cookin christians

My neighbor is somewhat heavily involved in his church.  He attends every Sunday and gets involved in various merchandising schemes to keep the church lights on.  He lets me know when the hoagies (po' boy, subs, grinders) are on sale.  Let me tell ya, they make the very best hoagies and I always order at least three at a time.  Yeah, they're THAT good.
   
Members of the congregation get together with local farms and bakeries and secure the raw materials.  Other members gather in the church basement and get busy making hoagies or soup or whatever is on the menu.  Pick up is in back of the church.  Yesterday was turkey dinner day.

This is a big deal for the church.  They have a small army of Christian men and women divided into groups in charge of making specific items.  You'll have several women who do nothing but roast turkeys.  Another group who makes the stuffing.  Another who makes the mashed potatoes and so on.  On turkey dinner day they all bring their fresh-out-of-the-oven creations to the church basement where it's carved up, dished out, and assembled in portion controlled efficiency and bagged up as one individual dinner.

Pick up was between 3:30 and 6pm and by 3:30 the line went around the church.  A half dozen church members were dispensing turkey dinners while others were bringing out more.  The temps were in the 40's but this stuff was still hot.  It doesn't get any fresher than this.

The bag consisted of several containers filled with apple-cranberry sauce, pickled cabbage, a tub of gravy, a piece of chocolate cake, and a big, partitioned, Styrofoam container filled to the max with mashed potatoes, fresh cut-from-the-cob corn, and a heaping mound of stuffing topped with thick slices of turkey.

I've had this dinner before and all I can say is this stuff you'll never find in a restaurant.  The quality and flavor is matched only by it's extreme massiveness.
I ate the whole thing in one sitting. 

The next morning, I couldn't help but notice a distinct elevation in body aches and pains.  My lower back felt like a train wreck and my shoulders hurt like hell.  This is exactly how I felt before I started keto and then vegetarian as a change of pace.  It felt like the low level inflammation I've been enduring most of my life while, at the time, I thought I was eating healthy.  

Ok, I've been staying away from bread, grains, potatoes, corn, gravy, sweet stuff, and white food in general for more than a year and I was curious how this stuff would effect my physiology.  Now I know.      

I can understand why a meal like this is something that anyone involved in ketogenics, paleo, vegan, Mediterranean, or any other food discipline can agree on.  There's something in the American diet for everyone to hate and for good reason.  Obesity, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, cancer, gastritis, celiac disease... the list is endless and a major boon to the medical industry and big pharma.  A long term diet like this will surely kill you slowly with lots of Rx drugs to help along the way.  Hail AMA! 

But who cares?

It all tastes so fuckin good!

I can't wait for hoagie day.  I already put my order in.