Apparently, making a nice chocolate chip cookie eludes me.

Yesterday I made a bunch of cookies for a dinner that my in-laws were doing for their church's homeless shelter (I'm not sure if that's exactly right, but the church provides a lot of food for this particular shelter). Sarah and I went to help out, which was the first time I've ever done anything like that. It felt good, except when we sat down to eat with them. I didn't mind sitting with them (they were all men), they were all very nice and we were chatting with some of them about what they did before they became homeless, and what they wanted to do in the future. The thing that made me uncomfortable was eating. I felt like I was taking food away from them, even though there was plenty of food there. I often have seconds when I eat (which you can tell by looking at me), but this time I didn't, for obvious reasons.

Sarah's parents were responsible for breakfast and dinner each day for an entire week. Sometimes they used the food that was there, and sometimes they made stuff at home and brought it with them. Last night was a bit of both. The kitchen/cafeteria was in the basement of a church that was built in the last few years. Apparently they had some Code problems, because the only thing that was hooked up in the kitchen was a 3 door refrigerator. There wasn't even a sink; luckily there was a bathroom in the basement, and we used the sink in there if we needed water (they took all the dirty dishes home to wash). There was a lot of equipment in the kitchen, and they are hoping to get it all installed and running by November, when the shelter gets more people for the winter (there were about 25 men there last night, they had up to 40 over the past week). I was actually wondering why Sarah's parents didn't ask us to help them before this. I have always wanted to help in a shelter on Thanksgiving, but I remember reading somewhere that everyone wants to do this, but no one wants to help the other 364 days of the year. So I guess this is a start for me.

We found out a little about what the men like and don't like (no diet anything, and no decaf!), so I think that I will get some giant cans of coffee to give to my in-laws for the shelter. I will ask to help them next time it is their turn, or if they are helping other parishioners. I don't do a lot of volunteer work (none, actually), and I feel bad about that. I suppose that I was afraid, but I see now that there is nothing to be afraid of.

I also see that I veered from my blog title. I made bigger cookies than I usually do, because I baked off 2 different sized chocolate chip cookies and let Sarah pick which size to make. I baked these 2 cookies in the toaster oven, and they were beautiful. I had my regular oven preheating, so I scooped out the cc cookies and put them in. My regular oven seems to be much cooler than my toaster oven, because the cookies turned out to be a flat mess (the other 3 kinds I made were fine). Maybe it's just the oven, I don't know. But my cc cookies are always too flat, like an halibut.

I need to find synonyms for "apparently."