Gwennie Ru, my new granddaughter lives in North Carolina with her mom Julia, and dad Kevin.

One late evening at the supper table, my daughter Julia said “Oh, by the way, there wasn’t anyone signed up for bringing a meal to youth meeting this week so I signed up.” This was the night before the meeting and my eyes went wide. I might have said something like “and how is this going to work out?” I knew that Julia and Kevin both had to work all the next day, and I also have a problem keeping my mouth shut. But, no one seemed overly concerned, and Julia got up from the table and went to Dollar General (at 8:30 pm) for spaghetti supplies for 30 hungry kids.

The next morning I came over to do granny daycare duties and saw that the table was loaded with french bread, linguini noodles and sauce in jars. Hmm…

Gwennie Ru took her bottle and an hour or so later was sleeping in her bassinet. I went out to the kitchen to say good morning to Kevin, who works at home, and found him in the kitchen. He was cooking noodles and trying to get ready for a conference call at the same time. I thought he looked a little tense.

He had opened all seven packages of linguini and put them in a pot of water, which was starting to boil. But who could really tell since the pot was so full that it couldn’t be stirred? It was hard to even put a spoon in it to try to stir.

I am not a wonderful cook and generally have very little advice to give on the subject but this was clearly a disaster in the making. “Kevin, this is not going well. Seriously, you need help.”

“Are you offering?” Hope sprang up in him. I could feel it.

“I guess I am.” I nodded.

And with that he went, rather quickly I thought, over to his desk and a couple minutes later was on his call.

Honestly, I could not move the noodles around in the pot at all and decided that the first needed thing was more space, and the second was more water. I found another large pot and filled it with hot water from the tap and set it on the stove. I began lifting clumps of linguini out of one pot and into the other.

I suppose many people my age know that as kids we used to make glue out of flour and water, right? Those are the basic ingredients of noodles as well and, unstirred, they pretty much glue themselves together in large clumps. The process was well underway.

I took out what I estimated to be about half of the noodles, and tried again to stir the pot. Now there was room for more water so I added that as well. I thought I was making good progress and the added water had cooled down whatever was taking place in the pot. The second pot was going considerably slower than the first and was not a worry.

What was a worry was thinking about where all the noodles were going to go at some soon approaching time. I don’t know about you, but I always think I’m not cooking enough spaghetti. When they’re dry, the noodles look so little and thin, so you throw in a few more and end up with spaghetti for a week. Think for a minute about seven packages of noodles… Okay, that’s long enough.

Although fairly unfamiliar with Julia’s kitchen, I found several large colanders and set them in the sink. I didn’t run, but walked fast to the basement where there were some large foil catering pans in storage. By this time I figured the first pot might be done cooking and need to be tested. I tasted them, and these were done but might have had a slight burned flavor? It wasn’t bad, so in spite of a few dark noodles coming to the surface now and then, I gave them the green light and poured them into the two colanders and started rinsing. While not always necessary, in this case rinsing was needed.

The majority of the noodles were fine, although I had to cut out clumps that had welded together and refused to separate. I had to do a little surgery getting the final layer out of the pot too, leaving the parts that were stuck to the pot. I split the burn flavored ones between the two pans and lubricated them with olive oil and a large jar of sauce. I repeated the process with the second pot of noodles which were not burned, so each pan had both flavors to kind of keep people guessing. More sauce, parmesan cheese, and voila, spaghetti dinner for 30!!

Julia came home early from work and took the spaghetti and bread down to the church to be heated and consumed. For her, it was another night away from home until 8 pm. As it turned out, there was nearly a full pan of leftovers for us to eat – see what I told you about having spaghetti for a week? It happened. Thankfully, a miracle occurred somewhere in there and it actually tasted pretty good. It’s just another story of crazy blessedness at Gwennie Ru’s house…