Extreme Food Day 4

Day 4 was a tough one for me. I woke up in the RV (a donation from Buddy Gregg) with a sore & swollen right foot. I rested for a bit longer than usual before heading over to the Food Tent, where the Food Team was de-boxing lunches, which means wrapping sandwiches from box lunches in plastic wrap and putting the fruit salad, pasta salad, and cookies in containers for other use. Here are some de-boxed sandwiches ready for delivery to the job site.

And, by the way, men apparently don't like pimento cheese. At the end of the day, that's all that was left: 4-5 pimento cheese sandwiches. We also started the day with a supply of wrapped BBQ sandwiches.

You'd think we'd have been set, right? Wrong. It was clear by mid-afternoon that even though we had meals coming at 6 pm, 10 pm, and 2 am from Pellissippi State Culinary Institute, we were going to run out of food during the next 12 hours. It's not because PSCC didn't bring a lot of food; it's because there were simply more workers & volunteers than the Food Team had been told would be there.

I let Cynthia Moxley, PR Coordinator for EMHE, know of the problem, and an hour after she posted the message on Facebook, David Neusel, owner of Big Ed's Pizza in Oak Ridge, showed up with 25 pies. His friend, Mike Daniels, didn't let our temporary hard hat shortage keep him from delivering pizzas to the job site.

These guys took the pizzas to the workers on site and returned very quickly with empty boxes. Amazing how quickly 25 boxes of pizza disappeared on this work site.

Pellissippi State showed up with chips & salsa, burritos, and bread pudding. Colorful chips.

Volunteer Aimee Rovane eating a burrito.

Yummy bread pudding.

We were glad to have a late night surprise sandwich delivery from Nixon's Deli.

Krispy Kreme donated doughnuts a couple of times--with one condition: Volunteers had to wear Krispy Kreme hats while delivering doughnuts to the job site. Here's one of our favorite Food Volunteers, Carl Loy, gamely wearing the KK chapeau. He was a very welcome sight to the late night workers.

By this time, it was clear I needed to return to the RV and rest my foot. Food Team member Janet Testerman brought me ice and socks and made me put my swollen foot up.

She showed off her own alpaca socks--very cool. Hope our friend (and former Knox Mag Art Director) Murry Keith sees these--he has a thing about alpaca.

My foot's pretty swollen, but you gotta love the cute reindeer socks she brought me! Since I'm a holiday minimalist, Janet had fun bringing me socks with holiday motifs--holly, valentines, pumpkins--all borrowed from her mother's holiday sock drawer.

Food Team member Andie Ray took a break to visit me. Andie wins the prize for most stylish hard hat--topped with her own furry hat.

Day 4 ended with lots of laughing about reindeer socks and Andie's hat combo. Sadly, it went downhill from there. Stay tuned.