Pancake Supper Part Two

Sorry it took so long for part two. I took a trip to Nepal and have safely returned. I actually have so many blog topics I may write a new one every other day just to catch up. This post is part two of a previous post. It could stand alone but much of the explanation of terminology happens in part one so feel free to go back and refer to that if needed.
Some years ago our church decided to host one of these pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday.  We had not done one in some years, and I don't really remember who's idea it was to have one, but that really isn't important to the story.  Like any good event at our church, proper planning took place. We discussed every aspect of the pancake supper, right down to the type of syrup we would use.  Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima?  Real butter or margarine? Sausage or bacon? Whole wheat or not? You get the idea.  People are funny when making these kinds of decisions. People with clean garages at home, the same people who actually park a car or two in their garages; these are the people who choose by debating which one will be the most used. There is only room for one syrup so we must choose carefully. People like me, with garages full of stuff and no room for cars; we say both and. Give the people choices! Let's have syrup with butter already in it and have plain syrup, and maybe add blueberry syrup as well! So the discussion goes back and forth from choices, to money-concious people who don't want too many bottles of syrup or any leftover pancakes. Where will we put leftovers? When we realized the discussion is about pancake batter and for 100 or so people that may attend, the difference is counted in perhaps $20, I say err on the side of too much. After all, who wants to come to a dinner on Fat Tuesday only to be given a diet-sized portion of food.  Lets buy enough for 150 people and spend that extra $20!
The reality is, what you just read in less than two minutes took a church staff of 6 people several hours to discuss. Of course I am as much to blame since I am one of the six, but you get in the moment and passion for pancakes takes over.  Ok, so we have the supplies, we open the doors, and begin serving people for the planned two hours. One hour into the dinner we have served about 20 people.  Evidently our new tradition hasn't caught on yet. Our cooks are busy counting out controlled portions to minimize waste. Two pancakes, one sausage per person. After one hour had gone by and we sat with empty plates, I encouraged people to go back for more. This is where things went awry.  One of our cooks was the soup nazi of pancakes. This was an "all you can eat" dinner.  He served you two pancakes and apparently that was all you can eat. You will get no more. As he sat in the midst of an overwhelming amount of batter, I let him know as a staff person we had properly planned for people to be able to eat as many pancakes as they wanted so please serve more to the guests. He told me no. I spoke with the senior pastor and made him aware of the rationing, to which he yelled from his seat to the cook, "give them as much as they like!" Well upon returning to the line, our volunteer threw one pancake on my plate and said "you are an ass!" to which I said thanks for the pancake with a smile on my face.
As the dinner concluded, I went to my office, followed by the cook who actually threatened to cause physical harm to me, even referring to a gun he had in his car. Over pancakes. And sausage. We didn't actually come to fighting over the dinner, but my sarcasm probably did not help diffuse his anger either. I guess you could say I dodged a bullet. We discontinued that tradition, and a few weeks later I received a letter of apology from that parishioner. It must have been seven or eight years ago that this happened. This year we had some new members who wanted to put on the pancake supper. I checked my schedule and would be in Nepal during the event. "Sounds great" I said. I heard it went well and there was plenty of leftover food.