Forty years of a church kitchen, written out at last. I ran the kitchen at my church in Jackson, Mississippi for forty years. Kitchen committee. Volunteer. Never took a dime. Everything I learned in there was written in pencil in one spiral notebook by the woman who ran it before me, and in blue ink in the margins by me and that notebook is in a drawer in a building that may not be there in twenty years. So I wrote it out. Two hundred and twenty-two things, arranged by the day they belong to, with the counts beside them. THIS IS NOT A RECIPE BOOK There are a hundred places to find out how to make macaroni and cheese. There is nowhere to find out that a full pan is thirty-six plates, that it takes ninety minutes and not thirty-five, that it has to sit an hour before anybody eats and therefore needs five eggs and two tins of milk instead of four and one, and that it is the dish people judge your whole kitchen by. That is not a recipe. That is forty years at a serving window. FIVE FILES, IN YOUR EMAIL IN ONE MINUTE The Committee Book 14 chapters, 222 entries. First Sunday, the repast, Homecoming, Wednesday night, the holidays, potluck, the sick-and-shut-in plate, and the chapters on scale, holding, cost and cooking it down for one. The Large-Print Edition the same book in big type. The Pan Tables what a pan holds and what it feeds, every dish by the pan, the six temperatures that are not negotiable, and the oven schedule counted backwards from the hour you serve. Pages from the Book six pages out of the committee notebook as they are. Mother Inez's pencil, my blue ink, and the page with three layers on it where I crossed her out in 1991 and put her back in 1994. Your Own Book blank pages for your counts, your oven, and the page you hand on. EVERY ENTRY ENDS THE SAME WAY The day it belongs to. The count always an exact one. And how to cook it down for one or two, because half of you are cooking for yourselves now. I am too. I AM NOT COOKING FOR FORTY. IS THIS ANY USE TO ME? Chapter twelve is the whole answer and it is the chapter I needed somebody to write for me. Every number in this book divides by four and lands in a nine by thirteen dish you already own. ABOUT THE NUMBERS Six of them are not mine to argue with: 165°F for poultry, 160°F for ground meat, hot food held above 140°F, cold below 40°F, two hours out of temperature one above 90°F and a day of thawing for every four pounds of frozen turkey. When you are feeding a hall full of people those six lines are the whole of the responsibility. I kept a thermometer in my apron for thirty years. I am not a doctor and this is not health advice. This is church food; there is butter in it and there is smoked meat in it, because that is what it is. One payment. No subscription. Thirty days to change your mind, and you keep the files. Always cook for one more.