDE TIME: One of the Mother's Day presents I received was a new pair of Doc Martens from Rick and Rachel, down in Vegas. They're part of Martens' pride line of shoes, which you can probably deduce from the stripes on the side, near the heel.

I thought the shoes would look even more pride-full with some rainbow laces.

So, I found some lace replacements on Amazon. They were perfect! The company, ULace, has all sorts of fun lace replacements. (You may have seen U-Lace on Shark Tank back in 2014.)

Annabelle just happened to match the shoes when she installed the lace replacements.

A PROMISE KEPT:  A few days before Mother's Day, I made sure to keep a promise I'd made to a friend, Jan. She was my supervisor when I worked for the Employment Security Department for a few years back around 2000. She was a strong, smart, kind woman who, sadly, succumbed to nasty cancer in December of last year, gone way too soon. 

Jan was a wonderful mother to a son she adopted as a single parent. My son Kennedy even babysat Jan's son one summer way back when. 

When I knew Jan's days were few, I was desperately thinking of a way to do something for her. I knew being a mother meant the world to her, so I thought maybe the best thing I could do is help her son remember he was loved and how great his mom was, so I got the idea to send him a card and a little pick me up once a year. I pitched my idea to Jan, and she loved it. I asked her which day of the year she'd like me to send it, and suggested his birthday, her birthday, his adoption day, or maybe Mother's Day. She *loved* the idea of a Mother's Day remembrance, and so that's what I did this year and will continue to do as long as I'm still kicking.

Pinball Wizards

 

FUN AND GAMES: Last weekend we were so happy to return to one of our favorite events of the year, the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show.

The show was on hiatus for a couple of years during the height of the pandemic and before the widespread availability of vaccines. But this year it was back and as big as ever. 

I spend way more time walking around and watching than I do playing. I'm always on the lookout for 'new' old pinball games I've never seen. A first for me this year was Teacher's Pet, dating back to 1965.

An apple for the teacher? It would be better if there was no worm, I'm guessing.

Another new-to-me pin is Gottlieb's Royal Guard from 1968. I suppose it caught my eye because of all of the Diamond Jubilee hubbub happening over in England at the time.

I've probably seen this 2001 game before, but this time I stood there thinking that the makers back in 1971 were not very close to predicting what 2001 would look like.  

The busy graphics on Roller Disco were ... something. 

I was surprised to learn this game came out in 1980. I thought roller disco was kind of passe by then.  Maybe the game was stalled in production for awhile. I actually played this game. Not a fan. 

I always enjoy checking out the super groovy Time Fantasy game by Williams. 

These mushrooms are definitely magical. According to the website TV Tropes, "Time Fantasy is reknown for its psychedelic fantasy theme, which has an anthropromorphic snail-like creature meditating contemplatively among a field of mushrooms in a surreal rainbow-colored landscape." 

It was created in just a couple of weeks in 1983, when Williams needed a game quickly, to avoid a production shut down.

Clint Eastwood caught my attention at one point. This Dirty Harry machine is from 1995. The movie came out in 1971. That's a bit of a delay.

The kids played a few Nintendo arcade games, of course.

Annabelle spent a fair amount of time in the expansive rhythm games section. 

Many of them have instructions in Japanese. That didn't slow her down. 

One game was attracting quite an audience. ...

That's right, it says The Simpsons Colonoscopy Party.

You use a joystick to make your way down (or up?) Homer's colon. 

Here's a little video for you. You're welcome.

All in all, it was a super fun day and it was so good to be back to that event.

Leftovers

FOR POSTERITY: Following are some random photos I neglected to include in previous posts.

First up are the cupcakes we made for CJ's birthday. They are Mountain Dew cupcakes with cream cheese Mountain Dew icing and topped by a nacho cheese Dorito. Shudder. 

I'd seen a photo of these years ago and finally remembered to make them for CJ's birthday this year. I pretty much followed the recipe from Rosanna Pansino's website.

The kids report the cupcakes were good. I'll have to take their words for it, as I certainly didn't want to eat one!

Next up is a couple of positive COVID tests. I feel like that's such a symbol of these last two years, I have to put it on the blog for posterity.

And then this random shot. Back when we were planning and prepping for the Back-to-the-Ballpark menu for Teen Feed, we happened to run across this abomination at WinCo. - a huge tub of cotton candy puffs! 

Cotton candy is most certainly a ballpark food, so we had to buy a couple for Teen Feed. They are some sort of coated puff, and certainly smelled just like cotton candy. Annabelle said they did taste like it, too. I'll have to take her word for it, because I didn't want to try it.