In December, Sister Douglas planned feasts again for all the Zone Conferences. She had done Thanksgiving feasts with turkey and stuffing casseroles, salads and all the trimmings in November for all the missionaries and since I wasn't available to help much at that time, I wanted to help her as much as I could in December. I was on salad detail. So Monday morning it was arise early, get ready for work, have Bill drop me off at the Mission Home, don an apron and start washing lettuce. The local lettuce has to be washed carefully in Clorox water, rinsed with bottled water, spun in a salad spinner and then dried leaf by leaf the day before the Zone Conference. We have stacks of towels for drying lettuce. Quite a process.
For our largest zone of 106 we washed 33 heads of lettuce, peeled 30 cucumbers, washed and Chloroxed dozens of peppers (of all colors...they're beautiful), and tomatoes...I lost count. We cut up carrots (thankfully we had carrots from the states so no Chlorox necessary.) Then we cut up onions and celery for stuffing, peeled 50 lbs. of potatoes for mashed potatoes, cooked 25 turkey breasts and made gallons of gravy. This was a 2-day process for each Zone Conference. On the day of the conference we cut up the lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and mixed the salad together in massive bowls. They were garnished with gorgeous large avocados (how I will miss these!) Then there were mountains of fruit to cut up for massive, and I mean massive fruit salads. Pineapple, papaya, melons, oranges, grapes. So nice to have these in season all year. Everything had to be transported to the zone meeting.
We did this 3 times in 2 weeks and on the last morning of the last conference, when my body alarm went off, I rolled over, looked at the clock and thought of the movie "Groundhog Day." "Morning campers! Rise and shine! It's Groundhog Day!" It seemed to be happening to me. The other senior missionary wives, Sister Fagersten and Sister Carroll, both made hundreds of yummy homemade rolls and helped cook turkeys and prepared mashed potatoes. We got the bright idea after the first conference (actually it was Toni, Sister Douglas's friend here to help her from Utah, who thought of this) to bake potatoes instead of mashing them. Brilliant!
Sister Douglas's two ovens filled with baked potatoes. Still a lot of work to Chlorox, scrub and wrap 100 potatoes. But we did it!
Cutting up celery...yes, I'm having fun! I think...
Here's a peek at one of the fruit salads. Now that's a wooden spoon to be reckoned with!
Stuffing anyone? .
The missionaries loved getting to have a Christmas feast.
They ate themselves silly. We had to monitor how much they took so everyone would get fed
Our beloved President Douglas.
And Sister D, equally beloved...she fed them well!
's It was a joy to serve the mission and we were grateful to be available to help. "Groundhog Days" long to be remembered!
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