As many of you know, I am a Shepard at church. At Sunday School the kids do a worship rotation. They learn the same story for four Sundays. Each Sunday they rotate to a different workshop to hear and experience the story in a different way, such as drama, video, cooking, art, games and computer. There are teachers that teach each workshop. So the computer teacher is in the computer room all four Sundays and teaches the kindergarteners one week, the 1st and 2nd graders the next week and so forth. I’m a Shepard for the 1st and 2nd graders. So I go around to each workshop with the same group of kids each year; keeping them in line and helping the teachers.

We spend the first ten minutes of Sunday School singing songs. Then we say the Lord’s prayer and pass around the offering basket. The last few months the money we’ve collected in the offering has been to buy food for a big Thanksgiving feast for a local woman’s shelter. We bought canned veggies and some potatoes and a couple of hams. Last week the kindergarteners made cornbread.

And this week it was the 1st and 2nd graders turn in the kitchen. My fifteen Sunday School kids made six pumpkin pies. Many of us moms have cooked with our kids before. Mom and a couple of kids in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies. But have you ever baked with FIFTEEN kids? It’s quite an adventure.

We broke in to three tables with five kids each. Everything was pre-measured and just waiting for the kids to pour it in to a bowl and stir. So you’d think it would go smoothly, right? Yeah. Right.

First we put in the four eggs. One of the kids at my table didn’t want to break an egg so that worked out well with the other four each breaking one egg. I thought “this is a piece a cake. No fighting or anything.” Um, yeah.

The first girl was just tapping her egg on the side of the bowl like it was one of the last remaining Fabergé eggs. But finally she got it to crack open and got the egg in the bowl. Then it was Skyler’s turn. She ended up getting some of the shell in to the bowl. When I was done digging that out we passed the bowl on to the next kid. He whacked it so hard he got egg all over his hands. And that point I started to wonder if perhaps store bought pies might be better for the woman’s shelter.

The kids were really good about taking turns and not fighting. I was really surprised. But we did have excitement when it came to stirring. The idea of gentle stirring is lost on children. They were whipping that spoon through the mixture like a tornado through a cornfield. We probably could have made another pie out of what was left on the table.

After that display I decided to fill the pie crusts myself. I filled each pie crust clear to the top. When I was done I realized I probably should have left a little room for movement because I still had to get them to the oven. Of course as I was transporting one I jostled it a little too much and some filling spilled out. But at least I didn’t drop it on the floor.

In the end we baked six pies which all look very, very yummy. And nobody even lost a finger. I call that a good day in the kitchen.

But I think we’ll buy our pies for our own Thanksgiving dinner.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 11:00 pm and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.