What's for Dinner?

I was looking for a book I'd failed to read when it was popular and was winding through the back corridors of the church.  It's a big place, with lots of halls shooting off in different directions.  I've got the main floor figured out, but not the top floor, and the basement where the kids go seems a maze.  Every Sunday the right parents get reattached to the right kids, and everybody goes home happy.  So it must be easier than I think.

Part of those back rooms house the choir and  the teens.  There's a little chapel and a lovely formal lounge, but I'm looking for the church library and the kitchen.  All churches will tell you to head towards the light, but in this case it's true.  It's Wednesday  night and not every room has the lights turned on.

As I near the library, I hear hoots and whistles,  a few shrieks, well-kept promises, and laugh-out-loud laughter. Somebody is having a good time.  Brent, our Australian chef, is playing pool with one of the guys, who is one of our refugees.  They are both stretching into impossible shots, kids and friends are urging them on.  I think that pool is a universal language. There are a few things that lend themselves to world peace.  Art is one of them.  You can tuck music in that one.   Brent will tell you that food is another.  It's hard to be angry with anybody who is feeding you good food when you are really, really hungry.  And I believe that sports and games is another.  People who play. . .

The pool table is in the library.  The library is doing double duty these days, decked out as it is with pool and fuzz ball tables.  There's some sensibility that supervised teens are in a better space than  unsupervised ones, hence the game tables.  Gotta have something for them to do.

And eat.  Brent and the gang  made Morrocan Beef (beef that's been braised all day in tomatoes and carrots and about a thousand spices) along with roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes.  The scent is enough to make me dizzy.  He's feeding about 200 people tonight.  It's a lingering fall day.

Pretty perfect, I'm thinking.