A Bumpy Night

I mentioned in my last post that we would soon be having some guests for dinner. Well, tonight was that night! The man who requested dinner at our house, also requested what meal he wanted. At first he asked for meatloaf, but since we had that last time, my husband 'asked' him to pick something else.
--on a side note-- It's good to know the meatloaf actually was good, and they weren't just being polite! (here's the recipe for it; if you're interested)
For his second choice, he sent a text message to my husband that read.... "How about Pam's fried chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, and her famous biscuits?"
Sounds good right?..... Wrong! I've never made fried chicken for him. As a matter of fact, I am terrible at making it! And my "famous biscuits"?? I've only attempted biscuits one time (besides opening a can!), and they turned out really bad. I can mash some potatoes, but the gravy I usually make is from a packet... and I was out of it and didn't have time to order more online. What was this guy thinking of? My husband texted (is that a word?) him back about the biscuits, and he replied that he meant my rolls. Now that's better... I make some really good rolls. We decided that we would attempt to fulfill this man's requests... and that's where the 'fun' begins!

We would be feeding 10 people, including ourselves. My husband's favorite cooking appliance is his Fry Daddy, so we decided to fry the chicken in that. Our small fryer would not be able to hold enough though, so we arranged to borrow a larger one. So far so good. This evening I had my rolls baking, the potatoes peeled and ready to cook, and the brownies were already cooling on the stove. On to the chicken. We did great as far as the coating goes, but now it was time to prepare the fryers. We were told that the fryer would take two bottles of oil, so that's what we bought. After pouring the two bottles in, we noticed that it was only half full. So, with only about 10 minutes to spare, my husband had to drive to the store to pick up some more. We decided it would be worth it to go to the little place down the street, even though it costs a lot more. He got back in record time and we finished filling up the fryer. Now, just to plug it in and let it heat up. Problem. We remembered that when my husband brought it home, we noticed that water was dripping out of the back where the electrical elements are. We were hoping it was nothing. We were wrong. It would not turn on! So now we were stuck with 4 chickens worth of parts waiting to be cooked, and only one small Fry Daddy to fry it all in... and 45 minutes to do it! We knew that we would have to pull out a frying pan and do some on the stove, but that also posed a problem. Our house was not wired well at all. Everything is on the same circuit and if we have too much going at once it flips the breaker. If I have the air conditioner on and the oven... I can't turn the stove-top on. But we had no choice this time. We turned off the air conditioner, and every other major appliance we could do without and turned the stove on. (We have a gas stove and an electric one, but all 4 of the gas stove burners were being used) We dumped the oil out of the broken fryer and into the pan and hoped for the best. The chicken was doing pretty well, so I turned my attention to the gravy. Since I didn't have any meat drippings to use, I planned on making a gravy from a roux and beef bouillon"broth". I even practiced the night before and it tasted pretty good. This time however, I misjudged the amount of flour I used and I ended up needing to double my amount of liquid just to make it taste decent. I had about 5 cups of gravy leftover at the end of the night, but at least it tasted edible. My plan this morning was to change my clothes and apply my makeup right before everyone got here, so I didn't get really messy while I was cooking. This plan got thrown to the side however. I made time to throw on some different clothing, but nothing could be done about the plain face. Oh well. Our guests arrived about 15 minutes early, and we ended up only being 15 minutes late with dinner... so it wasn't too bad. And all of the food turned out pretty well, so we were all pleased. It was a hectic couple of hours for us, but we were able to smile and laugh through it... and that is a big deal for us. My husband and I have never been very social and we have had very few people over for dinner in our married life. The Lord is trying to help us grow in this area of hospitality. The first big dinner we had here in our home was a huge undertaking, and the Lord helped it to go very smoothly. The next several times were just the same, everything went smooth. This time was a lot more bumpy, but by now we were much more comfortable with the whole experience and it didn't stress us out. Our guests had a good time and everyone seemed to feel right at home and even hinted that they would like to come over again. There was one female here, and she said that she'd like to come over some time and learn how to cook. I think that would be a wonderful opportunity to speak with her on a more personal, one on one level. Although I don't know how much help I would be in teaching her to cook! Overall, I think the night was a success... bumps and all.
I took some pictures of the kitchen afterwards, but they really don't do the mess justice. I'm going to put them here anyway so you can at least see the kitchen and understand the whole "two stoves" thing I was talking about.